Vietnam

For some reason, it has been harder to motivate myself to write about my experiences in Vietnam. It may be because I realize that I actually have some time between ports, or that I have more to do on the ship now for my classes. However, I think the main reason lies in the fact that Vietnam is taking me a longer time to process because it affected me more than any other port, and it’s hard to put something down in writing that I’m still figuring out in my head.

 

I went to an Explorer Seminar yesterday where three students on the ship, all of whom were children of Vietnamese refugees, talked about their experiences. It was obviously difficult for them to express everything they took from their trip—one of them hadn’t been back since she moved as a three year old and another had never been to Vietnam and didn’t speak Vietnamese because his parents didn’t want him to be disadvantaged in America. Hearing their stories and seeing how they are grappling with rediscovering their identity finally gave me the inspiration to write.

 

As we had breakfast on the ship the first morning, the first thing I noticed was the weather. It was very hot and humid despite being February; I learned later that Vietnam only has two seasons: wet and dry. We got off the ship around ten and set off to explore Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon.

 

Vietnam had its share of modern shops and tall buildings but was nothing compared to the skyscraper madness of Tokyo, Shanghai or Hong Kong. Another thing I quickly noticed about Vietnam was its traffic patterns. Vietnamese don’t really have or pay attention to traffic signals. On top of that, Vietnamese love motorbikes, and sometimes I spotted family of four traveling around. So to cross the street we were told to walk at a slow and steady pace and the traffic would avoid us. I felt a lot like I was playing Frogger, trying to maneuver in a street with a constant stream of traffic. One of the most terrifying things I have ever experienced in my life was trying to cross the street at a chaotic roundabout.

We walked around the city and had beef pho, the traditional Vietnamese soup, and coffee, of which Vietnam is the second largest exporter in the world, for lunch. The Vietnamese like strong coffee with sweetened condensed milk; I thought it was delicious. We visited the War Remnants Museum, which had dozens of gruesome photographs depicting both torture victims and children mutilated from Agent Orange. Everything was very disturbing, and I felt very uncomfortable seeing many of the pictures. The museum was crowded, and I saw several people visibly reacting to the exhibits.

 

We later visited the Ben Thanh market, which located in a huge building larger than a Sam’s Club. The market was overwhelming with smells (some good, some questionable), colors, and people. Some of the vendors were very intense; one of them had a death grip on my arm when I went to leave her shop. I also tried jackfruit for the first time. It is yellow in color and tastes kind of like a mango but has more of a plastic texture. As with most fruits, I enjoyed it.

We all returned to the ship to shower and discard our sweaty clothes before Zack, Lauren and I decided to venture out to Lemongrass, a notable Vietnamese restaurant. When we found the place they said it was full and redirected us to their other location, which happened to be on the fourteenth floor of a hotel. We elected to sit outside on the beautiful deck where we could see the city and our ship. It was a wonderful meal, with spring rolls wrapped in rice paper, fried meatballs, egg rolls, and a beef mango salad for the main course. We decided that the three of us had excellent luck in finding delicious places to eat together, since it was the same people for dinner in Kyoto, Japan.

 

The next day I had an SAS trip planned for the entire day. We first went to a Caodaism Temple. Caodoism is a fusion of a lot of different religions and philosophies including Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. They also have a looser conception of saints, and they pray to icons such as Victor Hugo and Thomas Jefferson (Mark White, the academic dean of the voyage and a professor at UVA, did not let us forget that fact). The religion was created in 1929 because Vietnamese did not want to have to completely convert to Catholicism like the French wanted them to. The temple was a sharp contrast to religious sites I'm used to visiting in Europe and even Japan and China because it was brightly colored to the point of tackyness. We visited during one of the hour-long services, which involved singing and playing instruments from the balcony and dozens of other worshippers on the main floor bowing at certain moments. The men and women were separated by sides to follow the yin and yang balance, and while most people were wearing white robes, some were wearing robes of brilliant blue, yellow or red. Our guide Hung explained to us that novice worshippers wore white and high ranking officials wore colors; the blue represented the Taoism religion, the yellow represented the Buddhist religion, and the red represented the Confucianism belief. We could observe the ceremony from the side balconies, along with dozens of other tourists, which seemed odd to impose on their worshipping. Right outside of the temple, several beggars, mostly children, approached us. I felt uncomfortable with them hanging around us while we waited for our air-conditioned tour bus to whisk us away.

We then went to the Cu Chi tunnels, which the Vietcong constructed during the war. The system was elaborately constructed, with three different levels and lots of traps for unaware soldiers. We got to go into one of the trap doors, which was a tiny opening that was impossible to spot when covered with leaves. Hung showed us a series of traps that were made with household objects like folding chairs. We also learned the Vietcong had techniques to mislead American soldiers from the entrances of the tunnels. For example, Americans used dogs as a means to smell the entrances, so the Vietcong would put pepper near the place so the dog would sneeze and be unable to smell for awhile. After walking around the outside of the tunnels, a guide led us through a section. It was very small and incredibly dark, probably about three feet high and two feet wide. I only walked about thirty meters, but that was enough to convince me that I would not want to live there for ten years, like some Vietcong did. The tunnels were presented with something close to pride, but it was impossible for me to forget how many people died because of this type of war. Eric, one of the Vietnamese students who talked about his experience coming back to the country, described it as “an amusement park of death.” On top of everything, there was a chance to shoot of guns including AK-47’s at a firing range, which made walking through the exhibit with far off sounds of gunfire an eerie experience.

 

After the tunnels we returned to the ship and after packing and dinner, I went to bed shortly after to prepare for my three day trip to Cat Tien National Park.  

I really enjoyed my time "away from it all" in the national park. It was pretty isolated, and we had to take a ferry to get to the main park area. In this place, there was a check-in place, an outside hut restaurant and another concrete one, a conference center with a small museum, and probably enough rooms for about 100 people scattered along a main drag. Each building had six or so rooms, so twelve people in each, with hammocks in the front. The shower was not separated from the bathroom, so all of the water just stayed on the floor until finding the drain in the corner next to the toilet.

 

We did a fair amount of hiking, probably about 25 kilometers all told. The first day we had a couple of hours free after we arrived so we took a walk through the ‘redwood forest’, a different species than redwoods in California but still huge. The trunks fanned out on the bottom so much so that part of the root could be taller than you. We decided to head back to the main place by hopping on the rocks on the river “rapids”, although since it was dry season the river was not deep or scary at all. Walking over the rocks was a lot of fun despite the searing heat.

 

We met up with the entire group and took a forest trek with our Cat Tien guide, Thom. We saw sun bears, who were protected in cages because they are apparently hunted for their bile, as many people believe it has medicinal value. The sun bears were much smaller and cuter than any bear I had seen before, and were playing with each other while we were there. Thom then took us through the jungle, part of which overlapped the trail we had traveled before. He told us some really interesting things about the park, like how the Vietnamese discovered a tree in the jungle that had less flammable leaves and was named something that translated to “friend of Viet Cong” because of that property.

 

After the walk and showering we had dinner at the hut restaurant, which was extremely pleasant and had great food. We got on a night wildlife tour and saw lots of deer, birds, wild pigs, and a couple wildcats. Ironically, the coolest animal we saw was monkeys, and they were hanging around the restaurant one evening trying to steal food.

 

Our second day at Cat Tien National park, we visited the Crocodile Lake. It was five kilometers into the jungle. On the way, we passed the biggest tree in the park, it was probably more than 100 feet circumference, I don’t know, it was huge. Some of the guys in our group (there were 18 of us total—two professors from Germany and their 11 and 13 year old children, one woman, and the rest students) were real monkeys. They climbed vines attached to the trees until they were at least twenty feet above us. When we got to the lake, we were greeted by a boardwalk connecting various huts on the edge of the forest and a beautiful clearing with the lake. Thom didn’t get our hopes up about actually seeing crocodiles because it was starting to get into the heat of the day, but a group of us ended up finding a mother and eight baby crocodiles a little ways from the edge of the lake. They were just barely poking out of the water. One of the guys in our group decided to aggravate the crocodiles and threw mud clumps at the mom, which I definitely didn’t support. But his goal of more fully seeing the crocodile was met; he hit the crocodile once and she responded by flying into the water, jaw open. After this we returned to the main group for lunch.

 

Three women from the main kitchen had taken food on the path to cook a hot lunch for us, and it was delicious, especially since it was made without electricity. They cooked things on a fire with a big black pot. I also tried dragonfruit, which has a hot pink peel, a white inside, and black seeds. The most similar fruit I can compare it to is a kiwi.

 

After lunch a few people decided to take a boat out on the lake, while I decided to sit and enjoy the shade and the view. One unique thing about the national park is the amount of butterflies; I was sitting at the edge of the forest relaxing and I saw hundreds of yellow butterflies moving past me. It was really beautiful and peaceful.

 

We next hiked to a “bat cave” although bats no longer lived in the cave. However, I must say that the previous day a bat flew out of the jungle right over my head, so I knew that bats lived somewhere in the park. The cave was nice and cool, which was a relief from the heat, and went back far enough for complete blackness. After exploring the cave awhile longer we headed back to our rooms, had dinner, played Bananagrams, and went to sleep.

 

On our last day at Cat Tien National Park, we got out of the jungle and instead visited a local indigenous village. We took a boat to get there and the first thing Mai (our incredible tour guide who was with us for the entire trip) pointed out was the "bathroom", which was basically just a shack thing over the river. It made me understand why we couldn't drink the water. We also saw huts with satellite dishes which was pretty bizarre. Most of the residences were made out of concrete though because they were built as a gift by the government to encourage people to stay in the village. We also walked through the rice paddies and cut rice with some local women. It was no leisurely walk though since the rice paddies are mostly areas of muddy wetness so we have to balance on these narrow walkways that arbitrarily connect with other walkways to get across. At one point we were walking just next to a canal about six feet across used for irrigation, and there was some debris stuff in the water that kind of looked solid. Anyway one of the guys in my group said, I'm going this way, and the next thing we knew he was chest deep in dirty water. It was pretty funny.

 

Mai also took us deeper into the village to meet the oldest couple in Vietnam, the man was 104 and the woman was 103. They had no heart monitors, oxygen tanks, or anything else we associate with keeping people alive for that long, they were both just sitting out on the porch watching things go by. The whole time we were in the village a group of kids followed us giggling and pointing, I guess not very many foreigners at all visit the place which is really cool. Mai had us take a picture with them and then rewarded all the kids with ice cream.

 

The village was very hard to take in. It was dusty, hot, and poor, with animals running everywhere and little signs of development. Still, it seemed like people were happy, and the kids acted like kids - one of the girls in my group played tag with them and whenever she would run after them they would scream and scatter. I was really glad we got to see the village of Vietnam, I still can't believe some of the things I saw. There was this one dog who was sick or something and had no fur and was all cut up, in some places you could see his bones. We took a truck back to the park and on the way a peacock scuttled across the road! Its feathers weren’t out but it was still neat.

After the village we returned to the main area for lunch and had a last wonderful meal at the park before heading back to the ship. While en route, Mai told us some stories about herself which were really moving. She said she was one of the “boat people” who escaped Vietnam on a 26 meter boat carrying over 800 people. She was maybe thirteen, and was in charge of her two younger sisters. She explained how escaping Vietnam was plagued with corruption, like people would bribe policemen and the people running the boats so that the boat was way over capacity. Also, the “captain” of the boat got his way free, and the only qualification of the captain was that he was a member of the US Navy. He could’ve been a cook or housekeeper for the Navy and have no idea how to run a boat. Mai said that her captain didn’t even know how to use a compass. Her boat got lost at sea; it was bound for the Philippines or Indonesia but with such an incompetent captain there was no hope. The ship was running out of water so the crew mixed it with diesel fuel so that people would be discouraged to drink it. Mai wryly joked that this was the reason she had such wrinkle-free skin even though she was 52 (she really looked like she was in her thirties). The people on the boat were picked up at first by a US oil tanker, but they did not have enough space for 800 people so they left them. A couple days later, a bigger German ship got the message from the Americans and picked them up, and dropped them off in a refugee camp. Mai said that over fifty people died on the boat, and they were just tossed overboard because no one knew if they were going to be able to provide them a proper burial. From the refugee camp, Mai went to Canada, where she worked hard for years before deciding to move back to Vietnam to work in the tourism industry. She says her children have no interest in Asia or coming back to Vietnam, so she only visits them every couple of years. At one point in her story Mai told us that she had tried to commit suicide seven times in her life… it was an unbelievable story.

 

We got back to the ship around the time everyone else was supposed to be getting on as well, so we bid farewell to Mai and returned to our temporary home on the MV Explorer.