Californication meets Tranpacificism

WOW! We flew into Ho Chi Minh City yesterday, and.. amazing! I tell ya. I say I’m not usually one for big cities, but .. I dunno, I found it quite fascinating, and have been enjoying Vietnam so much more than Thailand. It might be because I was with my parents in TH which took away from the experience, but no, I think it’s more than that. I swear I think the people are happier here, more free, outgoing, etc. It’s weird, our (Western) relationship to them, we lost a war to them (even though the US never lost a single major battle to them. See: What’s going on in Afghanistan & Iraq to see how you can (still!) win the war and take over a country, and still lose.), and their ideology, and yet.. they seem totally ‘westernized.’ Big lights, the women shaven & sleeveless/low-cut/etc, it’s.. odd. I’m making use of the Vietnam Lonely Planet (LP) book (and I highly recommend their books, btw), and it talks about a lot of wild stuff. Mutant fishes and Turtles in the Snake Farm, a result of Agent Orange. Don’t go walking off the beaten path, you might want into a minefield or across still live ammunition. Former US air bases into airports, China Beach we’re hitting tomorrow (R&R spot for soldiers), ancient structures we bombed, etc etc.. We (the USA) has a _VERY_ clear mark on this country’s landscape. And yet (as many have pointed out), “they love us.” As tourists, as a culture.. Wow. If only their feelings were reciprocated by us, that’d be great. I had _NO_ idea of what Vietnam was really like, and so this trip is really tripping me out. I had a lot of Vietnamese friends in High School, so it’s kind of funny to see “their” names everywhere. We flew into Hue today (a big deal in the Tet Offensive), and are heading to Hoi An tomorrow. (Then onto Danang, and back to HCMC (Saigon) and hit up the Mekong Delta, etc..) This is wild. I’ve been trying to figure out why I like it soo much, and I can’t really. The seemingly more contended people might be part of it, but I only noticed that after I tried to answer this question for myself. It’s crazy, really. For example, I love Thai food in the US, probably my favorite cuisine. But everytime I ate in Thailand, I ended up being not really hungry, and a lot of the food was really not that palatable to me. OTOH, in the US I don’t like Vietnamese food at all, but here, it’s been fantastic! What’s the deal?! I’m not complaining of course, since I was ~4 days in Th and ~12 days in Vietnam, so the food thing was worrying me, but .. it’s all worked out. My other problem with Vietnamese in the US is that it’s soooo meat-centered. Here in Hue, they have at least 2 (VN) vegetarian restaurants!! WOW! The “nice” hotels we stayed in TH, (~$30-50), I find to be not as good as the hotels we’ve been staying at here (~$5-12) even. Huh. So for anyone who doesn’t care for Bangkok/Southern Thailand, I’m wholly recommending Southern Vietnam! I’d already really like to come back to see more (eg the North), which is slightly unusual for me.
Oh, and the tourists, there’s soooooo many more “Westerners” than I had expected, and no, not a bunch of Ex-Vets or anything. According to John, VN’s quite popular on the backpacking circuit. Huh.. Possibly more on VN later, any questions/etc, feel free to post! Questions/comments/etc enhance the clarity of my thoughts (and hence, my words..) ta!

Everything’s pretty cheap (exchange rate is 15000 VND (Dong) to 1 USD ($)), this internet is ~40c/hour. In Phuket (resort town) it was ~$1.50/hour, and they have ‘ADSL’ everywhere, so it’s all relatively quick. I’m trying to put all my pictures on my website, relatively “live”, so we’ll see how that turns out. The u/l (ADSL, after all), is a bit slow for this purpose, so.. we’ll see.

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