The trip into Veitnam was in water that was a brownish yellow that was disgusting. I was ready to say Vietnam has the most disgusting water I have ever seen until I looked farther from the ship and saw the perfectly blue water. The river we were passing through most have been just barely deep enough for our ship so it churned mud from the river bottom into the surface water making the disgusting brownish yellow shade in normally greenish blue water. My first night out was not reaaly worth mentioning but I will anyways. I went out with a friend who just wanted to get drunk. Thank goodness she didn’t go that far, but she then decided to go to a club. Apparently an American that can’t dance trying to move some to the music is worth taking notice of in a Vietnamese club. Needless to say we didn’t stay long but we came back on a bus full of drunk or nearly so Americans from our ship. Yeah, I needed alone time when I got back to the ship so I went up to the main deck and stared at the stars. Pretty night so far removed from people.
The next time I left the ship was with a tour group. As the driver navigated the ever changing mass of motorbikes and mopeds, the guide told us stuff about the city. Apparently it is customary that Sunday morning everyone goes out to coffee with their friends and most businesses are closed until get-together is done. Interesting. As we passed the buildings I got the idea that the city was trying desperately to rebuild. Brand new buildings were cramped in next to buildings that should have been demolished years ago giving an interesting juxtaposition. Our first stop was a bank so people could visit the ATM. We got there just as all the cashiers were showing up for work and I saw the Vietnamese version of the ladies suit. It’s a fitted silk top with the high Asian collar that flows from the waist to about an inch from the ground in smooth silk. However, a slit on both sides from nearly to the ribs leaves the sides of the legs open so it seems like there is a cloth down the back and down the front leaving the legs exposed. Now, before you get scandalized I should mention they wear matching silk pants under to cover the legs. The only skin showing is a triangle on each side above the pants that shows some skin at the waist.
Our next stop was a beach, I believe it was called China Beach, that was gorgeous. The guide showed us the statue across the bay of the female Buddha that protected fishermen at sea.
The next stop was a temple on one of seven cliffs overlooking the city. Unfortunately, we had to climb about a hundred thirty steps dug out of the stone cliff at odd sizes first. Needless to say, we were all out of breath by the time we got up there. However, the temple was nice and the views were amazing. However, the really special part about this temple was that parts of it were built into the cliff. The tour guide led us through a number of caves that smelled pleasantly of the incense bought as gifts to the gods, or however they view it, and the rocks gave the area a natural appeal. Some of the caves with icons were mere niches cut from the rock while there were a few stone houses built to protect the statues from the mist of incense that filled the air and from curious fingers of the unrespecting. Next we continued our walk down the hill and passed a large shrine that had many roofs and many windows on a large tube of stone. At the end of the tour was a colorful temple that overlooked China Beach in the distance and a white stone Buddha that blessed the visitors on the trail up to it. Then we had to take another set of stone stairs down. Yay.
Once back on the bus we went to a marble sculpture store. Vietnam of that city is famous for it’s marble statues and this store sold every type of statue one could think of in all sorts of sizes. I got some gifts for family and a necklace of green marble for myself as well as a pair of marble balls that are small enough to fit in my hand and are stripped three different colors along with their small wooden stands to prevent them from going far. I was sitting in the bus later and watched them making a huge white dragon, I think, out of marble when a guy came in guiding a box that came up to his knees and had to be at least two feet wide on to the bus. The thing was being carried by two Vietnamese men that were struggling with it and must have cost well over a hundred or two hundred dollars American. Everyone on the bus rather thought him an idiot but the statue or table, I think he said, was put up front and we just had to be careful getting on and off.
The next stop was lunch and it was good. The restaurant was empty except for the two tour groups and was obviously a place designed for American tourists to experience “traditional” Vietnamese dishes. I put those in quotation marks because the meal was a high class seven course meal and it was well presented but some of the meal seemed to be Americanized. I don’t remember much about the meal except for three of the courses. The salad course was cool because it was supposed to be eaten on chips like nachos but it was a dish of greens. Another course was an egg baked around shrimp fried rice. The course I thought the most unique was a beef soup cooked and served in a coconut shell. All in all, the meal was amazing but my favorite part was the drink. The meal was included in the ticket but we had to buy our own drinks. I saw watermelon juice on the menu and thought I’d try it. Hmm, that was amazing. They literally just cut a watermelon from the rind and liquefied it in a blender so the texture was still the amazing texture of the fruit, just a little thicker than water, and it still had all the taste, maybe with a little sugar added. Needless to say, it was total bliss.
After the meal we went to a museum with all sorts of odd art from ages past. As I looked at the figures and took many pictures, it occurred to me how fun it would be to describe these things. I realized a really fun scene to write would be my main character exploring ruins, possibly of an ancient temple on another planet. Imagine how much fun that could be to be walking through a ruined building and seeing the ancient mythical figures of another species and how they once viewed themselves. Many of the figures I’d seen that day alone seemed to be from another species, so few of them looked human as westerners think of them. Needless to say, I got a number of pictures. Looking back on some of them, I’m surprised at a few that look like African art. I didn’t know they had met at that time.
After the museum, we went to a silk portrait store. The prints are really expensive, I saw a medium sized print for over three hundred dollars, but they are amazing. They look like well done oil paintings but are really sewn very carefully from silk thread on a thin background. They look really amazing. They are done from coal sketches done by the artist and then the artist and company decide the colors to go in it and the artist redraws it on a special paper that transfers the art to the cloth. Then the cloth is put on a big sewing easel and a sewer sits down and carefully sews with silk thread. The product is well worth the huge price for such amazing art.
The last place we stopped was a small store for souvenirs and mostly clothes. I bought a lovely teal dress and pants set while others looked upstairs at things like an elephant tusk decoration and nice wooden things. Lovely artistry.
All in all, the city I saw was gorgeous and I would recommend a visit but there is one major deterrent. Because the people here are quite poor, we got mobbed everywhere we went with street vendors, Vietnamese style. They followed us around like bees to honey shoving cheap ceramic bracelets in our faces trying to get us to buy them at exurbanite prices(okay, cheap by American standards but high for the product in Vietnam.) as their income. They were annoying. They literally got on their motorbikes and followed the bus all day and would wait for us to get out of buildings. There was usually a mob between the bus and whatever shop we were in. And it was really annoying to feel that pressured to buy, especially when they start telling me about all their kids at home and am I sure I don’t want a bracelet or two? It was really fun when I’d have one on each side fighting for my attention. Yay.
All in all I’d love to go back, especially when listening to some stories I heard from friends (one group of friends watched the cook butcher a snake and cook it in front of them, one of them drank the heart in a special alcohol drink and they love telling that story. J ) but will definitely have to save more money before I do. The good stuff is worth a pretty penny over there but it is really good quality.
Well, that was the last port on my first trip around the Pacific, stand by for more adventures in Japan and my next trip. I’m planning a weekend of fun for my birthday, but then again a weekend in a hotel would be more fun than the usual weekend in my neighborhood. I’ve invited some friends to go with me to a hotel and a trip into Tokyo and they both agreed. Then the next day they weren’t so sure. Simply put, I have other friends but I may spend the weekend alone and who knows what boredom and my 21st birthday may drive me to. J stick around and find out. J
Well, that’s all for now. This is Li’l B signing off.
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