Saturday
11:10am – SFO
We just finished our first flight leg and are waiting to head to Seoul, the longest flight on the way there (14-15 hours). The first flight was an interesting experience. Since we had to leave my house by 3:30am, we only had about 90 minutes for a power nap. We were, and are, completely exhausted. The plane ride itself was uneventful, but I had a strange thought while en route. As I lean back trying to sleep and staring at a large projected screen without headphones, I hear people opening bags, sipping drinks, and the occasional cough. This is when I realized this is what it must have been like when silent movies first began playing in theaters. I ran with that thought and looked over the audience for that sense of wonderment as the pictures came to life in front of their eyes. The pilot interuppted my fantasy with an announcement and I snapped back to reality. It was 5am. I didn’t have any sleep. I closed my eyes.
We arrived in Hanoi at around 11pm Saturday. The driver was waiting for us and had a sign with my name on it and the hotel name. I pointed at him and he gestured for us to wait while he literally ran to get his car. During the drive, everything was pitch black most of the way so we had no idea what was in store for us. The occasional building came and went out of the shadows. The drive was about 45 minutes, including a stop for gas. We check in and Jaime’s parents welcomed us. We were exhausted from all of the travel time so we promptly went to bed, after walking up four flights of stairs.
Sunday
Jaime’s parents had booked a city tour that was privately guided by Son. This was our first experience with Hanoi city traffic. It was organized chaos. There were no lights, no traffic signals of any type. There was an abundance of motorbikes that went anywhere and everywhere they could fit, at any speed. Cars were no different and even oncoming “lanes” were fair game. The one prevailing rule was to just avoid hitting others. Someone cut you off? It’s your job to adjust to not hit them, and following distance is nonexistent. We made several u-turns on our trip and there was no waiting and no hesitation; just do it and people have a responsibility to not hit you in the process. This all made for one hell of an experience, and I haven’t even mentioned walking in this traffic. One FAQ I found online had the best advice: walk with a purpose. If you walk/cross with confidence and determination, the traffic can predict your movements and swerve around you. This doesn’t just apply to crossing the street. A vast majority of sidewalk space is filled with motorbikes and/or shops with the occasional impromtu food stand. The sidewalks that did exist would be full of people trying to sell you their wares. Because of all this, you end up walking in the street, with those motorbikes and cars whizzing all around you. After one day of getting used to the chaos, I came to appreciate the simple beauty of it all. Hanoi was a living, breathing organism.
Back to the tour. It started with a visit to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum. This exemplified what I thought all of Vietnam would look like. It was a large Communist-style blocky building with two very large Vietnamese signs on both sides of it. There were police everywhere and checkpoints to gain access to each area. Since it was a weekend, there were thousands upon thousands of locals paying their respects. Surrounding the mausoleum, there is a large area with several other attractions, including a botanical garden, a one-pillared pagoda, a museum, and Ho Chi Minh’s small humble home, all of which we visited. Next, we went to a very large school complex that is no longer used but is well preserved. We ate lunch, a traditional pho ga (chicken and noodles), at Vietnam’s version of a chain restaurant. We finished the day with a visit to the Museum of Ethnology where they presented all of the different cultures and heritages of the Vietnamese people, including a well-done outdoor exhibit displaying various house styles and the tools used in rural life. Lastly we walked around part of the famous Hoem Kiem lake and across the red bridge into what’s left of an old prison.
We ate dinner at a place down the street from our hotel called Fives. To finish off the night we went to a 5-6 block long street market that runs from 8pm to 11pm, three days a week. At the cross streets, there would be three or four police officers sitting around with their shirts untucked. This is when it really hit me that Vietnam is not the Communist police-state I was expecting. These police were the first I’d seen since the mausoleum 12 hours earlier, and I’d continue to see very few over the next several days.
Monday
We woke up early and had a great free breakfast at the hotel. I couldn’t say enough about how great the Rising Dragon Hotel is. We paid $30/night for a large room containing a king-sized bed and a minibar, which turned out to be essential in the hot, humid weather. We had our choice of seven free breakfasts made fresh. Free internet access, and they arranged all of our tours and taxis for us. Each employee went out of their way at one point or another to serve our needs.
Today’s tour was to Halong Bay, a World Heritage Site that I’ve wanted to visit since I first heard of it. The three hour and thirty minute bus ride was a bit rough, and it included the obligatory “rest break” at a tourist trap shopping center made just for buses like ours. I noticed two things during the trip. 1) Almost all of the houses were the same cement poured block structure, but with very ornate and colorful front facades. The other three sides were just the gray cement. 2) The small local towns along the way were just smaller versions of Hanoi. They had the same crazy traffic, the same people in the streets, and the same shops spilling goods onto the sidewalks. This made me notice, and truly appreciate, how unchanged and unique Hanoi is. Even with the occasional tourist trap it was mostly business as usual, the same way as it was before tourists were not allowed to visit this great country.
Back to Halong Bay. We got to the coast and it’s lined with large wooden boats as far as the eye can see. We were later told that there are 365 boats and they are all used for tourists. Sometimes it’s not enough but today it seemed like way more than enough. There was a heavy fog over the water so you couldn’t see too far and there was a haze over each of the mountains. On one hand, the fog added to an amazing ambiance but on the other, it prevented us from viewing more than a few mountains at a time. The mountains themselves were gorgeous. They had long slow climbs and steep cliffs, all covered in greenery with gaps showing off the gray limestone rock beneath it. We ate a great lunch aboard the ship in the center of the bay. The most amazing backdrop for a dinner I can think of. The most famous mountain was right in front of me the whole time. After lunch we docked at an island for a surprise cave exploration! We climbed up around 80-100 stairs before entering the enormous cave. It was over 60 feet high throughout with gorgeous rock formations all over the place. It was as if the entire mountain was hollowed out. And to think, no one knew this existed until 1993. We continued sailing amongst the cloudy mountains until we saw civilization appear on the horizon and thus began the long bus ride back to Hanoi.
Tuesday
Today was what we called a hodgepodge day. We went through the guidebooks and picked out everything we wanted to see. The list ended up including the Hanoi Hilton prison, a water puppet show, a drink at the Sofitel Metropole hotel, and lunch at Hanoi’s oldest restaurant (where I ate monkfish). We took bicycled rickshaws to the prison and it was one of the best experiences of the trip. The cool breeze and leisurely pace combined with Hanoi’s insane traffic made it very fun. The prison was what you’d expect in a prison: sample cells, pictures, stories, etc. At times it was comical how happy they showed all of the prisoners since this prison has quite the opposite reputation. The water puppet show was all tourists but I’m glad we saw it. There was a live orchestra on the side and the rest was water. The show was very well done. I kept trying to think about how many puppeteers it would take to carry out each scene. At the end of the show they raised the curtain to reveal nine of them, standing waist-deep in the water.
Wednesday
I woke up with a horrible headache and skipped breakfast to rest. This was a good day to get sick since there were no tours or attractions lined up. Today was the day we flew to Cambodia.
I’m not sure what I was expecting when we got there. I mean I knew it was a poor country but I wasn’t expecting it to live up to every third-world stereotype. There were pickup trucks with 30 people in the back, kids wearing rags playing in the dirt, dusty dirty roads, and even elephants (though they were for rent). Our arrival was hilarious though. Our “hotel” arranged for our pickup from the airport. Looking for my name among the drivers, I finally see “Welcome Jester,” my email alias. I knew right away this would be an experience. I pointed at the driver and he preceded to walk in a different direction than the rest of the drivers. We were headed to the motorcycle lot. Uh oh, we all panicked. Then we see it. A tiny carriage made to barely fit four small people attached to a motorcycle. This was meant to hold us all and our luggage. We all started cracking up and continued laughing the entire trip with our luggage on our laps. We found out later that this was call a “tuk tuk” and was the primary transportation for tourists. The main road from the airport was lined with at least 20 large fancy resorts. This was low-season though so there didn’t seem to be much activity. We wondered if there were ever enough tourists to fill them all or if they were built expecting tourism to grow. Once we turned the corner the road became worse and worse. The side roads were now all dirt and the houses were slums. The people were not intimidating but the atmosphere was. This was real culture shock.
The driver took us to the wrong hotel. This is a common scam when you hire a taxi, but not when the hotel itself sends it for you. Also the hotel was right next to the one I had reserved. We went to the correct hotel, the Dead Fish Tower Inn, and the lobby is deserted and empty. We ask the guy why his driver would take us to the hotel next door and he mumbled something and made a quick phone call. Since the lobby was sketchy, we asked to see the rooms first. They were small, dark, and moldy. We voted and decided to go back to the original hotel we got dropped off at. The clerk was a young male with a stylish haircut that spoke great English. The rooms were plain but worked fine. We had a shared balcony too, though there’s not much to look at in Siem Reap. The heat here was overbearing so we collapsed and tried to cool down. We had scheduled a “cab” (which turned out to be another tuk tuk) for 5am, and I heard Siem Reap isn’t that friendly after dark, so we almost called it a night.
Jaime’s dad asked the clerk if there was a place to get drinks nearby and he told us about a foreigner hangout called Pub Street that was two blocks away. We decided to check it out and set out into the darkness. When we turned the corner onto Pub Street, we were surprised with several blocks full of various Western-style restaurants and bars, lots of lights, and probably most of the tourists in town. This was truly an oasis in the middle of nowhere. We ate at a Mexican restaurant and wandered the streets for a bit. On the way back to the hotel, we followed a sign to a night market down an alleyway. It was all lit up with a Christmas light canopy and neon signs. The market was the usual stuff, and I got two shirts. On the far end, there was a “fish massage” tank. We had to do it. You sit on the edge and put your feet in the tank. Literally hundreds of little fish attacked my feet and began their nibbling on dead skin for a solid 15 minutes until my time was up. Jaime just had a pedicure that day back in Vietnam so she had less fish but still enjoyed the experience. We saw another night market on the way back but didn’t need anything else so we went to bed.
Thursday
We got up at 4:30am and met our tuk tuk drivers downstairs at the hotel at 5am. We checked out with the same clerk, who slept in the lobby to make sure our drivers arrived. We set out into the darkness towards Angkor Wat. There were about a dozen other tuk tuks on the road and the occasional bus all going to the same place. The ticket booth was surprisingly empty and we got our badges quickly. It was now a race to reach Angkor Wat before sunrise. We made it just in time. Walking up to the gate on the wide boulevard, the structures start to appear and take shape. Inside the gate, the fabulous Angkor Wat is foreboding with the dark red sunrise behind it. Hundreds of people are walking all around us as we continue towards the main temple. About two-thirds the way down (after the gate) we find the rest of the tourists sitting in front of a large pool of water that the temple reflects in. There are about 1,000 people total to witness this beautiful sight. We settle on one of the two side buildings to watch the colors change in the sky. Once the sky was blue, but before the sun was above Angkor Wat, we entered the temple complex. The stunning architecture and carvings were jaw-droppingly amazing. To think that people built this by hand over 900 years ago is hard to believe. So much modern technology is needed just to main these structures: scaffolding, cranes, bulldozers, etc.
We visited five temples in total in decreasing states of decay. Angkor Wat is in the best condition. Angkor Thom with the Bayou temple is another famous one with large face statues throughout. Its condition is a bit worse than Wat. The third structure farther north is the largest enclosed structure though almost everything but the main walkway is caved-in and inaccessible. Just huge piles of stones that were once walls and ceilings. The forth one, Ta Prohm, is probably the most recognizable one — it has large trees growing from and through the walls. This was how they all looked but they “cleaned up” the others. This one was my favorite because it allowed me to be in the discoverer’s shoes and see the temple as they did when they first stumbled upon them. The last one had a large tree too but the rest was similar to the others. By this time it was about noon and easily approaching 100 degrees with a relentless sun.  This was the perfect time to wrap it up and go get lunch.    And to think this was off-season and supposedly cooler.
One word of warning. At the start and end of each temple are the usual hoards of shops but the key difference in Cambodia is that there are dozens of kids (ages 3-12) that follow you around and try desperately to get you to buy something, anything from them. Just about everything is $1 and they follow you around chanting “one dollar, please, sir” in the most heart-wrenching voice. This is part of the ploy of course but it’s very effective. And needless to say if you buy one thing, the number of kids following you instantly doubles. At the three famous temples they’ll generally leave you alone about 5-10 feet inside the temple grounds, but on the other two we were followed the entire time. We finished up lunch and caught an earlier flight to Ho Chi Minh City (known by the locals by its pre-war name Saigon) on Thursday afternoon.
Cambodia’s heat totally did me in. I drank tons of water at Angkor but stopped at the airport where the price went from 20 cents to $2.50. We got to HCMC around 4pm and the hotel picks us up. After an extended check-in, we take off our shoes and begin the never-ending trek up the stairs. Flight after flight we don’t know where it ends. Finally after six flights we get to the first room — 403. Jaime’s mom can’t do all these stairs so her dad asks for a lower floor, which they don’t have. After some arguing with the front desk, we pay for the airport ride and go to a hotel across the street — Tuan Ahn Hotel. It had no amenities but the rooms were on the first floor so we took them. The heat combined with the mountain climb were all I could take. Oh, and the air conditioning didn’t work. And there was no fan. I laid covered in sweat trying to cool down but it wasn’t working. I took a ten minute cold shower several times but it’d only cool me down for five to ten minutes. Jaime came to my rescue and went out to get me a smoothie and two large cold waters. Her dad also demanded a fan for the room. After two people tried getting the air conditioning to work, they gave us their personal lobby fan. We called it a night after that.
Friday
Since the Hanoi city tour was a bit too museum-heavy we decided to do Ho Chi Minh City on our own. Our first stop, the Rex Hotel, turned out to be quite fancy and centrally located so naturally it became our home away from home. We ate breakfast there and decided to book a Mekong Delta tour through them rather than the backpacker options we were considering. It was four times the cost but it was a private tour with what we assumed to be better transport. We set out to see HCMC by starting with the famous Ben Thanh Market. The prices were ridiculous and they didn’t want to haggle much so this was a quick visit. It was made quicker by the fact that the middle was all food with a rank odor. This smell would come to haunt us several times in HCMC. We think it was some sort of fish sauce but it was in literally everything. Tip: the shops about two blocks from the market have the same things with much better starting prices.
Afterward, we went to what one guidebook called Reunification Palace. The other called it Reunification Hall. In reality, it’s now called Independence Palace. This is where the North rolled tanks through the gates to finish conquering the South. It was just a large building with tanks outside so we didn’t go inside. Next up was the War Remnants Museum which had less propaganda than I was expecting. The most obvious thing was the prominence of the American atrocities and war equipment. The Chinese and French sections were hidden off to the side that you can easily miss if you don’t see the tiny arrow directing you through a small door to continue the exhibits. There was one really cool exhibit showcasing photographs taken by people who died during the war.
After that we went back to the Rex Hotel for lunch. I ordered spaghetti which had that horrendous smell from earlier. I didn’t eat it. For dessert, we ordered a banana split. The “strawberry” ice cream tasted like cough syrup and even had a bit of that fish sauce kick. The vanilla was almost as bad. The chocolate was the only edible one because it had a strong mint flavor covering up whatever else. We then went to the Jade Emperor Pagoda which was hidden in the middle of a cluttered side street. That was all we wanted to see in HCMC. There were other pagodas but that was about it. It was barely 2pm and we had run out of things to do. We went back to what we nicknamed Hotel Cesspool to relax and then went out to dinner. We aimed to go to a place the guidebook recommended called Red Dot but the address was a new art gallery. Luckily, two doors down was another recommendation — the Black Cat. The food was great and the server was a lot of fun. I even had some real ice cream! I demanded a sample first just in case though.
Saturday
Today is my birthday! And that’s exactly what the shirt Jaime got me said, in Vietnamese! I wore the shirt with pride all day. All of the younger locals loved it. I got a lot of smiles and waves along with half a dozen heavily accented “Happy Birthday”‘s. One older guy implied I was gloating and said some people might not think it’s okay to wear. Oh well!
We tried a new breakfast place today — a sort of french pastry restaurant which was mostly crepes. Afterward, we met up with Jaime’s parents at the Rex Hotel for our tour of the Mekong Delta. It was about two hours away, though on the way there we stopped at a beautiful pagoda in the middle of nowhere (Vinh Trang Pagoda). Next door was a very large statue of Buddha about 50 feet high, but we didn’t stop there. We then arrived at the coast and had to literally hop across four boats to get to ours. The ride was quiet and pleasant. We cruised around to different islands for various attractions. The funny thing was none of us remembered the itinerary for the tour we booked so it was all a surprise! I recommend doing it.
At one stop we had some homemade honey tea and snacks. I mean really homemade — the bees were in a barrel making honey about ten feet away! They let us wipe the honey right off the board covered in a thousand bees. I opted out even after they promised the bees didn’t sting. I did put a large snake around my shoulders without hesitation though. At another stop we heard some traditional music while sampling different regional fruits. The next stop we watched about twenty people making coconut candy from scratch, in an open-air hut. It was yummy!
The last stop was the most surprising and the most fun. We were casually walking down a dirt path and then we came across a narrow canal full of row boats and were told to get in. We were handed traditional pointed hats to wear and off we went! We zig-zagged the canal for about twenty minutes and then it opened back up to meet our boat at a floating pier. We then cruised around a bit more while sipping on fresh coconut milk that our driver had just cut open. Afterward we headed back to Saigon. Since it was my birthday, I got to choose dinner, so pizza at a place called Pepperoni’s it is!! It was surprisingly good and we ended up getting an extra pizza. A pitcher of beer later and we called it a night.
Sunday
Our last day in Vietnam. Last night I conned — err, talked — the Rex Hotel into holding our luggage all day by booking a night cruise on the Saigon River through them. They even offered to take us to the airport afterward for $10, so it would work out perfectly. Jaime’s parents left in the morning so we had the day to ourselves. We casually wandered around the city killing time. We had some delicious ice cream, bought some shirts and spoons (don’t ask), and mailed postcards. We relaxed in an African-style lounge for a couple hours in the afternoon too. Our slow relaxing day led us back to the Rex for our ride to the river cruise.
Jaime was skeptical at first but once we were settled in she started to enjoy it. We had a private table on the top level right next to the rail. There was a free massage included for some reason that we seemed to be the only people partaking in. Dinner was a buffet so we could avoid unknown foods for our last meal. The cruise itself was very serene and relaxing. The Saigon River is lined for miles with industrial shipping docks all lit up in different fashions. We saw a few people working but for the most part it was just a beautiful collaboration of lights that the locals are probably sick of by now. There was dancing downstairs but we stayed at our table the whole time. There was singing and some music on the top level too but the only dancing was done by a group of young girls doing traditional dances in various traditional outfits. It felt touristy but was easily ignored too.
Monday
I’m on my last piece of paper so I’ll keep this short. We are in South Korea! After finding out that most tourist places were closed on Mondays, we still decided to head into Seoul. We took the metro to the north side of town and walked to the south side for the metro ride back. We tried to see a couple of the supposedly open tourist attractions but they were all under construction. We spent most of our time in a huge market known as Namdaemun Market where even the stores shop.  It was so huge that it had several gates, maps everywhere on what looked like manhole covers, and even a full square city-block had another level underground!  We had lunch there from one of the many food stands throughout and finished the walk back to the metro.  The flights back seemed to go much quicker, mostly because of the break in South Korea.