The West Commences: The Mekong Delta

We flew from Hue to Ho Chi Minh City and from there were driven to My Tho where we boarded the boat that would take us around the Mekong Delta. Nobody liked the boat as well as the junk and the food was neither as delicious nor as decorative. The rooms were allotted by lottery as they had been before. Five couples and I got the less desirable rooms, which didn't really bother me because as I was alone in mine the fact that it was small was no problem. But on the first night one couple and I discovered another problem. Our rooms were over the generator and it was noisier than usual. As they could not repair it and as it had to run all night in order for the air conditioning to work, we were hooped. That is until Anita and I asked if we could sleep outside on the top deck. They don't like to do this but couldn't refuse, so we three slept on comfortable deck chairs that the crew set up and hung mosquito netting over. It was lovely. In spite of the heat and humidity, there was a breeze at night on the deck and the moon and stars were brilliant. The Mekong is a wide, steady flowing river; it's brownish with silt and everywhere dotted with large clumps of water hyacinth. The word fecund comes to mind as you float past and bike through areas lush with rice, fruit, fish and vegetables you have no words to name. I had never tasted dragon fruit until this trip when I ate both white and red. We had the latter one day while biking; it was cut from the cactus and we ate it still warm from the heat of the day, dripping and delicious. It was on this same ride that I almost gagged on durian. I had heard about this fruit and seen signs in the airport in Hong Kong which listed it among the things that could not be brought on the airplane. We passed an area where many were growing. Huang went up to a farmer and asked if we could try some. He found a big bumpy ripe one and happily cut it up for us. In retrospect, I think that what put the smile on his face was his anticipation of exactly what happened. I pride myself on being able to eat anything and was buoyed by the recent experience with dragon fruit, but here I had to put my mouth where my mouth was. I popped in a big piece. IT WAS AWFUL IN EVERY WAY: SMELL, TASTE, TEXTURE. I didn't spit it out but my writhing and gagging broadened the farmer's grin. If that hasn't taught me to keep my mouth shut, nothing will.

My only real incident of the whole trip occurred on the Mekong. We were biking through rice fields and fruit trees on a narrow cement path just wide enough for two bikes to pass each other. It had probably been used for decades. The Vietnamese we encountered seemed absolutely at home on it, but I was a bit wary of some parts that had abrupt edges. We were almost back to where we would meet the tender to take us to the boat for lunch when as I rode over a low bridge, I saw ahead a place where a bit of concrete had dropped below level. My front tire hit it, I rose up and my helmet hit a tree branch that knocked me sideways into the muddy Makong. I went right under, gulped in some water and rose up quickly, feeling fine until my feet started to sink into the silt. But by then Hoang had hold of my hands and was pulling me out. I was only worried about the fact that one of my shoes, the only ones I could wear in the heat of the south, was sucked off my foot. But Hoang pulled it out and all seemed well. Until I remembered that I was wearing a bum bag, which had been submerged with me. I zipped it open to see how my passport and iPhone were. The former was wet and a bit curled up but fine. The latter was blank. I felt a bit shaken but got back on the bike and we rode to the boat. A couple of the crew said I should let them bury 'Jay the thumb' in rice to see if that would dry it out. Unfortunately it did not rise from the dead. I kept it. I don't know why. Jay thought it fitting that the thumb went down in the Makong and so do I. It took most of my pictures with it, all the ones I hadn't transferred to this iPad. We exchanged email addresses as we parted and the other people on the tour said they would send me some of theirs. Anita's husband Steve had been riding behind me wearing a camera on his chest; he caught my fall and said that if he can edit it he will send me that section of what he shot that day. I opted not to go on the final ride of the tour and floated with the boat to the point where we picked up the others. I was in the shade and there was a breeze, so I really relaxed and let the life on and along the Mekong entertain me. Then I began to do some exercises. The captain heard me and came up to warn me to sit down while we went under a bridge. After my kayaking experience on Halong Bay, I thought he was exaggerating, but the closer we got the lower it looked and I bent my head down as we went under.

The Mekong is a busy river. People live on it, fish in it, transport everything from sand to eucalyptus branches to all kinds of fruit and vegetables on it. Just before leaving the boat to go to a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a tender through a big floating fruit and vegetable, market. Each boat sells one item and lets you know what that is by suspending an example from a pole on its bow. The boats are long and low. You could see through the windows in the sides of them that the front section was crammed full of whatever they were selling and the back window was for the part where the family lived.

We only stopped at a pineapple boat where we ate pineapple cut and quartered in a unique Vietnamese way and served on a stick, simple and delicious. That was our last taste not of delicious but certainly of simple foods.

We were transferred to a The Grand Hotel, Saigon, a big, generic, extravagant place that could have been anywhere in the world, except that from the bar on the roof you got a wonderful view of Ho Chi Minh City. I was amazed by the breakfast on the first morning: cheeses of the world, very good Italian and German cold meats, pho, rice dishes, roasts of pork, beef and chicken to slice, omelettes to order, breads, pancakes, cakes, exotic fruits, yogurts and cereals and more. I ate too much, and the next two mornings could not and didn't even want to repeat the performance.

We went on a bus tour of the city to see the main sites, impressive old pagodas and some buildings that remain from the period of French colonization. Huang, who was usually measured in his comments about the Chinese, Japanese, French and Americans, couldn't resist saying that the French stripped Vietnam of everything they could and left little behind but an opera house, post office and cathedral. I noticed that they had also left the douche, great consolation. There was one in every toilet I used in Vietnam, even in relatively remote places. I certainly hadn't seen any in China where many of the toilets were squatters that made me pleased I'd taken Tai Chi and could do 'donus.' Happily for the Chinese, they were never civilized by the French.

We spent quite a bit of time in the Reunification Museum, which presents the War Against the Americans from a Vietnamese perspective, a legitimate one, I think. There were a few exhibits showing how American soldiers and their families suffered during and have suffered since the war, but it was mostly a very moving presentation of a people fighting for freedom and family life in their own land against a country whose politicians were driven by an idea and saw themselves as the best defenders of the world against Communism. The devastation of the land and the people as a result of 'agent orange' was unconscionable. The land and climate of Vietnam are so conducive to growth that certainly the Mekong seems to have returned to being a very productive area, but the people who were deformed as a result and those who will continue to be for an unknowable number of generations into the future cannot be ignored.

Some of us ended our tour with a rush hour bicycle rickshaw ride around central Ho Chi Minh City. My driver was an old guy, undoubtedly younger than I, who mumbled and jockeyed his way through masses of motorcycles, buses and cars. He did get angry at times, which puts the lie to what I said earlier about the absence of road rage in Vietnam, but he seemed to be the exception because the other rickshaw guys got a big laugh out of him. We all went for a farewell dinner. Throughout the trip, I, as the oldest and only single person, was always chosen to present the envelope with our tips and make a short thank you speech to the crew. This night a very funny German man did this for Christoph and I thanked Huang. This wasn't difficult because he had been a very good guide.

I spent my last day alone in Ho Chi Minh City on a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 60 km from HCMC. They have about 250km of tunnels on three levels at this site. They played an important role in the resistance to the Americans. The people who constructed, lived in and worked in them were villagers, men and women, fishers and farmers. They made some devilish traps and weapons to slow down the American advance, using mostly captured American materiel. The ingenuity is inspiring. I went on the shortest walk down one of the tunnels and was very happy to get out. Women, from the Trung sisters who fought and defeated the Chinese around 41AD to the present members of two specifically women's unions, have always been publicly recognized as contributing to Vietnamese history. On the drive home we stopped at a place where people who are handicapped as a result of the war make and sell crafts. I bought one small tray. Aside from little gifts for Jay, May and the girls, this was all I could carry in my carry-on luggage, which was all I had brought on this trip.

My feelings about the tour were and remain complex, but as with so much in life the source of this is more within myself than anything exterior. I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that travel is "a fool's paradise," but it's true that you never get away from yourself. The old, "Wherever you go, there you are." And I like to be with people I know. Of course, moving to Vernon forced me to get to know new people for the first time in a long while; I did and now am happy here, but on a two week tour you can't do this and it's hard as a single person to work your way in among couples. And even when Jim and I travelled, we usually went from one friend or family member to another or stayed in one place long enough to make at least an effort to learn the language and get to really know some of the people. Also, I like to find my own way around most of the time. As time passes, I find my memories of this trip are getting fonder and fonder, I really liked Guilin and I'm happy that I finally actually saw Vietnam. I learned a lot, but I still would think twice before signing up again to go on a tour alone.