Viet Nam Summation

In the interest of catching up, I'm wrapping Vietnam Thursday and Friday into this post:

As mentioned, we started early by going to the fish farm. after that, we got back into our boat, which i've described, i think, and we cruised through this floating village. the pictures of drying fish on racks are from that ride.

Our destination was Cham village, a village of people who live in VN but consider themselves Malay. Most are Muslim. The pictures of the Mosque and the girl on the weaving loom are from there, as well as the high water marks. Those marks show how high the water goes in September. It had started to rain off and on when we left Cambodia, and Huy explained that it likely would not stop.

The picture of the sketchy looking dock is also from Cham village. One big takeaway is that everything is kind of smaller here, and there is far more physical demand on one who wants to vacation in this region.

We then got back into our boat and headed back to the mainland area, where we landed just in time to see a Buddhist funeral procession. They play music and throw yellow papers on the ground in the wake of the procession (sometimes they throw US Dollars, too. Note that most people in VN use the USD, too). Leaving this trail is believed to allow the person to find his/her way back. I have a picture of one on the Picasa Vietnam page.

I'm sitting here with my roommate, and we're both so braindead that we're having a hard time remembering what happened Wed and what on Thursday, so don't hold me to the dates.

We clambered into the van for a long trip...this was part of our trip plan--from this point on, we jumped from boat to van to boat. This picture, taken through the van window, is of a high-school age girl. This is the uniform they wear. It's pretty cool. Sorry for the raindrops.

We were headed to the crocodile farm, where we saw all kind of crocs and bonzais, and a few brown bears. Interesting stuff. We then met up with our friends J and C again, and ate a great VN lunch with lots of chilis. Then it was on to Can Tho, where we caught our next boat ride.

Here's a pick of a typical red light in a decent-sized VN town, Can Tho:Motorcycles and the like rule the roost, as I've already pointed out. Wait until you see the pics from Saigon.

From Can Tho, we headed onward to the bird sanctuary. See the picture below, and notice that it's not quite a sanctuary:

I took this picture as we nosed in to the dock at the sanctuary. There's a village there, and the people who live in the village sometimes take a bird or two for themselves. The pics from this stop include the white and black blobs (my cell camera just didn't cut it for these pics). I will be uploading some new pics from John and Jeff at some point this week. Also, see the picks of the little kid in the orange shirt. He followed us around there.

The spiral staircase and the rusted out railings were attached to the 20-25 ft high observation deck. Sketchy and a little unnerving. But, not as bad as the monkey bridges, which are basically not for monkeys but for humans are are one bamboo pole wide with one bamboo pole to hold on to and they cross the river. Pics of these bridges are at the picasa site.

We went from the sanctuary to the village where we'd spend the night in a banana leaf and bamboo hut on the water. See the pics of John and Jeff on the deck.

It was in this village that I think I had the best time. Fresh chilis, jackfruit, coconuts, lichi, rambotan, mangroves, etc, were all over the place. Oh, bananas too. Everywhere.

But the best thing was the kids. See the pics of the little girls. They wanted us to take their pictures so that they could then look at the pics on our cameras/phones. They (and the little boys) all called out in the same way..."hello, hello, hello" It was so melodical.

They were so gentle, these kids. Their hands on my arm felt like birds' feet. Sounds a little corny I guess, but I was touched by this for some reason. You can see pics of John showing them pictures he'd just taken of them. We also learned they wanted candy, so we stopped in a store, (a little hut on the path), and bought some for them. Then, we had it for all the kids who called out to us.

The village was a combo of literal huts, nice houses, corrugated tin shacks, and some amalgams of all of the above. However, one thing was for sure, they all had tvs. LOL! some had no doors, but had tvs.

The village was basically a dirt path that has houses and shacks on it; as noted, the store was about a 10x15 (if that) bamboo and tin room, about 5 feet off the path.

The host family fed us an awesome meal--we made our own spring rolls from rice noodle and various ingredients, and tons of fresh chilis. I was on fire, and the hosts all thought i was crazy. I ate way too many peppers, but it was GREAT.

I had my best night's sleep of the trip so far there, probably 7 1/2 hours. i woke up 4:30-5ish, and soon thereafter the roosters started crowing and the fishermen started leaving for their day on the water, which made a lot of noise. At 7 a.m., the loudspeaker in the village started calling out the Voice of the People, the government's news and propaganda service. You have no choice, you must listen.

We ate some french bread, butter and jelly in the morning, which is ironic because the guide had encouraged us to have a big breakfast since we'd be getting to lunch late that day. However, we didn't have much of an option.

Oh, and the coffee in VN, while really great, is not a good situation. I like buckets of coffee, and here, you get thimbles. And it takes a long time to fill that thimble. God, I would love to see a Starbucks, or anything like that. I've seen two in Bangkok, both at night, so I haven't indulged, because I am hardly sleeping as it is.

So, we departed our hosts and moved onward down the river, going to the floating market. It was neat, and you can see the the boats advertised what they sold by hanging it from a pole on their boat. At this point, we realized some of the boats we'd heard at 5 a.m. were actually going to sell fruit, etc, at the floating market, a giant collection of boats selling and buying products. There were also vendors selling sodas and waters. I bought a water from the mom of the kid in the picture who's making change. He pulled that wad of cash out of his shirt after she took my dong (Oh, another joke there. It's bad enough that now the poeple here in Thailand are joking about it. And we're MBA students. What the...?).

Well, once again, I'm exhausted and just can't stay up much longer. I'm almost done with Vietnam (next post will be last), and then on to Thailand, which has been great but also which by the time I'm blogging it I fear it will be in the rear view mirror.

But, I have to be up and at a meeting at 7:30 a.m., and we have lunch at the United Nations after that, then on to the Jewelry factory.