i'll show you mine if you show me your's first

October 28-30, 2011 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Part 2)

okayyy so i left off my last one with brewer & i sitting at dinner on the ship and skyler inviting us on a spontaneous trip to the mekong delta. obviously we said "YES!" so we hurried up and gave perry our plates, went to our rooms to grab our computers, then ran to the sushi restaurant next to the ship to find some free wifi. all our 15 minutes of research was totally useless... we couldn't find bus times or where to go or anything... so we just decided to pack our bags and see where the night was going to take us. once we packed a backpack with essentials (mainly toothpaste, a change of underwear, and malaria meds... i mean really, what else do you need in life!?), the three of us headed to the bus station. even though everybody we talked to told us there was only one bus station in hcmc (ho chi minh city), we knew that wasn't right. but we can't really argue with the locals who are trying to get us there. we tried to communicate to a taxi driver to take us to the bus station... but taxi drivers did not speak a lick of english here. actually, nobody really spoke english here. vietnam was the first country where communication was a huge issue. so what did we do? got on the back of a bunch of motorcycle taxis. that's what vietnam is known for. there are roughly 10 million people in hcmc... and 5 million motorcycles. you can imagine what traffic looks like. try crossing the street with that. pretty much the rules were "do not stop, do not turn around, do not pass go, do not collect $200." and i think the only criteria to turn your personal motorcycle into a taxi is to have an extra helmet with you. really regulated, you know. so we told three guys to take us to the bus station for a dollar, threw on our helmets, and away we went. it was really fun and i'm pretty sure the first time i've ever been on a motorcycle in my life. that is, until the three of us split up. i thought for sure i was getting sold into the sex trade (cus vietnam is seriously the hub for that), and so i was just praying that maddy & i got sold together (not that i wanted her to get sold... but i mean if i'm gonna get sold, i might as well take her down with me). the peak of the ride was when we ran out of gas. and had to push the bike 2 blocks to a gas station, where my driver had no money for more gas, put me on the back of a different motorcycle to hopefully take me to the bus station. i had no idea what was going on since again, nobody speaks any english. so i FINALLY reach the bus station and maddy & skyler are there waiting for me. they both thought i had died, which i thought was a definite possibility... but it all worked out. it always does. so we get to the station around 10:45, the last bus to can tho leaves at 11:30. we rock. so we buy our tickets, skyler buys a coconut water, and we each buy a baguette from a guy on the corner and we are ready for an adventure (though technically it probably already began with the motorcycle ride).

so 11:30 finally rolls around. turns out we are not taking a bus. instead it's a mix between a minivan and a passenger van. because why not? the three of us are in one row, then the rest of the van is filled with vietnamese people. i love being the only white people anywhere. 3 hour van ride down to can tho. could not sleep at all, mainly because people outside of america do not understand the concept of putting their phone on vibrate or silent... or even turning the volume down! people's phones where ringing at all hours... then they had the audacity to answer them and have a full conversation. this happened on the overnight train in india too. like come on, it's common courtesy to not be on your phone in a minivan full of strangers at 2 in the morning. but maybe that's just an america thing. we roll up to can tho at 2:30am. the "bus station" is really just a gas station. there is nobody around cus it's so late. except for some more motorcycle taxis. since we really have no other option, we again get on the back of them. we tell them to take us to the river, but instead we end up down an alley. again, definitely getting sold into the sex trade or shot in the face. but managed to not die again. instead this guy turned out to be a travel guide or something because told us it'd be $50 for the three of us to take a 7 hour boat tour of the mekong delta. which was exactly what we had come to can tho to do. it was definitely overpriced, but we didn't really have any other option. so we agreed to do the tour. but it was 2:30 and the tour didn't start until 5:30. there weren't any hotels or anything, so we walked down the street towards the river and stumbled upon the food market. which was in full swing. fresh produce, seafood straight from the river, and meat butchers. it was so cool seeing the market and all these locals pulling up on their motorcycles to do their shopping for the day. once we walked through the market for a while, we stumbled upon this "cafe" that was open. it was really just like a garage... but the family that was there served us coffee and tea. have you ever had vietnamese coffee? because i'm pretty sure i will never be able to drink regular coffee again. i have no idea how they make it, but it was SUPER thick and so strong. delicious. and just what we needed to keep us awake. cus keep in mind, we haven't slept yet. then all of a sudden this woman starts bringing puppies out from the back. brewer & i were like little teenage girls... sitting and petting the cutest little puppies that probably all had rabies and fleas, but in the moment we didn't care. seriously the most random time, but they were so nice. then we noticed the road was beginning to flood. my dad had emailed me earlier that day asking if we had been experiencing flooding like bangkok, and i assured him we hadn't and i wouldn't unless i went to the delta. and what do i do? go to the delta like 3 hours later. woops. so we were like "well shit, what are we gonna do?" so brew and i ask the woman to go to the bathroom so we can change into nike shorts. wait, the bathroom is literally like in their house in the back. there was a woman back there breastfeeding this brand new baby. so random. once it gets to be time to leave, we pay for our coffee, then start our hike through the flooded streets back to where we needed to meet for our tour. i've never actually seen and experienced flooding before, and it was really intense. i mean we hear about major flooding all the time on the news, but it's so different to actually experience and walk through it. we finally got back to where we met the travel dude, and he handed us off to this woman who was going to be our guide for the day.

our tour began by us getting on this little fishing canoe thing. we watched the sunrise from the middle of one of the rivers of the delta. then our guide took us to three different floating markets. the floating markets consist of a bunch of people in their little boats filled with whatever they have to sell (pineapple, lettuce, onions, etc.) and whoever is there to buy them would tie their boat to the other one and fill their boat with whatever they needed. i bought more coffee from one of the guys, and our guide bought fruit at some of the markets for us. we had the freshest pineapple and oranges i've ever had... plus some other random fruit that i didn't recognize. our guide took us all around the delta. it was a 7 hour tour. she took us to this place where they made rice noodles. it was really cool to see after eating so much pho and noodles at all these meals. except for the fact that i lost my sunglasses either getting off or back on the boat when we stopped there. i didn't know if i should punch a hole in the wall, curl up in a ball and cry, or just kill myself then. dramatic, i know. but i don't think you understand how obsessed i am with my sunglasses. like, they're on the same level of obsession as my eyebrows. i've had the same sunglasses since high school. i mean, not the same pair. but i continuously order the same ones every time i lost them. i had to do so 2 days before i left for this voyage... and ordering a new pair is not really an option when i'm on a ship. so i had to suck it up and buy a pair of knockoff ray bans on the side of the road the next day. but i'm still crying, and probably will be until i get a new pair of mine again. but our tour guide gave me a rice hat to wear the whole day, which was a blast. you win some, you lose some. she also took us down these really small creeks to this village that was on the side of the river. she let us get out and walk to meet her a couple hundred yards down the river. skyler made us stop at this random person's house. even though he didn't speak any english, he gave us chairs to sit on on his front porch, and he hacked a coconut off a tree outside and gave us fresh coconut milk. we were a little skeptical as to if we should drink the water or not cus we had just seen his wife clean the glasses in the dirty brown river we were just in, but we couldn't be rude! so we went for it. haven't gotten sick yet, so i think i'm in the clear. it was a really cool and unique experience. but it was cut short when our tour guide came looking for us. we walked a little further and arrived in a random little restaurant. i had a really good lunch. i don't know if it was good because it tasted good, or if it was good because i hadn't eaten anything yet. maybe a combination of both. but this one guy that was there was seriously blacked out. it was like 10:30 in the morning and he was pouring everybody shots of this disgusting banana flavored grain alcohol and singing karaoke by himself. such a winner. after lunch we got back on our boat and road back to where we started. the tour ended at a little after 12:30. skyler was talking about trying to go somewhere else to walk around, so we went to a little cafe to get some internet so he could try to figure out if he really wanted to do that. brew & i weren't really into it. at that point we had been awake for like 30 hours and were pretty ready to call it a success and get back. so we sat in the cafe a little bit, then decided to just go back to the ship. first we needed to find the bus stop again. but the whole language barrier thing was a huge problem. first we couldn't find motorcycle taxis (we figured out pretty quickly that they were the only people who knew where anything ever was and they spoke the most english). so we asked a taxi and struck out with him too. so we decided to just walk it. as an asian person myself, i feel like i'm entitled to my next statement... but let's all face the fact that asian people are horrible drivers. so why we thought they could give us directions to the bus station, i have no idea. we pretty much got a walking tour of can tho in the billion degree heat and humidity. we finally called it quits after about an hour of walking around. i found a cafe that had free wifi and air conditioning, so we stopped there to regroup and figure out our next move. somehow we got the people who worked there to call the bus company who sent us a free shuttle to take us to the bus stop. thank goodness! so we finally got to the bus station at like 1:45 and go on the 2:00 bus back to ho chi minh. this time it was actually a bus, so i got to sleep a little bit but i was more interested in the beautiful lightning storm outside. there were major lightning storms pretty much every night we were in vietnam, which was really cool. we got back to the ship at about 7:30, ran and got some dinner before it closed in the dining hall, then showered and crashed. another night where we closed the blinds and decided to set an alarm at noon "just in case." yeah that "just in case" alarm was what woke us up. 15 hour sleep... pure heaven after being up for 36 hours.

so we woke up the next day, got ready, went up to the dining hall to grab some lunch then we had to catch the bus for a field trip. the first part of the field trip was going to the house and meeting a former upi photographer from the war. he showed us his personal memorial to the 200 photographers and journalists that had died in the war. then we all went to little cafe nearby where he had all his pictures and the two jeeps he used during the war. his story and all his pictures were awesome. after the war he spent 9 years in hiding, then spent 7 years in one of the re-education camps the government started. he said he was forced to do hard labor and was tortured while he was there. we got to look at all his pictures too, some of which were really hard to look at. then after we talked to him for a while, we got on the bus to go to the war remnants museum (formerly known as the museum of american war crimes). it was really hard being at the museum as an american. i don't know enough about the war to know what is fact and what is blatantly false, which kind of sucked. the pictures of the effects of agent orange really got to me though. it was really hard to look at them, and then there were even people there who had physical deformities from the lasting effects of agent orange in their gene pool. it was really crazy. and the entire museum was incredibly anti-american, which was really uncomfortable. the museum, the cu chi tunnels, and the vietnamese arlington were really weird to be at as an american. i think it's kind of like when you're young and think your parents are superheroes and can do no wrong. then you grow up and find out maybe they're not so perfect after all and it crushes your whole world view. i think it's kind of like that. how you grow up thinking your country is the best and then you learn that maybe we weren't always so great. very interesting to be at all these places, and i'm so glad we went.

we got back to the ship around 5:30. we got dinner and met up with a bunch of our friends. we had all been doing different things so we exchanged stories for a while. then me, brewer, will & jeremy decided to go to the night markets together. we had so much fun! it was basically just like the regular market, but it was out in the streets instead. and it was so funny how into it will & jeremy were. they bought just as much stuff as me & maddy, if not more. after a couple hours there and spending way more money than i wanted, we headed back to the ship, got ready, then went out. we were going to go back to apocalypse now because there was going to be a wedding party there. i guess america doesn't recognize marriages from vietnam, so a bunch of kids from the ship decided to get married while in port. yeahhh, no thanks. so we were going to go to the after party, but we ended up meeting up with cassie and a bunch of people on the street and we all decided to go to oscar's instead. it was just another club, where we again ended up getting free bottle service somehow. and i really don't understand why nobody dances in these countries. nobody danced in morocco, in south africa, and now not in vietnam. what's the point of a club with no dancing? so again, we were the american assholes dancing around with everybody else starring at us. whatever. we were there til about 2:30 in the morning, then will, brewer, brian & i walked back to the ship. it wasn't that far, so it was perfect.

the next morning we woke up at 7:45, got ready and grabbed breakfast then took the 8:30 bus out to the rex. i don't think i've actually said what the rex hotel is. for you non-vietnam war history buffs... the cia used the rex basically as their headquarters during the war. and the buddhist monk who emulated himself in protest of the war... yeah that happened in front of the rex. there's now a huge statue as a memorial for him outside the hotel. crazy stuff. so we take the bus to the city, then walk a few blocks to the notre dame cathedral to go to mass. the cathedral was really beautiful, but i thought it was really funny that they had like neon l.e.d. lights as the halos around Jesus or the saints. and they had tv screens with like a powerpoint slide with the order of mass. kind of tacky, but it was really nice being able to go to mass. especially since everybody at home keeps emailing me about going to church every week. after church we talked to the priest for a second, turns out he's from orange county. such a small world. then we sat in a coffee shop for a little bit to write our postcards then went to the post office. the post office was really beautiful too. then we walked to a different coffee shop back closer to the rex and grabbed some lunch.

then we headed back to the rex. why? well we knew we wanted to get a massage while we were in vietnam. and i'm pretty sure everybody on the ship has a "spa" story for you. but i think maddy and mine's right up there. so a few days before, we were on the shuttle to go shopping and we were talking to a lifelong learner who was going to go book her spa day. she was going to book it at the rex and she said it was really cheap. so we followed her up to the spa to just look at prices and stuff to see if that's what we wanted to do. we ended up booking a couples massage. and not just any couples massage... a 4 hour couples massage... also known as the love melody. now, we don't know if we should be more embarrassed by the fact that they offered us a couples massage, or the fact that we took it. i mean, it's not the first time we've been mistaken as a lesbian couple on this trip, and i'm assuming it's not going to be the last. (for the record, we are not lesbians. good. glad we got that settled). so at 12:30 on sunday, we found our ways back to the rex to start our romantic day together. i mean, we started the day at mass to like pray the gay away or something michelle bachman-style. so i figure we were okay, right? we brought bathing suits and everything, to at least attempt some modesty. but that went right out the window when the first thing they did was basically rip our clothes off. i'll show you mine, if you show me yours first. so we started with a half hour steam bath (which was either way too hot or we had to much alcohol in our systems still cus we didn't last). then we had a half hour full body scrub. and when i say full body, i mean FULL BODY. i didn't think i needed my ass and tits salt-scrubbed. but hey, jokes on me i guess. then we had an hour long full body massage. then an hour long facial. heaven is what that's called. then a half hour foot massage. our romantic day ended with a naked candle lit rose petal filled jacuzzi, complete with fruit and chocolates. i mean, they totally thought we were lesbians. but that was seriously the most romantic day of my entire life. it's going to be awkward when my future husband has to compete with my spa day with maddy brewer in vietnam, but that's not my fault i don't think. after our massage, we went downstairs and got dinner in the lobby. did some last minute shopping, then headed back to the ship.

all around, vietnam has to be my new favorite port. which is really surprising to me. when i first looked at the itinerary for the voyage when i was applying, i saw 7 days in vietnam and was like "wtf am i going to do in vietnam for 7 days!? let's spend 7 days in south africa or japan!" but i seriously wish i had a month in vietnam at least. so much history and so much fun. can't wait to come back!