When I woke up and went to the back deck, around 6:30 in the morning, thrilled that I didn’t have to get up really early for a change, the sun was just coming up over the low-lying mountains off to the starboard side of the ship. The time was not earlier because we needed to plan heading upriver to coincide with the tides. At least, that’s what we assumed was the reason, they don’t tell us anything so we have to make answers for ourselves. The answer could also be that we don’t want to go up the river while it’s still dark. I assumed that we were not in the river yet because the land off the port side of the ship looked like it was at least a few miles away, if there were land at all.
Something that was professed to us ad nauseum for the past three days was that Vietnam is a country, not a war. Come to think of it, nearly every time I have referred to Vietnam in the past, it was usually a reference to the war. Now that I was looking at the low mountains of southern Vietnam, you can’t help but think of what was happening in this part of the world some 35 years ago. But as I was trying to tell myself, it’s not a war, it’s a county.
For some reason, I expected something clear to indicate where the entrance to the river would be located, but it was really open for interpretation. I figured that we were in the river once there was less than forty meters of water between us and the shoreline on both sides of the ship. I figured that would be a very good indicator.
Once breakfast opened at 7, I took a seat inside near a window so that I could see the scenery whiz by. I thought that we would be going up the river at a gentle pace, because we’re a large ship, and this river isn’t exactly as wide as the Hudson River. I never looked at the speed, but we had to be going at least 20 knots up the river. It seemed amazingly fast. I think the ability of our ship to make really tight turns helps that, because we did not slow down when we had to make u-bends in the river. It was really fun to watch.
Something that I was on the lookout for was the other small fishing boats in the river. The river is obviously a busy shipping and fishing channel and there are quite a few very small two person outboard motorboats out in the river catching the fish in the morning. Supposedly, Semester at Sea sends out a bulletin to the local authorities to warn the fishermen that the ship is coming between specific hours, and that if they don’t want to lose their boat, they should get out of the way. In the past, Semester at Sea has had to pay for all the damages to the boats it capsized as it blew by, so I was hoping for some good old-fashioned carnage on the river. I looked, but so far, I did not see.
As always, that doesn’t help to explain how the immigration people made it on board. We did not have to do a face-to-face meeting, but they did have to stamp through all of the passports, and as I walked by one of the classrooms, they were sitting in there going through them. How or when they got on board, I have no idea because I was at the back of the ship for the whole time, and I didn’t think that I would be able to miss them, but apparently I was wrong.
My Mom was coming over with a group of three other Moms that she met on-line through the Semester at Sea MSN Message Boards, and they all figured that they’d meet up, because they were all coming alone. The other three Moms had daughters on board, and when my Mom told me the three names a few days ago, one I knew relatively well, and I had never seen or heard of the other two names. At this point in the trip, that fact still mildly amazed me.
The one name I did know was Jordi, because she’s in my shipboard family with fellow Penn State graduate John Paul, and his lovely wife Shannon. So, we agreed that I would call Jordi in the morning to wake her up to let her know that we were heading up the river and so we could meet up and try to find our Moms together.
We had been going up the river for just over an hour, and I felt guilty calling her room because it was still early and the emptiness of the ship indicated that a lot of people were still sleeping and missing out on the entertaining spectacle outside.
When I called, the guilt trip ensued as her roommate answered the phone to tell me that she was already awake and out of the room. I profusely apologized for clearly waking her up as I pondered my new dilemma. With the size of the ship we’re on, it should not be difficult to find people, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s near impossible to find anybody on this ship, so in addition to watching us head upriver, I would now be searching for Jordi, while keeping an eye on the arrival clock, hoping I find her before we dock. And so the Vietnamese adventure has already begun.
As I moved around the ship trying to find Jordi, I went to each new location to scout out the best spot to view our dockside arrival, as well as to see what the best view of going upriver would be. At the front of the ship, it just gives you an unobstructed view of what will be coming up in a few minutes and you miss all the fun stuff on the sides and in the wake of the ship, which is really where all the action should be, as I indicated earlier.
I thought we would be in trouble at one point when a big freighter was in front of us in the river and it was moving rather slowly. I should have known better. Just like a broken line in the middle of the road, we went right around it like it was standing still.
I had a difficult time telling when Ho Chi Minh City was coming because there were points where there were a lot of big ships docked along the side of the river, and I didn’t know if we were just going to dock alongside or blow right by. We blew right by every decent guess that I made.
Of the ships that were docked alongside the river, most of them seemed to have very large communist-like declarations, but every declaration said something to the effect of, in perfect English, ‘SAFETY FIRST.’ I thought it good that the Vietnamese were so concerned with safety on their large seafaring vessels.
Something else that I thought was fun to look at as we were heading upriver was where all of the docked ships were from and seeing if they were places that I had already been to, or were places that I would be going to. There were quite a few from Malaysia, China, and Hong Kong, as well as a smattering of other random locations, some as far away as South America.
Eventually in my wanderings I found Jordi in a place where she said she had been the entire time, which I didn’t bother contesting, because it could have very well been true. We staked out our spot on the back of the ship because I could see the entire shoreline better. What made everything increasingly difficult is that we did not know which side of the river we would be docking on. Every few minutes I had to move from one side of the ship to the other. I timed my movements with the chicanes of the river so that I would be standing in the shade as much as possible.
Eventually, I got a tip from John Paul that the taller buildings off in the distance would be Ho Chi Minh city, meaning that the dock would be on the left side of the river. The buildings seemed closer than they were because the river was not a straight shot towards the river, but we figured that they would be about a half hour away.
Thankfully, I had something to look for along the docks as we drew near. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew that I would know it when I see it. All I was told was that it would have my name on it, and knowing my Mom, it would probably have a little more, too.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
As I’m sitting on the back of Deck 5, looking off the port side of the ship, something jumps out at me immediately. I didn’t have my glasses on, so I wasn’t really sure what I was spotting, but I knew it was them. As we drew a little closer, I saw that there were coach buses thirty or forty meters from the edge of the dock, as well as a small, but multicolored group near the edge of the dock.
I summoned Jordi, who had gone inside to get out of the sun and blistering heat, that our Moms were in sight. At this point I realized that the best vantage point would be further forward on Deck 5, about where Purser’s Square was. It would be as close to the dock as we could get, and they should be right beneath us. I ran across the ship, which is surprisingly difficult to do in flip-flops, hoping that the viewing area I had thought of would be relatively unoccupied, and when Jordi and I arrived there, there was only one or two other people there, so we had full view of the side.
It appeared as though there was a small group of people in front of a metal barricade, a metal barricade already in place and much more effectively installed, as opposed to the one that just started to be assembled upon arriving in Chennai, India. The people in front of the barricade had the traditional pointy, round Vietnamese hats on, in pastel gowns, holding up a red banner that I couldn’t read yet.
Behind these people appeared to be a motley crew of very excited looking people. The excitement was a dead giveaway that these were the parents. We were still too far away to communicate, but I think I picked out Mom in a red shirt behind a large blue, sheet-like object hanging over the metal barricade.
Just as we were drawing into shouting distance, even though I think I already tried shouting once or twice, the boat began to slow down and change direction. The boat was now moving to point towards the dock, as if it were pivoting in place. The movement was slow at first, so I turned around to see Assistant Dean Ron, who is the Dean that takes care of all the immigration and getting on and off details, so I figured he would be the perfect person to ask what side we would be docking on.
So I said, “Ron, do you know what side we’re docking on?” He had no idea, but based on the pivoting, it appeared that we would be docking on the other side. I grabbed Jordi and we ran to the other side of the deck, to the other side of Deck 5, where the view currently showed us further upriver, and nothing of the dock. Jordi started to doubt me because there was a crowd growing on the other side and nobody was on this side. If I was wrong, I was not going to have a spot on the railing to wave from, and that would be a problem. I was just starting to doubt myself when the dock came back into view as it was clear that we were turning to face downriver to dock on the side we were on, so that when we were leaving we would just have to shove off and already be pointing in the right direction.
As we further pivoted, we moved closer to the dock, and I decided at one point I would wave my arms and yell, ‘Mom!’ And she heard me, she waved back. It’s nice to know that when I yelled ‘Mom,’ the correct Mom waved back. And I was even correct about my long distance assessment that Mom was wearing a red t-shirt. She was also wearing some sort of dress or wrap around her legs, and what appeared to be purple boas around their necks behind a giant blue bedsheet that read ‘Welcome to Vietnam’ and had Jordi and my name on it, as well as the other two girls that I had never seen or heard of. And the most unusual thing about that was the fact that we was wearing a skirt/wrap around her legs. Upon closer examination, it appeared that all the women did as well, and almost all the men had a wacky pair of pants on. Almost all the men.
As we moved closer and finally docked, some 30 minutes or so behind our scheduled time, there were people on board that were leaving for a Cambodia trip, rather they were supposed to leave for the trip 30 minutes prior. So these people would be let off first before they let the parents on. Also, there were children from an orphanage in Cambodia that were going to perform, and they were to come on before the parents as well. All of this of course kept me from my Mom who I haven’t seen in months.
Something else that struck me was that I was in Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam, and there was my Mom waiting down on the dock, and it all seemed rather normal. Like it was perfectly ordinary that something like this would be happening. Happens all the time. The fact that I was meeting my Mom in Vietnam, on paper, is bizarre, but don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled and excited about it beyond belief. It’s just that the juxtaposition of it all was amazing to me.
They made an announcement over the PA that all students that had parents waiting to board the ship should go down to the dining room to wait for them. They didn’t want to crowd the gangway, and the ship photographer was adamant about a photo-op the kids seeing their parents again, and the gangway didn’t allow for that good of shooting. I ignored the instruction.
Just as I saw she was coming on the ship, I went down to the gangway to meet her. It seemed like most students actually went to the dining room, which I find bizarre. I stood off in a corner out of the way waiting for Mom to come around the corner, and I think I scared her when I went to go hug her. She looked a little lost for a second, then once she realized that it was her son, she was quite happy. And I was quite happy, too.
They had not officially cleared the ship yet so we weren’t allowed to leave, so Mom and I went over to the dining room for lunch. People were still waiting for their parents there. Anyway, we had lunch, and Mom told me about all of her travels from New York to LA to Bangkok finally to Ho Chi Minh City. That’s quite a bit of flying done to get to the other side of the world, but I think it was worth it.
I thought lunch was icky, but I always seem to find that because I’ve been eating the same food for quite a while now. I don’t think Mom minded it. But I’m not going to hold that against her.
After lunch, we went back on over to my room to get ready to head out into the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. I didn’t know what to expect of Vietnam, but I was hoping for the best, as usual.
Where the boat docks is almost in the center of town. You could walk, but because of construction being done to the roadway, the detour you would have to walk would add well over a half hour to your walk, and that’s only if you knew exactly where you were going, and we didn’t.
What was nice was that there were buses that were coming down to the dock and shuttling us to and from the center of Ho Chi Minh City. The trick of it all is that nobody was exactly sure of the schedule and how long the buses would be running for. Much to our luck, as we left the ship, there was a bus waiting outside to whisk us away. I think the first bus already left, and we just happened to be in the right place at the right time for the second bus. It looked like there was a small group of people waiting around for the bus, and it pulled up and nobody moved. Mom and I went on the bus, and I think we may have cut the line, but I have no evidence of that.
As we pulled out of the dock, I noticed something that I would grow to love and find endearing – the Vietnamese drive in ways that confound the mind. Namely, most vehicles on the road are motorbikes weaving in and out of traffic. It’s really fun to watch, even while riding on a bug bus amidst the traffic, but that would just be the beginning.
The bus dropped us off right outside the Rex Hotel, which was the hotel that all the war correspondents stayed during the war. It’s a very nice looking hotel. In fact, it was a very nice part of town. I was glad to be back in the hustle and bustle of a city. Here, the dead giveaway that I was in a city was the name of the city, because it contained the word ‘city’. There’s a reason it wasn’t called Chennai City.
Amongst other missions that we had in Vietnam, one of the more important missions was for me to be fitted for a suit, because as the President of the Ambassadors Ball, I can’t be without a suit, and the long-standing word on the street is that Vietnam is the place for me to get tailor-made suits and for girls to have their dresses made. So, we were off on that mission.
Mom, in all her infinite wisdom, had already done research on a good place to go to be fitted for a suit. She asked a tour guide she had and wrote down the name of the place on a map, and even had a dot on the map where it should have been. We couldn’t find it. We walked a few blocks over from the Rex Hotel where the map indicated the suit place should be, and it was not. We went a further block over and found a nice looking bellboy outside of a nice looking hotel. We showed him the name of the place, as well as the map, with the dot on it, and he had no idea. One of his buddies came over, and he had no idea. We thanked them and moved on.
We went another block over, and sure enough, there it was, although, it was spelled a bit differently than it was on the paper, but we found the place, and it was packed. Packed with other Semester at Sea people. I’ve never had a suit made before, so I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Some other people came in behind us, looked at the mayhem in this small space about twelve feet by twenty-five feet, and left to go find another place. Eventually, I shifted my way over towards where the magazines were, and I picked a pattern and style. I thought I was good to go, and all I needed to do was be measured. But it’s never that simple.
There were three other guys on line in front of me. You wouldn’t think that that would be an issue, but you would be wrong. One guy wanted four suits, and another wanted three, and all the suits had completely different styles, fabrics, and linings. Let me tell you about the linings that they were picking out. They were some of the most mismatched and ugly colors for jacket linings that I have ever seen in my entire life, and I’ve observed Paul Shaffer’s wardrobe.
Anyway, there were four or five girls in matching outfits, with the exception of one, running around trying to figure out what the two guys were doing with their combined seven suits. They made them go over their order multiple times. We stood there for ten minutes, then for twenty, thirty, forty, and close to fifty minutes waiting for these guys to get on with it. They made it so complicated that with the language barrier, it was painful to watch. That’s why Americans can get a bad name around the world. Just let them do their job, and we would have been out of there in half the time.
Something the two guys argued about was that we’re only in town until Friday, so their suits had to be done by the time we had to be back on the ship. One of them must have misheard one of the girls because they kept asking if they would be ready by Friday or not. It seemed like it was a simple concept, but as I’ve said before, simple concepts are sometimes lost by the people on the ship.
After the two colorblind and gluttonous guys left the store, the guy in front of me went very quickly, and then when it was my turn, it went very quick as well. I was measured, indicated what style I wanted, gave them the pattern, and then paid. And we were out of there. I was being helped for less than ten minutes at the end there. And the girls indicated that they were less than pleased with the two guys that had left already.
Finally, after what seemed like quite a long while, my suit was ordered and would be ready on Friday, which as you’ll soon see, would make for an interesting Friday. But we’ll worry about Friday on Friday. Today was just Monday.
And now the game plan for the rest of the day was simple – walk around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and see what we could see before it got too late to see anything. The map that Mom had had a number of hot spots and must-sees on it, and the one that most people wanted to visit was the Ben Thanh Market. For some reason, we thought it was an open-air market, and we almost walked by it.
One of Mom’s friends from the internet and the trip, Linda, found us outside the market and told us, as we were walking by, that the market was an interior market, and we were standing right outside of it. Mom and I would have never noticed it.
Always looking for a good deal, as well as the apparel that I needed to go along with my soon to be made suit, we stopped as the first stall on the right as we walked in. A very nice and young woman was more than helpful to get us whatever we wanted, even if it wasn’t visible, or even there for that matter. There appeared to be some sort of cooperative state of affairs in the area. As we would say that we liked something sitting out, but we needed it in a different size, another, even smaller girl, would come over and hear instruction from our girl, and then she would run off in a flash and be back in a few minutes, with what we asked for. Who knows where she went, but we didn’t really care.
And as long as we kept buying, at unbelievable prices for the stuff we were getting, the prices would keep going lower, which was music to our ears. We ended up purchasing a lot of stuff, but paid hundreds of dollars less for it than we would have if we bought it back in the states. We were quite proud of our purchases and I picked up most of the additional accoutrements that I needed to go with my suit, which was being made as we spoke.
After we finished making our purchases we went through the rest of the Ben Thanh Market and found that it was largely food related stuff with a few exceptions. Mom found a couple Adventures with Tin Tin shirts that we couldn’t resist. It was Tin Tin in Vietnam, so it made quite a bit of sense.
The smells and meats that were sprinkled throughout the rest of the market were really something special. It really stands to remind you that you are no longer in the United States and that you are somewhere in Asia. That becomes pretty obvious after a short time.
Once we made it back out of the market, we ventured into the streets of Vietnam with Mom’s handy map of hot spots. Once we figured out which direction we were walking in, we headed north to the building where that infamous video was taking of the last helicopter leaving Vietnam. It’s not an embassy like most people believe. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but behind it is a beautiful park area that we walked by.
The guards in front of the gates looked semi-intimidating so we didn’t bother to try to walk past them onto the grounds, probably because we had to pay to do so and we had other places to go and things to see. In fact just down the road was the Post Office, which for some reason was one of the eight or so highlighted items on this huge map of Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a very pretty Post Office, architecturally and such, but there’s really not a whole lot to do there, so we were only there for a couple minutes or so. It was really just enough time to take some photos.
After the Post Office, very nearby is a Catholic Church. Churches are plopped around the world in the most interesting/bizarre places. I did not think there would be one in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, but I’ve been proved wrong before. We made a wish as we walked inside, and inside it looked like a very nice, old catholic church. It was very nice. Until we noticed one or two small details. Namely, the neon signage around the statues on the left side of the church. They just didn’t seem appropriate. Halos should not be neon.
A few blocks away from the church was the hotel that they put Mom up in. There’s no room for all the parents to stay on the ship, so they get to stay in a very nice hotel in full view of the ship. The small trouble we had is that Mom had not been in the hotel for a full day, so she wasn’t exactly sure where it was, or more importantly I would think, what it looked like. She knew about where it was, so we headed down towards the river to look for it.
We found it eventually. I’m not sure how we did, but I think we came around one corner and Mom looked over and said, “Oh, here it is. See, I told you it was right on the water.” I’m always amazed at the hotels that Semester at Sea puts us up in because they’re really, really nice. I walked into the lobby and there was a piano and what looked like a band getting set up to play later. Any lobby with a band means that you’re in a nice hotel.
So we went up to the room, which was also quite nice. It had the same trick with the key card that I saw in India and Malaysia. In order for the lights to work in the room, you have to put your key in a small holder by the door. Mom said it took her a while to figure that out.
Anyway, after we stopped in the room, we decided to go up to the roof to have something to drink and relax for a little while. It had already been quite a busy day for both of us. Mom ordered a wacky fruit drink and I had a soda. It was quite impressive watching the bartender make the fruit drink. Lots of fruits that I could not recognize went into the blender.
As we admired the view and the size of Ho Chi Minh City, I grilled Mom about stuff that was going on back at home, most specifically, if anything good was happening on the TV shows that I was missing out on. I was just happy to be talking to Mom, it really didn’t matter what we were talking about, because I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Mom and I were chatting on a hotel rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. If you told me that we’d be doing this a few years ago, I would have called you crazy and slapped you silly.
Every time I’m in port, I look for places I recognize from the Amazing Race, and where Mom’s hotel was on the river, was exactly next to the ferry across the river they took to get to the Pit Stop in Race 3 Leg 11. The ferry itself is fascinating to watch. There’s two or three ferries that jostle back and forth the river taking people on motorbikes back and forth. Every so often you see someone without a motorbike on the ferry, but that’s a rarity.
The photo above shows the queue for the ferry. It’s quite simple in that you get in line with your motorbike and once everyone gets off the ferry, the line starts to move to let you on as much as the ferry can hold, and if you don’t make it, you wait a few minutes for the next ferry to come because all these ferries are absolutely packed during rush hour, and probably not during rush hour, too.
Something else we could see from the hotel was the ship parked downriver. No matter where we go, the ship always feels so small when we look at it from port, and that couldn’t be further from how it feels when we’re on the ship, because then we think it’s big. It’s amazing how that ship gets us everywhere.
Once it started to get dark, we figured it was about time that we headed out to look for a place for dinner. We passed a nice-looking place about a block and a half away from the hotel, and the whole time we were eating, and it was a good meal at that, the sounds of the street always came up to where we were. Between the lights and the sounds, Ho Chi Minh City is quite active, even into the evening. I was again glad to have a good meal in me.
After dinner, we decided that it might be a good idea to take out a little more money from a bank, and we think we passed an HSBC somewhere during the day. Mom said it was across from the Opera House, and I remembered where that was, but I didn’t remember the HSBC. As we walked back, you would have thought that it was daylight with all the activity that was happening outside. It was as busy as it was all day. It was amazing.
As we went into an intersection, I looked onto the side of a building, and sure enough, the bank was there. It was a huge building and I’m not sure how I missed it earlier in the day. We withdrew thousands and thousands of dong from the bank, which amounts to about fifty or sixty dollars. It’s a fascinating exchange rate.
Once we did that, we headed back to the hotel as we tried to figure out how we’d meet up again in the morning for the trip because Mom was being picked up at the hotel, and I was being picked up back at the ship, so the logistics of it all boggled my mind, and I assumed that it would be something we would figure out in the morning.
Back at the hotel, because it was getting late and we were going to have an early morning, I took a cab back to the ship, a cab ride that cost pennies over a dollar. There was no way that I’m getting on the back of a motorbike. Unless I was in a suit of armor, it wasn’t going to happen. The cab ride back was interesting because it was dark and I was mildly concerned that he was taking me for a ride somewhere I didn’t want to go because it was clearly not the reverse route from the bus ride Mom and I took earlier to the Rex Hotel. Thankfully, we turned a corner and the ship came into view like a shining beacon.
Due to wonderful planning on my part, I had yet to start packing for the big trip tomorrow, so that was something that I needed to get around to, and when I came on the ship just before 9, I was not looking forward to staying up later than I wanted to, and I had a couple things that I needed to do.
The first thing I did was put up a blog posting because I had deprived my public of my travels for too long. In port, the internet is always faster because there’s less people on it, and there’s usually satellite coverage where we are. Mauritius was an exception, but as the trip progresses, Mauritius is turning out to be more and more of an exception.
After the blog posting went up, and I watched my internet minutes tick away while looking at a mostly blank screen on my computer, the next thing I did was take some cough medicine. I had depleted my supply this morning, and Mom replenished it just in time because once the sun started to set, the cough reared its ugly head again, and I was not doing well. Just after the post went up my cough was almost continual, but other than taking medicine for it, there’s really not much more I can do.
Knowing that the one mission that I had to get done tonight was pack, that’s what I did next when I went down to the room. After doing it so many times already I’ve found that it goes by pretty quick and I don’t have to worry about forgetting stuff, since I have largely stopped unpacking everything but clothes and essential toiletries. My lone backpack was packed and done by 10.
One more thing that I really wanted to try to do before I went to bed was get my iPod working. It doesn’t sync with my iTunes, and I’ve had the same 100 songs on my shuffle the entire trip so far. Mom brought out the loading disc for iTunes, so I hoped it would be able to fix the tummy ache my iPod had.
I played around with the CD, the iPod, and the computer for almost an hour until, in a fit of frustration, I realized that it was not going to be fixed this evening. On top of it all, now it doesn’t play any of the 100 songs at all, so that was one less thing that I had to worry about packing now. Even though I was frustrated with my iPod, I still had little trouble falling asleep, even with the wet, intermittent, sporadic cough and accompanying postnasal drip that kicked in way back on night one of Malaysia.
Going to bed earlier would have really been a great idea because the alarm was set to go off at 4, and sure enough, it woke me up at 4. I wasn’t enthused about the time, but I was quite excited to be taking a trip to Hanoi with Mom. The good outweighs the bad here in this case.
Our trip met in the Union, scheduled to depart the ship at 5, which is well before breakfast is served, so we would be eating our breakfast on the flight, which would ensure to be something nutritious and rhyming with ‘foenut.’ Or not.
When we left the ship, there were two buses sitting out on the dock and they told us that we could get on either bus. Then, after I sat down on one bus, they told us that the parents bus would be the other bus, so I think just about everybody had to switch buses, with the students without parents on the trip moving over to the bus that I was abandoning. Once we had that settled, we were all off to the hotel.
We picked up all the parents who were, as they should be, far more excited looking than the students were. I know they’ve been traveling nonstop for days now, and they’re older than us, but we’ve been moving at warp speed for quite a long while now. I think we’re allowed to look and feel knackered at just after 5 in the morning.
As expected, Mom was bubbly. I think she slept later and longer than she normally does back at home, which explains an awful lot. Anyway, we then departed for the airport. Mom was telling me that when she flew into the airport a few days ago, they passed and interesting site on the drive from the airport to their hotel. She said they passed by a park that was filled with what we’ll call amorous couples. I don’t know where, but I remember hearing something about couples going to parks to smooch because there’s so many of them, that not one couple can get in trouble, or be found for that matter. I think that’s what was going on, but I don’t know. I wasn’t there.
We arrived at the airport just as the sun was rising, which is a reassuring thought that our pilot will have sunlight to aid in takeoff. In what can only be described as wacky, the process of handing out tickets was, well, wacky. They had them in a giant pile and then split up the pile into smaller piles to hand them out, and of course, once it appeared all the piles had been gone through, I didn’t have my boarding pass yet. Someone was still standing around with a small handful of boarding passes and not handing them out. Wouldn’t you know that my pass was in there?
After I received my ticket, there was no longer any kind of purpose, direction, or leadership, so Mom and I went off by ourselves to move through security and head up to the gate. I’m not exactly sure what the security process was, but I think that I went through two separate security zones that checked for the same stuff. I didn’t feel twice as secure, I just felt a bit lost to be honest.
After we went up the escalator after security, we found something new waiting for us outside the gate, something I have never seen before in an airport, and I really wasn’t sure what to think of it. Outside of our gate, and every gate, there was a large clear box that was the waiting room to enter the airplane. To enter the large mythical-like box, our boarding passes had to be checked, and once we entered the box, we would be unable to exit and reenter. So when you enter the box, you better be sure that you don’t have to leave it ever again.
We only had to wait 20 or 30 minutes in the box for the plane to begin boarding. And, once boarding started, they wouldn’t let us in the jetway without checking our boarding passes a second time. It seemed like there was an awful lot of security at the airport. I still didn’t feel extra safe, though. It’s not that I felt unsafe, but I didn’t feel super-safe, we’ll say.
I had no qualms about the flight itself. It might have been the smoothest flight that I’ve yet been on, which isn’t saying a lot, but the flight went by quick and was good. I was a bit confused about breakfast, however. It was pork or fish. I’m not big on breakfast in the first place, so while I wasn’t thrilled with the choices, I felt like I’d been up so long that I was eating lunch, so I went with the pork, and it was much like typical airline food. There was stuff to eat, and stuff that I did not recognize and did not eat.
After getting off of the two hour flight, there was a rush for the nearest bathroom, which has happened every flight I’ve been on so far. While I was standing with the group outside of the bathroom, I noticed something quite peculiar. There were travelers on the flight that were en route and had to make a connecting flight. They distinguished these people by having them gather in a specific place, and most entertainingly, they had to wear large bright stickers to indicate that they were in transit. They looked quite silly, and I snickered at it.
Once we were all ready to depart the bathroom (did anybody go to the bathroom before the flight?) we went out into the public area and found the tour guides for the buses. They led us out to two buses, and we were semi-adamant that the people on each bus remain on the same bus they were on a few hours ago. It was a difficult concept for some people, but I think all the parents on one bus was a deterrent for those that didn’t have parents on the trip.
The first thing that I noticed once we exited the airport was the fact that it was that it was relatively chilly outside. I haven’t felt cool air outside since I left home. It was cloudy and gray, but it was beautiful to me. It’s like being outside and being in air conditioning. It had been hot for so long for us on the trip, that the sudden change in temperature was almost a shock to our system. But, it was a very welcome shock at that.
Our tour guide was talking about what we would be doing for the day as we drove by some of the sights. One of the first things that struck us was what the buildings and houses looked like. For the most part, they are very tall, but not very wide at all, and usually in a bunch of different and fun colors. Supposedly that’s left over from the French colonial influence. But they buildings really are something else.
One of the things that I caught our tour guide talking about when he was discussing the events of the day was that one of the war museums we were supposed to visit today would be unavailable the time we wanted to go there, so that has been rescheduled for later in the trip, and in its place this morning we would be adding a stop at the Hanoi Hilton, which was not originally on the itinerary. For those of you who don’t know, the Hanoi Hilton is not a hotel, rather it was a prison made infamous during the Vietnam War where prisoners of war were held, most notably Arizona Senator John McCain. It was a stop that I was both looking forward to, and felt like I was going to be a bit heavy, too.
Out tour guide gave us a heads up that the presentation inside is a bit skewed in that it makes it look like the Americans were treated very well, much better so than their own people. And when we were inside, it was quite clear that there was a skew. There were photos and exhibits of how poorly the Vietnamese were treated and then a whole room on how well the Americans were treated. I believe that’s the definition of propaganda.
Anyway, the best word to describe the prison, or what’s left of it, is downright spooky. The worst part is that they have a lot of remnants like shackles with what looked like ceramic body figures still in them. The bodies were plain and all in white and it was scary when we would walk by a closed cell door and a stark white figure would be sitting in there against the dark, dingy yellowed walls. It looks like the furthest thing from a pleasant place. I didn’t really want to even think about what it would have been like to have been in there, because it would just be frightening.
The diorama inside the prison showed that what is left of the prison is a small portion of what it used to be. They knocked down almost three-quarters of the prison and abutting up against the walls are office buildings or whatever was deemed more important than the prison at the time of construction.
Outside the prison, there were people that looked to be selling fried pastries on a stick. To be honest, they looked tasty, but buying street food in port has always been a good way to increase your chances of becoming ill, so I passed. Quite a number of other people didn’t. Instead, Mom and I took this photo below outside of the Hanoi Hilton.
Next, we hopped on the buses and went over to the Temple of Literature, which is Confucian, I believe. I’ve gone through a number of religions on this trip so far, and Confucianism is a new one. It’s also one that I haven’t been taught about in any of my classes, so my knowledge on the subject is quite limited to whatever I remember about it from high school. And all I can remember is that Confucius was a old Chinese guy. That really shouldn’t help me here.
Anyway, the temple was built back in 1070 and became Hanoi’s first University. It hasn’t given out any doctorates in over 200 years, but every one that it did give out has the name of the recipient carved into stelae in the back. Our tour guide walked us through half of the place and then let us loose for the rest. Here Mom got the chance to put some of her finer camerawork to use:
But she figured it out eventually:
After we departed the temple, it was time for lunch. Even though I thought I had lunch on the flight up to Hanoi, I was hungry again – probably because ‘lunch #1’ wasn’t really that great. When we got to the restaurant somewhere in Hanoi, where the acoustics were less than ideal, because the restaurant looked to be in one of those tall, thin houses, we sat with Mich, a fellow student from the ship, as well as her Mom and Dad. To be completely honest, I had never met Mich before, and I didn’t recognize seeing her on the ship at all. She looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t recall her at all. (As a fun side note, I don’t recall seeing her for the remainder of the voyage as well. Not sure how that happened.)
The first thing that we did, the silly Americans that we are, we looked at the menu sitting on the table and tried to figure out what we wanted to eat. After not being able to decide what we should order, the wait staff started bringing out food and it didn’t take us long to start to figure out that we would be served everything on the menu. How silly we were.
Lunch wasn’t that bad, and the company was very nice as well. Mom and I were doing well. As much fun as we had during lunch, the real entertainment would come outside. As I indicated in Ho Chi Minh City, traffic in Vietnam is something to marvel at. To end this blog posting, I leave you with the video below. The video is footage of the intersection outside of the hotel. It kept us entertained very well and we could have sat there all day.
Just remember when you’re watching it, no stop signs, and no traffic lights of any kind:
