Thinking Back

Sarasota, Florida

The vacation was really interesting.  The best part was meeting the people. In Thailand, Carol's  cousin Bennett was extremely kind to arrange almost a week of sightseeing. It was good to see him again. You never know when will be the last time. It's hard to imagine topping this vacation.
 

Our local guide and driver in Thailand, Ken, was extremely knowledgeable  about things to do and see in Northern Thailand. We liked him a lot and we felt privileged to meet his wife and three children for dinner one night in Chiang Mai.

 

In Cambodia, our guides were Bantah and Sothy. They both had personal experience with the Khmer Rouge and the genocides in Cambodia at very young ages. Despite this, they were very humorous and knowledgeable guides.

 

Tony and Henry (so what makes me think they might have other names?) were our guides throughout South Vietnam, Cambodia and North Vietnam. Tony was responsible for our section of the group and helped us overcome some Visa difficulties. They both were very likable people who showed a great deal of wisdom and maturity in dealing with some of the more difficult and crotchety members of the tour.

 

Tony would end each evening by singing a beautiful rendition of some song that Frank Sinatra might have managed on a good day. Such likeable people. It's hard to believe that we were trying to rack up a body count on people like Tony's father 45 years ago. What were we thinking?
 

Ensie Wiensie Spider

Mekong River, Vietnam...
Sa Dec City and Cu Lao Gieng Island

 This lady is collecting Hyacinth stalks. When dried she can sell them for $1.20 a kilo.

They have built some impressive bridges here since the war ended. In 1985 they adopted a market economy so you can see some big modern factories along the river.

We get on a little boat to visit Sa Dec City on the river in the morning.

The city has extensive kilns for baking bricks, floor tiles and roof tiles.The pictures are a little dull, so just imagine. We also visited a rice processing factory.

Strange fruit.

The market is hectic. Mrs. Phred wonders how they can sell so much food. Motor scooters and people vie for the right of way. Fruit, vegetables, snails, eels, fish, chickens and rice. As far as I can tell rice is about 50 cents a kilo. They seem to have an inflation problem here. The 21,000 dongs to the dollar is a clue. The banks pay 14% on dong deposits, but only 2% on dollars.

I meet Mr. Henderson onboard. He served in the Merchant Marine in WWII at age 15. He was also a marine in Korea when the Americans went north and when they came back south chased by the Chinese. He also served in Vietnam. His wife of 54 years died last ye3ar at this time. I think he came on the trip to not be alone. Daisy sat down next to us. Her husband of 57 years died almost on the same day last year. Kismet.

This is our boat, the Tonie Pandaw. Somehow they have adopted the image of a turkey and their icon.

The boat is full of doctors, lawyers and investment bankers. They all have interesting stories. Eleanor and Cam are from Canada. They lived extensively in Asia and Africa and did microfinance deals for poor farmers. Peter is an Australian vegetarian. He went to school at Berkeley in 1969 when things were total chaos. Now he lives in Hong Kong and works as an investment banker specialising in commodities.

We visit the island of Cu Lao Gieng on the Makong in the afternoon. The villagers are very friendly and curious (especially the children).

They have these strange vehicles to haul the rice out of the paddies.

One of the village rice fields.



Chicken.

These guys are stringing Christmas lights on the  village's Catholic church. They work barefoot.

Mrs. Phred cracks up the village kids, teaching them how the eensie wiensie spider went up the waterspout.

The Mekong River

Cai Be, Vietnam

We check out of the Saigon hotel and pile onto the bus for a 90 minute drive to My Tho on the Mekong River.

The boat is cozy with about 25 cabins. Ours is right next to the dining room and the landing dock. Our cabin has two bunks on the opposite sides of the  room. They are built-in so we wave at each other at bedtime.

We visit the riverside village of Cai Be in the afternoon. They are making rice krispies and peanut brittle for export to Saigon. It's a small scale operation.

The villagers are also distilling rice wine, which has the taste and kick of white lightning. I can buy a bottle with a cobra in it for 550,000 dongs but it won't pass TSA scrutiny with our carryons.

We have duck for dinner and a native four piece band come aboard for entertainment in the evening. Their instruments are traditional and non-western. The scale they use is not "do-re-me-fa-so-la-te-do".

We'll be rossing into Cambodia today or tomorrow...I'm not sure when.

A Tourist's Day in Saigon

We have a busy day scheduled by the tour company. They put all the Americans on the same bus. The guide suffers all complaints and abuses in silence or with polite responses.

We visit the Reunification Palace, which was the Presidential palace until a North Vietnamese tank crashed the gates in 1975. The palace before that was built by the French and bombed by two South Vietnamese pilots flying U.S. made Skyraiders. They were annoyed were Diem and destroyed the old palace in 1962. Both Diem and Kennedy are assassinated the following year.

Madame Nhu was the wife of Ngô Đình Nhu who was the brother and chief adviser to President Ngô Đình Diệm. As Diệm was a lifelong bachelor, and because she and her family lived in the president's palace, she was considered to be the first lady. She was called the Dragon Lady and was tiny, cute and voluptuous but also was widely detested  as a personalty, She verbally abused both her husband and his brother. She said, "Power is wonderful, but total power is totally wonderful".

When her husband and brother were assassinated, with the approval of Kennedy, Madam Nhu was shopping in California with her children. She died in Europe in April of 2011.



Next we cruise Chinatown in the bus. There are an estimated 3,000,000 motor scooters in Saigon. You can cross the street easily though a swarm of them as long as you maintain a consistent pace. That allows them to swerve around you. At night, a river of young people on scooters flow around our bus like schools of fast fish around a lumbering whale. There are no old people  braving the flow. They drive three abreast with inches of separation  They interweave though intersections with breath stopping boldness. Where are they going? I don't know....

Chinatown in Saigon.

We visit the War Remnants museum next. A man with two amputated arms comes up and says hello. There is something wrong with his face and eyes. He offers his stump and I shake it. He says he set off a land mine. I buy a Vietnamese phrase book and a history of the war from him. It's all about class struggle and how history is sometimes made from the bottom up. The author has little use for the American Government or either of the Vietnamese governments. He finds the Americans and Vietnamese peasants who actually had to fight the war equally oppressed. I think I agree with his premise. Later the vendor returns to talk a little. I mention that it is hot and he observes that it is also humid. He wishes me a good trip.

They have a lot of pictures of Agent Orange deformed babies. Some of these are the children of American soldiers after they returned home. They also document atrocities committed by the South Vietnamese on captured Viet Cong. There is little doubt that both sides engaged in bad conduct.

Next we visit the post office, which is also kind of a banking centre that sells souvenirs.

The post office has a Christmas tree. Eight percent of the 90,000,000 Vietnamese are Catholic.

The last stop before dinner is a lacquer factory. They make lovely artwork. Mrs. Phred and I discuss it and decide it doesn't make sense to acquire more possessions. We only just managed to give all ours away last year.

Lacquered paintings.

Four Million Dongs

Saigon,Vietnam

The ATM only let me have 2,000,000 dongs at a time so I made two withdrwals and have 40 notes with 100,000 dongs on each note.

The long taxi ride to the hotel was a flat ten dollars, with none of the usual financial games. The driver refused a tip. He must have blown his horn 10,000 times at motorbikes.

Saigon's skyline has changed drastically since my last visit in 1968.

Today we pile onto buses and see the sights of Saigon.

Tomorrow we'll be on the Mekong river heading up into Colonel Kurtz territory in Cambodia.

There is a lovely bamboo Christmas tree in the lobby.

Mrs. Phred has a lot of bites. She hopes we are not bringing a load of bedbugs back to the RV.