Vietnam - Angels, Lost Bags, Rain Post #12

So we ended our New Zealand tour with three days in Auckland, staying at my cousin's home (Mark and Mary Perkins). We also spent time with cousin James and his wife, Sue. I cannot convey how wonderful it feels to have an expanded family, even if they are 9000 miles away. The Perkins family has been in NZ since 1958 and are true Kiwis, accent and all. We spent time at the Auckland Museum of Transport and Technology and the Auckland Art Gallery where we really enjoyed the exhibit of Robin White's (well known NZ artist) work. The next day we went to Waheike Island which is known for vinyards, restaurants, beaches, and good walks. We had several wonderful dinners with the cousins, and on 12/4, we hopped on a flight to Melbourne and on to Ho Chi Minh City.

Mark, Mary, RCP, James, and Sue. And my Susan? Well, someone had to take the photo.

So - the angel. We had applied for the Vietnam evisa several days eariler and had not heard anything back. This seemed normal as the Australian evisa approval took many days even after it had hit our passport.

Quantas handed us our boarding passes for Auckland-Melbourne and Melbourne-HCMC. We assumed we were good. Wrong. As the flight was boarding from Melbourne to HCMC, my name was called with a few others. The attendant in charge asked if we had approved evisas. We were told we would not get on that airplane without the approval email on our phones. Of course, we just had a 4 hour layover in Melbourne where we could have addressed the issue with an expensive expediting service. But now we had about 20 minutes in a crowded, noisy airport to try to find someone on our phones to get the approval. After 10 minutes of dialing and barely heard conversations with a couple of services, no luck. We were truly out of options and facing serious delays and extra costs. Flights to HCMC were nearly all booked for this holiday season and very expensive.

And then a young Vietnamese woman, Breeze (real name), comes up and asks if she can help. She is just another passenger on the plane but we appreciated the thought. I gave her my phone and she tried to speak with the person on the other end without success. Then she said she had a contact in Vietnam who might help and called her. She sent our email addresses to the contact, and the next thing you know, we have a document on our phones that gets us on the plane. Breeze told us she had paid the $200 fee from her own funds. Who does that? Then she said that once we were in the air we had to delete the emails from our phones because it could get her contact in big trouble, but she said by the time we landed in HCMC we would have the official approval on our phones. We deleted the emails as reauested and when we landed we had another approval email which got us through Customs. We were incredibly lucky to be in Vietnam and we knew it.

We hit the airport ATM and paid Breeze and saw her off to her taxi. She is actually an accountant living and working in Melbourne. We have had a couple of emails with Breeze since the airport and there is no question that someone is looking after us. There was another family in the line at the Melbourne airport in the exact same position as we were. We passed them as we boarded while they were frantically tapping on their phones. They never got on the plane.

Exciting, huh? Then on to our hotel in District 1 (downtown). An exhausting (and stressful) 24 hours of travel behind us, we slept well that night. Oh, I nearly forgot -- Susan's bag never showed up. Given all that had gone on that day, it was just another blip in an eventful day. Well, the bag apparently went to Singapore. We got it 7 days later when we were in Hoi An. Let us just say that Susan looks very good in one outfit. She did get some knockoff pants and shirts and a pretty good rain jacket at the big market near our hotel just before we flew to Da Nang, headed to Hanoi. That was also interesting as the woman in the stall we first approached ran all over the market finding clothing that would fit Susan's body and taste. She did great and Susan could finally had a change clothing after 3 days.

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has 10 million people. And they are all on motor scooters -- every day.

The city is crowded, busy, dirty, and very foreign to the two of us. I do not think we ever felt really comfortable. The best part of our time in HCMC was our "street food" walking tour with Tan for 4 hours as we danced between raindrops. Tan is 32 years old and spoke excellent English. We were the only clients and it was amazing to speak with an optimistic and open (we think) person whose life is in communist HCMC. The food was ridiculously good, purchased in places we would never go into, sitting on chairs that got progressively shorter until we were basically sitting a few inches above the rough concrete floors. Tan explained how to eat the various courses in 5 different places. You really do need to know how to eat Vietnamese food to appreciate it. I was full at restaurant #3 but gamely soldiered on. Susan was still going even at the 5th "restaurant" - a term used very loosely to describe a hole-in-the-wall producing amazing food for very little money.

Broth, noodles, and tender beef chunks. Damn near heaven.

Our heroes eating way too much. Note the tiny chairs. They got smaller.

Tan told us that both his father and grandfather fought with the Vietcong. And they do not hate Americans. They hate the French. Look up the history and there are good reasons for that - French colonial practices were not pleasant for those being uplifted by the French effort to "civilize" them.

Tan taught us how to cross the street, which is a valuable skill in HCMC. Done correctly, the waves of scooters go around you and everyone survives. Tan also pointed out how few police we saw on the street, or anywhere, for that matter. Is Vietnam that safe? Apparently.

The first day we also went to the War Remnants Museum. Truly a difficult experience for Americans because we are portrayed as war criminals and losers of the war. For two kids who grew up protesting against the war, we pretty much understood the history, but the displays drove home the Vietnamese reality in the war. We stopped before we went into the Agent Orange display -- we were told later it is brutal. Clearly, our country's involvement in a civil war was a mistake. And as it became clear we were losing, the prosecution of the war increasingly used tactics which did not discriminate between enemy soldiers and civilians. And truth be told, those lines were blurred by the Vietcong who would farm during the day and attack US troops at night.

Being masochists, the next day we went to the Cu Chi tunnels - 250 km (150 miles) of underground tunnels, sleeping areas, kitchens, etc. that the Vietcong and their village sympathizers dug to hide from American firepower. These tunnels were dug with very small picks and the dirt brought out in small straw baskets. The effort was incredible to contemplate. And then the VC would pop up in the most unlikely places, like American bases built unknowingly on top of the tunnels and attack our men. We actually got down in the tunnels and walked (hunched over) about 40 meters to the next exit. People prone to claustrophobia need not participate. The Vietcong purposely made the entrances to the tunnels very small so that larger American soldiers could not get in. The most chilling display was the "boobytraps" that these resourceful people built from the metal of US bomb fragments. Hard to imagine our soldiers walking in the jungle with any confidence knowing that these torture traps were out there.

The reality of the Vietnam War hit us harder than we thought it would. I do want to say that nothing should detract from the real heroism and dedication of many US soldiers in the conflict, regardless of the fact that we should not have been there in the first place.

Entrance to a tunnel. And the little cover in his hand fits perfectly and has leaves glued on.

This photo should dispel any notion that I have a resemblance to Father Ho. Right?

Finally we did a tour of the Mekong Delta which included a Buddhist pagoda, a boat trip up the Mekong, a short music presentation of Vietnamese folk music, lunch, and a boat ride with a 60-year old woman paddling who was amazingly strong. She and Susan did not arm wrestle but I would not bet on the outcome.

Laughing Buddha - this statue is about 25' tall

Is Susan cute or what? There is a photo of me with this hat on. I will never show it.

As usual, this has gone on too long. I intended to recount our stay in Hoi An but will leave that for the next post. But -- it rained for 6 days straight there! We still enjoyed our stay but you could say that the rain "dampened our spirit" a bit. it was also raining at our planned next stop, Hue/Danang, and the next week looked dreadful also, so we hightailed it to Hanoi where the weather has been much happier.

As always, we think of our friends and family a lot and love communicating this adventure with you. We hope everyone is doing as well as possible in this pre-holiday season. Stay sane!