The Mighty Mekong

We hit the road today at 8:30 and as expected it took quite awhile to clear HCMC.  Once out, we hit some good highway where no motorbikes were allowed, with a speed limit of 100 km, which is unusual.  Large flat rice paddies, most of which had one or more tombs located haphazardly somewhere in the field.  It's no longer allowed to put a tomb in productive land such as this, as the need for food is too great.  After an hour and a half, we stopped for a stretch and an iced coffee.  Vietnamese coffee with ice and condensed milk.  I'm not normally into something like that, but these were very good.  Three of them cost $2. 

Our coffee and happy place stop

It wasn't too much longer before we made it to the river, where we saw several sizable groups heading to the boats.  I thought we'd be a part of one of them, but give it to Mrs Ha again, we had our own boat.  Sweet!  We puttered past a small local market, then pulled in to a dock, where we got out and watched some small scale industry in action.  Caramel candy, popped rice, and Mekong whiskey (yes we got some candy and whiskey).  We discovered that Nhung has quite a sweet tooth.

Eileen and Nhung discussing the candy making

Vietnamese popcorn (rice) maker

After departing this dock, we went to the other side of the river, where we all boarded a small rowboat, operated by a rather elderly woman, who took us up a narrow tributary that cut through the mangroves.  I'm not sure how long we were on this boat, but it was certainly over a half hour and she was paddling against the tide for half the time.

Blending in with the locals

exiting the mangroves, the original boat picked us up, and took us for about an hour, along what I thought was a branch of the Mekong, but we were actually going around an island.  The tide was really low, so our speed was slow at times.  A lot of interesting houses and boat traffic. I cannot imagine what this lifestyle would be like.

Home along the river

One of many small boats

We arrived at our lunch spot a little later than I think we had planned (3:00), but it was good (appetite has returned, horray!)  Highlight was a Mekong specialty, elephant ear fish. 

Elephant Ear fish

We got back on the boat for a short trip back to the car, with a full stomach Eileen had a little relax time at the back of the boat.

A little relax time

I think it was about an hour to Can Tho and the hotel.  We crossed the Mekong a couple of times, including once on a very impressive bridge that was built with some Japanese help.  This has not been the first bridge in Vietnam that has been a Wow moment, but I think this one might be the winner.  No decent picture though....
Awesome hotel in Can Tho, a very colonial looking building with a large pool and big landscaped property.  Would be a nice spot to have a little more leisure time.

View of hotel, river is behind me

And finally, a card that is on the desk in our room, that I had to smile at, and which Eileen outright laughed at.  Instant thoughts of a friend from home, you know who you are.

We had a couple of happy hour beer at the bar here, and saw that the restaurant prices were pretty steep.  Nhung had said that there were eating places at both sides of the resort, so we headed to one of them.  The one we picked covered a large area, each table was basically it's own island, surrounded by Mekong water (not out in the main channel but certainly connected).  We had a seafood and mixed mushroom hot pot (that we could not finish) and four beer, for a cost of $12.50.  Crazy.
Tomorrow, we get to a boat early and putter through a large floating market.  It's supposed to be quite a scene.  We then drive up to the Cambodia border where we have to say goodbye to Nhung and our driver.  We will be exchanging email addresses for sure, she has just been too much fun.

Cu Chi tunnels and War Remnants Museum

We were met in the lobby this morning by our guide Nhung, who interestingly has a law degree and has worked two years in law, until she decided she enjoyed travelling and tourism more.  Her sister is also a lawyer, with her own practice, which Nhung says she will join when she feels it is time.  Off we went for the 1.5 hour drive to the tunnels, most of which was in Hanoi and outlying urban area.  In the rural area leading up to the tunnels we went through quite an area of rubber trees, which I had not expected to see.  We arrived before too many of the big tour buses arrived, which is probably why we had an 8:00 pickup instead of the more typical 9:00. 
The ingenuity and determination of the Vietnamese was apparent throughout the day.  The systems that they had for filtering smoke from cooking fires and the ventilation openings disguised to look like termite nests were classics.  This particular tunnel system totaled 250 km of length and I think she said there were 16,000 people who lived in these tunnels.  The soil that was removed was hauled to the river, used to repair roads, or inconspicuously dumped into bomb craters, which were all over the place. There were also some displays of the boobie traps used by the Vietcong, nasty looking devices.  One section of the tunnels has been 'Westernized', as in made about twice the original size, to accomodate tourists like us.

I easily fit into the westernized entrance

 

A ventilation mound

 

We made it 40 metres through the enlarged tunnel

 

These tunnels went undetected for many years, although the US knew they had to be there.  They were discovered by accident, when a shirtless US soldier sat and rested against one of the ventilation mounds and felt the cool air from underground.  Eventually, this lead to flooding of the tunnels by pumping water from the Saigon river, drowning a large number of the residents.  So sad, and not so long ago either.
After touring through the tunnels, we drove back to the city and had lunch quite close to the hotel, at a place most tourists probably would not stop at, but really in the heart of the city right below one of the most modern looking high rise buildings in HCMC.  As usual, good food.

Lunch stop, those bbq duck looked good

 

Financial building outside the lunch stop

We then went to the War Remnants Museum, which is a large, three story building with thousands of journalist photographs from the war.  It was a very somber place, and some sections we so difficult to see that we went through those parts quickly, especially the after effects agent orange and other chemical weapons that the US employed.  There were several familiar pictures as many were prominent on Time magazine covers during the war, and of course there was that iconic photo of the 'Napalm Girl', the crying, burned child running towards the photographer.   The grounds surrounding the museum contains a large number of US aircraft and artillery that was abandoned at the conclusion of the war.

Abandoned US helicopter

Close by the museum were two old French built landmarks, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office, which still functions, although ATM machines now occupy several of the old wooden phone booths.

Inside the Notre Dame cathedral

 

Notre Dame cathedral

 

The Saigon Post Office

 

The neat looking wooden phone booths

Got back to the hotel about 4:00, turned on the AC, had a beer and nap, and then headed to supper at the BBQ Gardens, recommended by Nhung.  Great looking outdoor place, very popular, good food that you cooked yourself on the BBQ built in to the center of each table. 

Cooking supper

View of the BBQ Garden

Tomorrow Nhung and the driver are picking us up and we'll head to the Mekong river for a couple of days with them.  We had a great time today with Nhung, despite some of the disturbing history that we witnessed.  A prelude to Phnom Penh and the Killing Fields next week.  Nhung and Eileen had a lot of laughs together, so we are looking forward to the next two days.

On to Ho Chi Minh City

Tom picked us up right on schedule and in just a few minutes we were dropping down though the pine forests along a scenic, winding highway.  It took about 15 minutes of downhill before we broke out of the mountainous terrain and hit flat country.  Again, flat land means something can grow on it, and here we saw hundreds and hundreds of acres of gladiola fields.  No doubt there are millions of plants.  thirty minutes after leaving the hotel, we arrived at the airport.  Of the four Vietnam airports that we have been in, this is the third brand new terminal building.  About 30 years ago, Vietnam introduced some economic reform measures and since then the economy here has been booming.  We certainly did not expect the country to be as modern looking as it is.
The flight here was short and sweet, we only got up to 16,000 feet and didn't stay there long before we began the descent.  It was clear all the way and I was regretting having my camera stowed away in the overhead bin. 
The driver was waiting for us and we headed to the hotel.  Now I know it's been a couple of weeks since we were in Hanoi, but seriously, was the traffic this chaotic there?  Can only one million more people make this much of a difference (7 mil vs 6 mil).  Anyway, the traffic here is nuts.  It was too early to get our hotel room, so we dropped the luggage, picked up a map, and went for a walk.  It was only a few blocks to the main market area, but this one was pretty much the same as the others.  There is another market area that leans more towards sewing and fabrics, so we debated about whether to try and find it, the streets here are a bit confusing, straight lines don't seem to be a part of the urban planning anywhere in the early city history.  A cyclo driver saw us studying the map and asked where we were trying to go, we said we were just trying to figure how where we were.  However, after some negotiation, we agreed to let them take us to this other market for 150,000 VND.  As we found out, we would never have made it walking.  Here is where we got foolish, rather than just paying them their money, they said they would wait and take us back.  We did some shopping, maybe half an hour and Eileen picked up a few more yards of fabric.

One of the hundreds of fabric shops

 The drivers were right there waiting for us when we were done, and back we came.  They dropped us on a relatively quiet corner about a block away from the hotel, there was the first clue.  I pulled out the money, quite prepared to double up for the return trip, but a new price list appeared, and we now fell under the one hour city tour category on this list, which had a price of 1,500,000 VND per person, which is a ludicrous amount.  Now there happened to be a couple of police close by, but they were nothing more than onlookers, but I was not paying them.  I turned my camera on them and said that I wanted some good pictures of them, one immediately turned away and the other put his hand in front of the lens.  I shot off a few pictures and we walked away.  It was our own fault, we knew better than to hire a cyclo, and yet we did it.  Oh well.
Got to the hotel and the room was ready, complete with a free upgrade to a junior suite, which is indeed sweet.  The Jacuzzi tub in the corner of the main room really sets it off.

Our room in HCMC

We had some lunch at a street side café, then went wandering the area, mainly looking for some rum, which is not a popular beverage here.  Scotch drinkers would have a blast.....Eileen tired of this venture in the heat fairly quickly, so we came back to the hotel.  I returned to the street while she cooled off in the AC.  It took me a little while, but ended up finding a place about two blocks away, just on the opposite side of the street than we had already walked.
At 5:30, we went downstairs and found our motorbike drivers waiting for us at the curb, actually there were four of them, as there was an Aussie couple going on the tour too.  We had a little safety briefing, some passenger rules, and off we went to the first stop, where we hooked up with five others, all Aussies.

My helmet was a little small, so a replacement was found

  I won't go into any long details, but we had three food stops, and two tourist stops, just to give us some digestive time.  Our total trek took 4.5 hours and covered a huge part of HCMC, from the poorest neighbourhoods to some of the high/middle class neighbourhoods.  we beef noodle soup from Hue, grilled okra, grilled goat, quail, shrimp, frog (skin on and skin off), scallops, clams, crab, and probably something I've forgotten, oh yes for the adventurous few a boiled egg with duck embryo.  Maybe on a good day I might have gone there.......

mmmm, frog, skin on.  My driver in the background

We do not have many pictures of the evening, the tour company was taking a lot of photos and they will be emailing them to us in a few days.
Tomorrow we will visit some of the Vietcong tunnels, see some of the local rural life, and do see some of the sights of HCMC.

What a beautiful city!

Dalat is a gorgeous small city, full of flowers, parks, manicured boulevards, and then just a few minutes drive from downtown you are into mature forests of tall long needled pine trees.  The climate here is very predictable, with little difference between the seasons, warm shorts and shirt sleeves in the daytime, cooling off in the evening with the altitude. 
We had an hour after breakfast before our pickup, so we went for a wander.  Discovered the main local market, but escaped without buying anything.  The flower stalls and the fresh produce were pretty impressive.  Our guide (Mai Anh - we called her Annie) and driver (Tom) showed up right on time, she suggested that we put on sunscreen, as the rays were stronger than we've been in, again due to the latitude.  We left the hotel and drove for maybe 20 minutes, half city and half in the pine forest, before we got to Datanla Falls.  Here we had an option, we could hike about a kilometre to the falls or we could ride a self-operated roller coaster car (for a couple of bucks).  That sounded like a no brainer.  The ride down was fun, you had braking control of your car by pulling back on the two levers along the side of the car. 

Preparing to head down the hill

It took maybe two minutes to get to the bottom, where the lower section of the falls were, the upper falls required rock climbing, and an all day excursion.  Very pretty waterfall in a beautiful setting.  It's dry season right now, so the water is relatively low.  To get back to the parking lot, we got back in the cars and they were basically pulled back up on a more or less straight path to the top.

Datanla waterfall

After the waterfalls, we made another short trip to the Truc Lam Zen monastery, a very well groomed property in another forested setting with a nice distant view of a calm lake.

We should have written the name of this flower down - very unique blue orchid

 

A small portion of the grounds at the monastery

 

Next, we did a tour of the summer palace of King Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam.  Then we made an unplanned stop at an optometrist office that Annie recommended.  Eileen had an eye exam, and ordered a new pair of glasses.  They will be dropped off at the reception desk tonight.

 

Eileen and Annie at the optometrist - she is sitting about 6 feet from the sidewalk here

 

Here Annie diverged from the planned itinerary, suggesting that some of the planned stops were a bit touristy, and that she would like to take us to a greenhouse operation.  We certainly were up for that.  We didn't have to go far before we got out at one of the thousands of greenhouses.  I can see how this city can be so well groomed with all of the local product available.

Roses growing in a greenhouse

A short distance away, we stopped at a small place at the side of the road.  These people buy the flowers from the farmers and prepare them for shipment all over Vietnam.

Preparing flowers for shipment

Before lunch we stopped at a place called the crazy house.  It is an eccentric house or maybe collection of structures that is about as odd as you can imagine.  I can just imagine Ellyce on the loose in here.

A small portion of the crazy house

After a nice lunch neat the crazy house, we stopped at a coffee place where we tried a couple of different brews, and came away with a couple of small bags of coffee beans.  We finished up with a lengthy tour of the Dalat Historical Village, a large complex which had a focus on silk and silk embroidery.  Eileen bought some silk thread, so that she could give it a try at home.

We got back to the hotel about 3:30 and said our good byes to Annie.  We've had some good guides in Vietnam but she rates right up at the top.  It was a wonderful day.  I wish we had another day in the schedule for Dalat.  Tomorrow, Tom will be picking us up early to catch our flight to Ho Chi Minh City.  It is an open day in terms of planned excursions, but we have booked a motorbike food tour with an outfit called something like XO tours.  Highly rated, just hope my stomach is back to 100%.

Move to Dalat

It was moving day, in more ways than one.  something I ate or drank got the better of my last night, and I moved many times, until about mid-morning when things started to settle down.  good thing too, our driver picked us up at noon for the three hour drive to Dalat.  It took about 20 minutes to get out of the city and then for the next twenty or so we made good time though the prairie like countryside of rice fields.  Mileage markers were showing 110 km to Dalat, and I'm thinking how can this possibly be a three hour drive but then we reached a point where we were surrounded by mountains and the only way to continue was to go up, and up, and up.  An hour of uphill curves and switchbacks until we started getting into the clouds.  They got thicker and thicker until we could barely see the road.  We finally reached the crest and started dropping.  The clouds disappeared, the sun came out and it looked amazing.  Sheer rock faces with lots of small waterfalls, small scale farming happening wherever there was an opportunity.  One crop started to dominate the farmland, I suspect it is coffee, we'll ask tomorrow. 
As we got closer to Dalat, the greenhouse industry started to appear, and then became enormous.  Acre upon acre of greenhouse, with a lot of cut flower and strawberry production.

Large scale greenhouse operations

 

Dalat has a pretty lake in the center of the city and our hotel is up on a bit of a hill, overlooking the lake.  A golf course on one side of the lake too, but we will not have time to indulge this year.


View from our balcony

Nha Trang - more food stories

Another sunshine kind of day in Vietnam, although it was a little breezy by the beach.  As I mentioned yesterday, we had a cooking class arranged at the Lantern restaurant.  It took a little longer to walk there that we had calculated, but we made it just on time.  They didn't get going right away, so it wasn't really an issue.  There were eight of us in this room at the between the main eating area and the kitchen.  We haven't met many Canadians here, but in our group were two guys from Winnipeg and two girls from Edmonton.  One of the Winnipeg guys had his phone stolen last night, on the street close by the restaurant.  We asked if it was just one guy and he said no, it was two girls on a motorbike.  The bike stopped right beside him, one girl hopped off, grabbed him on one shoulder, and lifted his phone from his back pocket, hopped back on the bike and took off.


We all got put into cyclos, which are little bicycle taxis, and off we went to the market.  It was not the same one that we had been to a couple of days ago, this one was much more into food.  Our chef lead us through the market, stopping to buy pork, chicken, fish, some fruits and vegetables, and a few seasonings.  She was not quite the comedian that we had on the last market visit, but there was still a good sense of humour there.  she was just a little spit of a woman, and when describing chili peppers, she told us that the smaller they were the hotter they were, just like Vietnamese women. 

Ummmm, fresh seafood

Fresh chicken

Even fresher chicken
We took our cyclos back to Lanterns and shortly after started in on the cooking.  We did all the prep work for fish in clay pot, and set them to marinate for a bit, then on to appentizers.  We make fresh spring rolls all the time, but she had a few new secrets for us that really make a difference, plus a tip for our deep fried spring rolls.  After they were made we got to eat our rolls, pretty good.

The fresh spring rolls

Our chef

While our fish cooked, we sat and chatted.  They brought out some rice and we had our fish for lunch.  We'll be making this at home some day.  After that was cleared away, we did some flambaed deserts, that were also really good. 

 

Flamebaed desert

We had a very lazy finish to the afternoon, then scoured the reviews for a supper destination.  All the good reviews are for places down at the far end of the strip, but there was one we found that might not be mainstream but it was close, actually closer than we thought when we found it.  It is very popular with the locals.  The big favourite is BBQ beef, which you cook on your table with a small charcoal cooker.  It was a very smoky place with so many people grilling up their dinner, I think we were the only westerners in the place, but no issues.  The beef was so good, that we ordered a second plateful..... Two plates of beef, a noodle and shrimp dish, and a vege dish, two beers, for $15. 

Tomorrow, we have an afternoon drive to Dalat, which is in the central highlands, east of here.

 

 

Tour day in Nha Trang

Nha Trang is really a beach town, so the tours here are really scrambling to find something interesting.  I have to hand it to Ha though, she has this set up pretty good.  We started off this morning with a visit to Ponagar temple and some history of the Vietnamese in this region.  There are certainly some big differences between here and the north of the country.  The females play a much more influencal role here. 

Ponagar temple

After we left the temple, we hiked down a few back alleys, and soon hooked up with a fisherman, who had converted a boat into a tourist boat.  We basically went through his yard to the boat, past a few workers that had dry docked a boat between two houses and were doing a re-build.  On the boat, we cruised through the harbour and learned about the different boats.  The large woman boats did all the fishing, the smaller man boats ferried fuel and supplies.

Fishing Boats

 We took the boat up the river, there was surprisingly little traffic on the water.  I guess the serious fishing is in the ocean.  We made one stop at a little set up that a local has started, just a rest spot where they serve up some fresh coconuts.  These are quite different than those we've had in the Caribbean or Costa Rica, these ones were good.  we carried on up the river some more, passing under what they call the Monkey bridge, which is a rickity looking structure that is wiped out every rainy season and rebuilt every year.

We ended the boat trip at an ancient rural residence.  The house was built sometime in the 17th century, and compared to a city house, it was very spacious, separate entrances for men, women, and the head of the house.  As always, the center of the house had a shrine, with pictures of ancestors.  The yard was gorgeous, with fruit trees, flowers, birds, and butterflies all over.

The car was waiting for us here, on the drive back to town we got out once and walked a couple more alleys to a small scale weaving operation.  It was very interesting to see these two women creating a mat with this ancient looking weaving device.  Eileen had a try at feeding in the next strand.  We bought a couple of placemats from them for $3.

Our lunch stops on these tours are all similar, a nice little restaurant where they have a set menu.  Todays was a little crazy for volume, there is no way that the two of us were going to eat all this, but we didn't end up leaving too much behind.  That was it for the tour, we were back at the hotel by early afternoon.  We saw that there were empty beach chairs, so we headed right down there.  After about an hour and a half it clouded over, our first stint on the beach and our first clouds, bad timing.  Oh well, finished my nap on the bed and then we went down to the pool bar for drinks and a look at the supper setup.  Tonight is the Saturday BBQ buffet.  We had a couple of drinks and then moved to the other side of the glass for supper.  We paid the exorbidant price of 350,000 VND (17.50) which included a beer, glass of wine, or shot of vodka, for the buffet.  First time I've seen that drink offering combination.  You name a seafood, and it was probably available.  For appitizers, I has clams, scallops, fresh oysters, smoked salmon, shrimp, a jellyfish salad, and probably some I can't remember.  We followed with a seafood soup, then went to the bbq selection, where you put whatever you wanted cooked on a plate and then the cooked it.  Think lobster, prawns, more clams, scallops, oysters, beef, and other meats that I did not try.  Throughout the meal, they had live entertainment, an acoustic guitar with a couple of singers doing very familiar music and doing it well.  For desert I had some flambaed banana and pineapple.  Eileen had some baked deserts. Awesome meal.....
We went for a late night walk after we finally finished.  They really have the streets lit up here for New Years.  A nice walk along the big walkway that is between the main drag and the beach.  Tomorrow is another relax day for us.  We had so much fun with the last cooking class that we booked another one for tomorrow.  It's something like $24, and we'll be well fed when it's over.