Uncle Ho's Kingdom

We are just finishing off our time in Saigon, flying for Singapore tomorrow. We were going to go to Cambodia, but because my (Camilla's) passport is running majorly low on pages, we'll have to skip it since it requires a full page visa. The Canadian consulate is singularly unhelpful when it comes to running out of pages in your passport. You can't add pages, and it takes 3 weeks to get a new passport. ALSO, you need to have your original birth certificate, as well as someone living in the jurisdiction of that consulate who has known you for 2 years and who is a magistrate, lawyer, doctor, dentist, mayor (?!), judge, or public notary. It's ridonkulous. So I may have to apply for a new passport when we arrive in Hong Kong in early February, and Chris and I may have to be separated for 2 or 3 weeks while I wait for it (since he has to arrive in China to start work)!!! So sad!!!

Vietnam has been interesting. There is lots here to capture your interest. They've got an interesting history, cool handicrafts, Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body, museums, good food... The only problem is, it's really frustrating getting ripped off at every turn. Even trying to buy a Coke on the street is an exercise in getting ridiculously cheated! There are 2 prices for everything, and the "tourist" price is completely unreasonable. And unlike in China, they don't sheepishly tell you a more reasonable price when you call their bluff and walk away. No, they are completely shameless here.

Nevertheless, we've had some good experiences. In Hanoi we went on a shopping spree and bought lots of neat local handicrafts and shipped them home. We went to a water-puppet show with traditional music, which was really fun. We also got the chance to see Ho Chi Minh's (aka "Uncle Ho") mummified body lying in a glass case. It was pretty creepy. They did a really good job embalming him, and he seriously looked like he was just dozing. Maybe it was the ripples in the glass surrounding him that distorted his image as we walked past, but I could almost swear I saw him move!!! Every time I snuck a glance at him, I kept expecting him to sit up and start giving orders. Thankfully, Uncle Ho stayed dead.

Then we flew down to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), where there is more of a backpacker scene and therefore prices were a little more reasonable. We visited the War Remnants Museum, which displayed the horrors of the Vietnam War (with an obvious bias towards the Vietcong side, not surprisingly) as well as various models of US airplanes, helicopters and tanks. We also took a day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, which are a network of tiny little tunnels used by the Vietcong during the war. I (Camilla) crawled into a little trapdoor in the ground (Chris wouldn't fit) that was used as a hidden entrance to the tunnels. There were also displays of all sorts of grisly traps used to injure and kill US soldiers...lots of spikes. On the same trip, we visited a Caodai Temple, a supposedly "indigenous" religion...which basically means it's a combination of Catholicism, Buddhism, Eastern Mysticism, Islam, Hinduism...anything you can imagine. The temple was a hideous, gaudy big building. It was just one of the interesting elements mentioned in the book "The Quiet American" which we've both been reading.

The weather was a lot nicer in Saigon, which is in the south of Vietnam. We took a couple days trip to the beach at Mui Ne, a fishing village-turned-resort town. The beach was nice, the weather was great, and we have a couple dozen mosquito bites as a souvenir of our sojourn there.

Today is our last day in Saigon and we plan to spend it eating good food, drinking the remarkably drinkable Vietnamese coffee (at least Camilla is), visiting the Fine Arts museum and maybe seeing our friend Sara (whom we taught with in Shanghai) if we manage to meet up. It's been quite a ride in Uncle Ho's kingdom, and while we'll miss some aspects of it, we're also looking forward to our next adventures.