Even though we were still making our way up to the port in Saigon, early this morning several Vietnamese officials and tour operators had gotten on the ship with the pilot, so our passports, visas, and money needs were being taken care of before we docked.At 10:00 a.m. we had the diplomatic briefing. I sat in the back with a lot of the staff and made paper cranes. We're trying to make 1000 cranes for peace before reaching Japan and we have a long ways to go. Mine all look roughly like camels or dogs, but I'm slowly getting better.
I met up with Molly after the briefing and we headed out to the pool deck for the breakie barbie. It was wonderful food. Mostly the normal cookout hot dogs, chicken, and hamburgers, but since some (most) people had missed breakfast, the buffet also included sausage and eggs. I stuffed myself and didn't even have room for the fixings on the huge dessert bar.
After breakfast and packing, I went to Molly's room to plan our trip and our plans of Hanoi turned into Hoi An when Corey and Collin said they were going there and our inter-port student said it was very nice. We've been to enough cities, I agreed that we'd both rather go to a smaller town rather than just see museums and stuff in a large city. The plane tickets were cheaper too.
The parent trip that they have every voyage is in Vietnam this voyage with a side trip to Cambodia, so all of the parents were on the dock waiting for the ship and then got to come on and see the ship and their kids' rooms. We were finally allowed off the ship around 14:00 after parents came on and the SAS trips got off. Corey, Collin, Susan, Molly, and I headed out for a half day in Ho Chi Minh City. After buying tickets on Vietnam Airlines for a 6:20 a.m. flight tomorrow morning, we walked to the Notre Dame cathedral to see the statue of Mary out front that had sprung a tear in the past week. There were many praying/singing/chanting Vietnamese out in front of the statue. I thought it looked suspiciously like bird poop, but it has been there a few days and with the monsoon rains, bird poop would probably wash off.
I loved being back in a city that I knew. HCMC looked more modern to me, especially the are around the shuttle bus stop which is by the municipal theater, but as I walked around I recognized a lot. I recognized the store that I bought my ao dai last time, and the post office, and other little stores. My favorite part about Vietnam is the traffic pattern. It's all about trust. As soon as there's a break in the traffic you step out and continue across the street at the same pace. They tried to demonstrate this in our logistical pre-port with the kids acting as cars and motorcycles, but it didn't really work as well. I think they did a better job of describing this method on my last voyage. Actually, there really aren't many cars in this city, it's all motorcycles and cyclos - the 3 wheeled bikes pedaled by one person, with one passenger. After a stop for a cold drink, we walked to try to find a hotel for the night, but Molly, Susan, Corey, and Collin all got distracted by the shopping. I knew that there would be plenty of shopping and I'd gotten a lot the last time I was here, so I was more intent on finding out hotel and getting back to the ship by 6:30 to pick up Byron for dinner.
I finally pried them away and we were walking towards the backpacker's district when a cyclo driver told us he'd take us to the ship. I loved the cyclo experience last time and had so many great experiences with them that I decided we should all do it, so we got 5 cyclos to take us to find a hotel and wait for us and then take us back to the ship. They gave us kind of a high price, but I negotiated it down to $1 and we went. We found a cheap, but slightly red-light hotel, paid for 3 rooms at $10/room and then headed back to the ship. When we got to the ship all 5 drivers dropped us off in different places and across the busy street and then tried to charge us like $8-$12. I gave my driver $2 which was twice as much as our negotiated price and then he told me no, $6. I finally whipped out $4 and had him take me across the street to Corey. Corey and I both agreed to give $4 which they didn't want to take, but I told them it was that or nothing. Corey and I then had to run back to pick up Collin, Molly, and Susan. They all paid too much, but only Susan paid a lot more than $4. I was so disappointed in this experience. I had met such good honest people my last time here and I really didn't want others to have a bad taste in their mouth about Vietnam. It saddened me that not everyone was honest.
We agreed on a 10 minute turn around to pick up our bags for the Hoi An trip and then head out for dinner. Byron wasn't feeling well, so since we had 15 minutes until the bus left, I ran back off the ship with about 10 minutes to spare before the bus was supposed to leave and it was gone, along with Molly and my bag. I had no idea where they were heading for dinner, so I stuck around the ship until 10:00 when one of the last shuttle busses left and took another cyclo to our hotel. This time I had a good experience. The hotel was dark when I got there and they hadn't seen Molly and the others (although I wasn't really sure because they didn't speak any english). Since I had my own room that night I wrote them a note and headed up to my room. All of my stuff was in my bag with Molly, and although this red light hotel didn't have much more than a mirror and a picture of a naked woman, it had a toothbrush and toothpaste, so I was able to buy a bottle of water, brush my teeth, and lie down. Molly and Susan showed up a little after midnight with my heavy bag that they had lugged around town. I was so happy to see them!
After only about 4 hours of sleep we woke up and tried to find the taxi that was supposed to come at 4:45. I had heard a honk earlier, so I was checking to see if it was our driver. As we were leaving the hotel we saw about 4 people sleeping on the floor and none of them woke up as we walked by. We had to unlock the door to let ourselves out. Last night when we had gone to look at the rooms there was a little kid getting a shower in the room that Molly and Susan slept in, so I thought that maybe we had kicked people out of these rooms and they were having to sleep on the floor. The floor was probably cleaner than our rooms anyway. Last night I had somehow through a huge language barrier communicated to our hotel that we needed a taxi this morning, so they called and had one come, but I found out that that really wasn't necessary because there were several taxis outside trying to get us to come with them. We had no idea if any of them were the one we called, but just outside the hotel there was a parked taxi with the driver asleep. We figured he had slept there are was waiting for us, so we knocked on the window, woke him up, and had him take us to the airport. Just as we were pulling out we saw another taxi pull up to the hotel and the owner come out so we probably picked the wrong taxi - oh well.
We arrived in Denang around 7:30 and went out to find a taxi which we found to be very cheap. We ended up negotiating a taxi for $8 to take us into Hoi An 45-60 minutes away. We found a beautiful hotel with very nice people. We had breakfast at the hotel and were introduced to banana pancakes which are super yummy. They also have very good orange juice here. I wasn't able to sip the OJ it was so yummy, I gulped it right down. They also have very good banana (or any fruit) shakes on every menu, so every meal we had included at least one person getting a shake.
After breakfast we asked the hotel for some tailor recommendations and went down the street to one they said is inexpensive and good. I decided to get a suit there and a suit shirt and have them copy another shirt I like. It's so hot that I'm sticky and wet with sweat every time I try to try something on, it's pretty gross. None of these places are air conditioned, but they often turn the fan on for us tourists. Hoi An is buzzing with tourists, but the really cool thing is that it was completely off the radar of other SAS students, so we didn't see another SASquatch the entire time we were there. I was the only one getting a suit at Mr. Tuan's (although Collin later came back to get some shirts and pants made), so they left me to get measured and wandered down the street. After I was done and started wandering, I wandered into a shop selling lots of name brand (I suspect knock-off) backpacks and bags, so I suckered my self into buying a huge Lowe Alpine frame pack because it had both a day pack and a fanny pack that zipped off it. Molly, and later Corey and Collin all found me at this store. The woman helping us was very cute. Her name was Tu and she was super tiny. She was showing us a really big suitcase and climbed in to show us how big it was. You could have fit 3 or 4 of her in this suitcase. She sat us all down and served us dragon fruit and yummy pears. The fruit is so good in Vietnam. I left my newly purchased bag and purse in her store and came back for it later and kept walking with the group.
We ended up walking down the main drag where most of the tailors and shoe makers are. Down the entire street every store is either a tailor or a place that makes shoes with an occasional restaurant sprinkled in there. There's really too much to choose from. They have some pre-made clothes to draw your attention. You can have clothes made to fit you modeled off of their samples, or just describe what you want and they can make something completely unique. I always went into the stores that had some item that sparked my attention, but as we kept walking we found that a lot of the stores had the same clothes. I got several things made at several different stores. I'm really pretty happy with my new custom fit wardrobe.
Molly has been on the lookout for her first pair of heels because she's required to get heels for salsa class. She asked for my help in deciding which shoes to get but totally ignored my advice. I told her to get black shoes instead of brown because they'd go with more and if she was in a salsa performance she'd probably be wearing black and she can't wear brown shoes with a black skirt, but she didn't buy my fashion advice and went ahead and got black shoes. Later she wished she'd listened to me. That will teach her!!!! :)
We shopped for so long that we had a hard time finding an open place for dinner, but finally found a place where the 3 of us that ate meat all ordered the same thing - Cao Lau, the Hoi An specialty - Doughy flat noodles mixed with croutons, bean sprouts, and greens topped with pork slices and mixed with crumbled rice paper. Apparently authentic Cao Lau can only be served in Hoi An because to be authentic the water used to prepare it must come from the Ba Le Well, a well from Cham times that is in Hoi An.
The next morning, after a late breakfast of banana pancakes covered in honey or chocolate we hit the usual tailors for fittings and to purchase even more and then met up at the hotel at noon and wandered down to the river. We wanted to get out and visit a small village and I really didn't want Molly, Corey, and Collin who had never been to Vietnam to miss the river life. We didn't even make it up to the docks where we'd thought we'd find a boat when a woman rowed up to us in her little boat and asked us if we wanted to go on a short ride. We told her we wanted a longer ride to a fishing village. I'm not sure if it was possible to do what we wanted or if she understood us, but she told us we'd see fishing and a village, so we hopped in. Molly was so excited to be in a boat that you can paddle that she helped paddle. Collin helped too and Corey and I just were along for the ride and took pictures.
Just down the river a bit a 13 year old boy jumped in the boat and we found out that he was her son. His english was very good, so he was our tour guide for the rest of the trip. There was a couple out in a boat fishing with a net. It was really cool how he threw the net. I'm not sure if they were really fishing there or if they were just in a location that a lot of tourists come by because after I took a few pictures the woman rowing us paddled right up to their boat and it was obvious that I was expected to make a contribution for the pictures I took. This boy and his mom actually live in a small boat the size we were in (a little larger than a canoe). They pointed out the mooring where their house boat was. It's incredible, you can barely sit up much less stand up in these boats when they have the covering to make them livable.
After about 30 minutes we arrived at the village of Kim Bong on Cam Kim island. This island is known for its woodworkers and some boat makers. Our little tour guide walked us around the village first to a woodworking shop and then we saw a few men making boats. The tour of the island took less than an hour and after Corey bought some artwork we went back to our boat where our guides mom was patiently waiting for us. When we got back, we of course did some more shopping and had another lunch of Cao Lau. While Molly continued to shop, Corey, Collin and I wandered down to the Japanese Covered Bridge doing a little shopping on our way. We got down there just before sunset and the sky and reflection of the buildings across the river were beautiful in the river. I took a lot of pictures of the sky and little kids walking around on the street.
After two shopping days, we needed a change of itinerary. We woke up super early on our last day in Hoi An to catch a taxi at 6:00 to drive us one hour through some small towns and country side to My Son which is an area of ancient Hindu temple ruins. This is Vietnam's most important site of the ancient kingdom of Champa. According to my Lonely Planet which I was very grateful to have along, My Son is considered to be Champa's smaller counterpart to the grand cities of Southeast Asia's other Indian-influenced civilizations: Ankor (Cambodia); Bagan (Myanmar) - where I went last week; Ayuthaya (Thailand); and Borobudar (Java). My Son was a religious center from the 4th century until the 13th century, and unfortunately because during the war the Americans bombed and destroyed most of these monuments because it was used as a staging ground by the VC. Only about 20 of the monuments were spared, many of those 20 were damaged extensively, but Unesco is currently trying to restore them.
The drive to My Son was great. It was past sunrise, but we saw hundreds of Vietnamese school kids in their school uniforms riding bikes to school. The girls all wear matching ao dai (the traditional Vietnamese women's dress) and the boys also in matching uniforms. We also often had to stop because there were cows or other animals blocking the entire road. So many times I wanted to stop to take pictures, but I had to settle for taking them through the window or passing my camera over to Collin or Molly to take photos out the window.
The taxi dropped us at the road entering the My Son area and we had to walk a few minutes to the place where you buy an entrance ticket for about $4 and then continue walking across a bridge to meet a jeep who drove us the final 2 km into the area of the ruins. From here we pretty much gave ourselves the tour helped along by Lonely Planet and looked in and around what remained of these ancient monuments. I had more fun just trying to figure out how to take cool artistic shots. My coolest one I think was of Molly standing inside a dark room with light shining through the columns in the window. We were at My Son for about 2 hours which was more than enough time. I could stand on a street corner watching people all day, but I don't have nearly as much interest just staring at crumbled buildings, or any buildings for that matter.
On our way back from My Son we asked our driver to stop at a little store on the side of the road where they were selling gongs. Byron and I had looked at a lot of gongs in Myanmar, but we ran out of money so he couldn't buy a big gong like he wanted, so yesterday when I saw some gongs in Hoi An I bought him one. Molly saw my gong and thought that Nate would like one, so we stopped at this stand and she bought an even bigger one than I had gotten. It'll be interesting getting this trash can lid of a gong home!
We were back to the hotel around 10 a.m. and went for our last banana pancake and checked out of our hotel by noon. Molly had to go down the street and buy a big bag before she could pack up because we bought so much stuff in Hoi An. I made a trip down to Mr. Tuan the tailor of my first suit just down the street and found that my suit still needed some minor adjustments before it was complete. I'm so picky that I've pissed off just about every tailor in Hoi An. I just keep asking myself "what would mom think of this suit." I figure if it would pass the mom test, anyone would be happy with it. If it hugged my hips too tight, or there was a pucker on the sleeve, it didn't pass the mom test and had to go back for more work.
It was difficult yesterday trying to all stay together when we had slightly different agendas and we all wanted to what we wanted to do and not wait for the others in the group, so today we just decided to all do our own thing and meet back at the hotel at 4:45 to catch a taxi to the airport. I still had 3 of my 4 tailors to visit and pick up my suits and other clothes, so most of my day was spent going between the tailors and taking care of last minute tweaks. The right arm on my suit jackets was always too tight and I had to keep asking them to make it bigger and finally Bu, my super gay tailor yelled at me and said "I'm sick of you, what do you want, I'm not making much profit." This frustrated me as much as him because I had been telling him what I wanted all along, I just hadn't gotten it, but this resulted in me having to do something that I really didn't want to do which was to get on the back of a motorbike with this woman who worked in his store and go a few blocks away to the tailor who was sewing the suits so he could see what needed to change. This was a real experience. It's a little one room shop off the street behind a garage with about 4 sewing machines, a table where someone is measuring material and drawing on the pattern of where to cut and sew, and a table where someone is ironing and putting in the lining and stuff. Every time I went (2 or 3 times) the main tailor had a cigarette in his mouth, this was the real local experience. I had to take off my shoes before entering the shop, probably so they don't get dirt grinding on the new suits. The woman who was driving me around was very nice and friendly like all Vietnamese women. She kept grabbing my arm and holding my hand, it was so cute. I think she said that she was 23 or 24 and she has a little baby (who I didn't see). She kept assuring me that my suit would look very good by the time I got it.
In between fittings with Mr. Tuan, Chic, and Lovely (the three tailors I was still working with), I decided to get a facial. I had no idea what this facial would entail and the people at the place I found just down the street from our hotel didn't speak any english, but since this place didn't look like a brothel, I figured I'd be OK. I later found out that many of the SASsers who went to get massages chose places that were a little sketchy and ended up having to push scantily dressed Vietnamese women off of them when the massage went a little (or a lot too far). They walked me to a room that was kind of a passage way between the front office and the back where I'm assuming they did manicures and stuff. There were 4 beds in this room and I sat down on one in the middle and was given a little tube top to put on while a woman helped me take off my t-shirt and bra. I just went with it, I knew it would be an experience. The facial was $6 and they said it would be 1 hour and 15 minutes which seemed about right to me. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but it was nice and included a face, head, and upper body massage, of course that's the part that I wasn't really expecting. The massage went a little TOO LOW and I found that I was getting my breasts massaged as well - yikes! At the end of the facial she asked if I wanted a face mask which I assumed was just a basic 10 minute mud mask, but it turned out to be something wet and gooey, like papier mache that she put on my face and after 40 minutes it was still wet and I was getting antsy. I hadn't been able to see anything during this whole process because I had my eyes closed, but I could tell that 2 of the other beds in the room were now occupied, and when I turned my head to look at one point I saw a woman next to me getting her stomach flab massaged. She fell asleep and was snoring while I was waiting for my mask to dry, so finally I got the woman's attention who was doing my facial and pointed to my watch. She got the point and finished me up. The best part was that she brushed my hair with a vibrating massaging brush and for the rest of the day my hair felt like silk.
After the facial I made my rounds again and still had a few things that needed to be fixed on the suits. We were down to the wire with only about an hour left before I had to leave Hoi An. They all promised 30-60 minute turn around, so I went off for a quick lunch of Cao Lau, the Hoi An specialty - a pork, veggie, noodle soup that I'd had for practically every meal, and wound my way to the central market to check it out since I hadn't yet been. I was able to drive very hard bargains since I didn't really need anything in particular, I just wanted to get good deals on gifts, so it was very easy to walk away if the price wasn't right. One last stop at Chic and I found that the jacket still wasn't right, so they sent it off to the tailor again while I went for my final & successful fitting with Mr. Tuan. I went back to Chic with about 20 minutes to spare before our meeting time and the jacket still wasn't right, so I got whisked back to the tailor on the motorbike. We left the tailor at about 4:43 and I went back to Chic to pay for the suits and get them wrapped up, then they whisked me back to the hotel on the motorbike. I was only 5 minutes late, and I beat Molly. I repacked all of my stuff in the lobby and got it ready to check on the plane. We settled our bill, and at 5:15 when we were supposed to be out of there Molly still wasn't there. We were pretty sure she was OK, but knowing Molly she had just lost track of time, but we were all risking missing our flight, so I wrote a note to the hotel with the ship info and how to contact us if she didn't return tonight so we could send out a search party. As I was just handing over the note and passport, Molly came running up. She never got oriented in Hoi An - it's a very small town and not hard to find your way around, but somehow she had managed to get very lost and had been trying to get back for almost an hour. Finally a motorbike whisked her back. If she had been 15 seconds later, we would have left her, so I'm very grateful she made it.
On the way to the airport, Molly shared with us that she had had an interesting experience. She had been walking through the market and many women commented on her unshaven legs and offered to wax them. Well, one very persistent women sat her down on a bed in the middle of this market and took out a piece of thread and started plucking her leg hair out with thread. The process took an hour and a half and still wasn't perfect, but it was quite painful for Molly. The woman acted like she had never had anyone who had been as much work as Molly. This has been a trip of a lot of firsts for Molly. She also bought her first pair of high heels which she needed for salsa class.
It actually turned out that we had plenty of time to make it to the airport, our driver didn't let the traffic slow him down and we were there over an hour before our flight. Our plane was a huge Boeing 777 and it had a camera on the front of the plane so we could see the take off and landing. The coolest thing was seeing the stars outside and flying through the clouds. We arrived in HCMC around 9:00. We tried to find a place for dinner, but everything was closed, so we headed back to the trip.
I spent our last day in Ho Chi Minh City by myself. I didn't have much Vietnamese Dong left, but I wasn't planning on spending much money today, so I didn't bother exchanging money or going to an ATM. That turned out to be a good decision because anywhere I needed to pay in dollars, they just gave me change in Dong if change was warranted.
My plan for the day was to pick up a few last minute gifts and then find a place to get a hair cut and mani/pedi. I stopped at a cafe to get oriented and had an ice coffee while reading my Lonely Planet and map and then headed off to finish up my shopping. The few gifts turned into many, so I was laden with bags. Some items like my knock off Lonely Planet books for China and Japan were far from light. After wandering through the Ben Thanh Market for awhile which as the Lonely Planet says the slogan "If we don't have it, you don't need it" applies, I had all the gifts, toiletries, and additional clothing items I needed and had almost too much to carry.
I really wanted to find a hot pot restaurant, so I wandered in the direction of the salon I was trying to find and the Post Office which I needed to visit and looked for a restaurant. I didn't find a restaurant, but it didn't take me long to find a nice looking salon. I figured I could go in for a quick hair cut and then they could direct me to a good restaurant for lunch. It was already 1:15, so in my book it was past lunch time already, but I figured I could wait for a bit. I should have known from my 2 hour facial yesterday that you don't just quickly drop by a spa in Vietnam, it's a process. I went in and asked how much a hair cut was and they brought me a price card.
I was incredulous that a shampoo was more than a haircut, but they told me that it involved more than just getting your hair washed, so I decided to splurge the extra $4 for a shampoo, and I'm sure glad I did. I sat down in the hairdresser's chair and they first brought me a glass of cold green tea. Then they wheeled up another chair with a dish of water for me to soak my hand and another dish of water to soak my feet while one woman began to give me a head massage. My head massage turned into over an hour complete upper body, arm, and hand massage while another woman gave me the manicure and pedicure while I took a nap since I had had a short night of sleep. After she was done with the massage she wrapped a towel around my shoulders and brought out a bottle of watered down shampoo which she poured on my head and shampooed me right there. I forgot to mention how hot it was that day. I had been dripping in sweat when I entered, but it didn't take long to cool down and dry off while I was being pampered. After my mani and pedi were all done except for the polish I went to pick out colors and then headed to a chair in the back that reclined into a full bed and laid down to get my head rinsed. They propped up my feet and put a plastic collar around my shoulders to keep me dry. I actually didn't even know what was going on, but apparently in that time my nails had been painted and I also got my face washed and some more head massage.
Once I was all rinsed off and massaged, I went back to the chair where they refilled my glass of tea and a guy came over and started combing out my tangled locks while the nails lady put the last clear coat on my french manicure and the massage lady combed out the other side of my head. At this point I had 3 Vietnamese people taking care of me, it was unlike any experience I've ever had. This would probably cost about $180 in the US and I had this entire 2 1/2 experience for $11. The greatest thing was that as I was getting my hair blow dried and styled I was watching the crazy monsoon rain storm that had been going on since shortly after I entered the salon. I didn't get out of there until 3:45 and it was still raining, so the woman who had been done my shampoo and helped with the hair cut got an umbrella and walked me across the street to a cafe. I had tried asking where a hot pot restaurant was, but the only thing they understood was restaurant, and that was after asking 4 different people in the salon.
The cafe was pretty expensive and definitely didn't have hot pot, but it was a nice place to eat spring rolls and drink grapefruit juice and coffee while writing postcards. I had one last gift that I wanted to get which was those Vietnam style hackie sack type things that are like a shuttle cock - I saw a little stand on my way to the Post Office and bought all 12, so I have stocking stuffers for all of my cousins.
I walked back to the shuttle bus and had to wait about 30 minutes for the next one, and finally got back to the ship to drop off my stuff and had 10 minutes before hopping the next shuttle back into the city for dinner. I saw a hot pot restaurant on our way into the center. I walked all the way back there and found that it wasn't what I thought it was, so I kept looking. The restaurant I finally ended up going in said "Saigon something" and when I got inside saw that that something was Indian. Oh well, I was already in, so I quickly ordered my favorite Indian cuisine - very weird to be doing in Vietnam, and quickly ate and was back to the bus and on the ship by 7:00 - 2 hours before on ship time.
When Jason and Chris were back on we did a quick video on the new suits that everyone bought and I modeled my new knock off backpack. We had a party at 9:30 to meet the new ethno-musicology teacher who is replacing Mitch who is still recovering from his recent heart attack in a hospital in Thailand and won't be coming back to the voyage. I stayed up way too late and then headed off to bed.