The Mekong

I have heard so much about the Mekong River and Delta that I guess that I had created a mythological water paradise.  It was not.  In fact, it turns out that the Mekong is just a really big river.  But, it is pretty cool.

The Mekong Delta is not so much a river but a shallow sea where people are trying to live.  It is just water, water everywhere (and plenty to drink). 

 

 

 

Most patches of dirt between the waters are enough for a house but most houses don’t need dirt at all as they are built on poles over the water.  All houses are built on poles since even if there is dirt beneath sometimes, all it takes is a little rain before that dirt is underwater.

 

Transportation is by boat.  Cars would be pretty useless around here.  The motors here are these really simple yet ingenious contraptions.  By the driver is a simple motor that is attached to a long pole.  On the end of the pole is the propeller and he turns the boat by turning the whole motor.  To go in reverse, you just lift the whole thing out and point it to the front.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For short distances, there are paths and these cool bridges for walking an cycling.  Mostly, they just look really picturesque.

The real reason to see the delta are the floating markets.  Given the lack of land and the abundance of boats, the obvious place to put a market is, of course, on the river.  Basically people fill up their boat with they chosen veggie/meat and sell it there. 

 

Advertising is a matter of sticking what you are selling on a pole.  It seems to work.  This guy is selling pineapple.  Yum.

 

 

 

This was the last stop for Vietnam.  After a month, our visa was about to expire.  As we moved north to south, the people became friendlier (we became less easily offended) and we saw some amazing places.  Vietnam has definitely emerged from its many years of war and really is a wonderful place to visit.  Don’t let those who fought there tell you differently!

Thanks Dalat

Dalat, Vietnam is a mecca of delicious food, wine, and friendly people. We headed up to the mountain town of Dalat with some new friends, Matt and Jill from New York. Together, we had suffered a particularly awful night bus trip and a cramped minibus to Dalat. By the time we arrived, 18 hours later, we were ready for some food and drink.

Fortunately, Dalat helped us out in both those arenas with some of the cheapest wine we’ve ever had – and while certainly not the best, far from the worst, considering the two years we spent drinking cheap boxed wine in Fiji. We also found delicious food including amazing dried fruit and fresh artichokes! We were also able to decompress from our harrowing travels in the hotel’s sauna. What a treat!

In a style very much like Gaudi, Dalat has its own architectural experiment: the Crazy House, which is expanding each day. It certainly was crazy, with twisting staircases, sculptures of a giraffe whose neck you can climb, beautiful tile work,  nooks and crannies to hide in, and plenty of places to get lost. Apparently, you can overnight in the house, and despite the sauna at our hotel, we think we chose the wrong hotel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dalat is set in the beautiful southern mountains of Vietnam, which gave us the perfect excuse to rent a motorbike and drive through the countryside. We found some hiking, a silk factory, waterfalls, and an enormous Happy Buddha, who despite being under construction, still made us chuckle.

Hoi An

Hoi An is a town that history forgot about.  It was always just off the main north-south road in Vietnam so that when the French built the railroad, they went ahead and skipped it.  When the Americans came in, they sort of forgot about it and when the Viet Cong swept south, they didn’t bother with it either.  With no Viet Cong presence American bombing runs skipped Hoi An.  That means that all of the old structures that haven’t fallen down of their own accord are still standing: old buildings, old streets, old bridges.  The whole place just feels old and is rife with history.  And in a feat unseen anywhere else in Vietnam, it is quiet owing to a ban on motorized vehicles in the downtown area.














We walked the streets and popped into 14th century buildings from Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese builders.  We went to one very old house where an amazingly sweet man gave us a tour of the house that has been in his family since who-knows-when, but the house is hundreds of years old.  He was a retired math professor at the university, as was his father and his grandfather.  He son now teaches math there as well and will move into the old house when his father dies.  








An hour’s ride outside Hoi An is an area that unfortunately history did not forget about quite long enough.  The ruins of My Son (mee sun) go back to the 11th century and while they managed to stay hidden through almost a thousand years, they didn’t last the Vietnam War.  Unfortunately, the Viet Cong thought that they made a good base which meant that the US figured it was a good target to bomb.  And bomb they did.  It took a French archaeologist’s appeal to the UN who then appealed to LBJ to please stop bombing historical artifacts.  We stopped, but the damage was done.  What is left is pretty remarkable, but we couldn’t help feeling sad about what lay in ruins.  War sucks.









Most of the statues were clearly of ancient Hindu origin but some of the statuary had interestingly European characteristics.  The mystery of the identity of this handsome man remains unresolved.

North-Central Vietnam

We stayed in a couple of towns on our way south from Halong Bay: Ninh Binh, Hue (Whay).
In Ninh Binh, we took a river boat around yet another landscape from another world. Paddling along the river, we visited beautiful pagodas (temples) seemingly left in the middle of nowhere and rowed through impossibly long caves, all while passing under the limestone mountains that seemed to take in our every move.

Heading south from Ninh Binh, we went to Hue, the old capital of the southern empire going back a few thousand years.  We went there to see the old capital compound because we were told it was impressive.  We were not disappointed. 

The old city is entirely surrounded by a moat and then a wall, stretching 10km.  It can only be accessed via a few bridges.  Once inside that compound, which is itself a fully-functioning city, there is yet another moat and another wall to separate the palace.  Of course, inside that is yet another wall to separate the Forbidden City for the royal family.  Luckily for us, getting in now is just a matter of money.

Unlucky for us (and for the people of Hue), the city sits very near what was once the DMZ and there was heavy fighting here resulting in destruction of a lot of the old capital.  Hue was a major site of the infamous Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong that many site as a major turning point in US public opinion about the war and in the Viet Cong’s ability to mobilize south.  There was still plenty to see of the capital now and the war seems a minor blip on the screen when looking at thousand year-old buildings from a forgotten time.