#even though the embassy is only 25 min away from me!

[cinematicnomad]

i finally got my passport back WITH my ghanaian visa!! my upcoming trip to ghana and nigeria officially feels REAL! 

[haggertyadventuretime]

Good morning, Vietnam!

Actually, it’s night time for us here, but the rest of y’all are just waking up, so hello!

(TL;DR: Vietnam is beautiful and crazy, the museums are eye opening and depressing, and some crazy shit has happened to us already and this post will slightly scare at least one mom... Sorry mums and dads! We are ok and loving it!)

Today is our third full day in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon). Definitely the sketchiest place I’ve ever been, with the craziest traffic, and we are LOVING IT. No travel book or YouTube video can really prepare you for the onslaught of sounds/tastes/smells/sights that are packed into every square inch of this place. It’s also an area with very high crime, mostly petty theft via motorbike (or motorbike/cyclo gangs luring you into alleyways), so we have not been taking as many pictures like we would like, even though our phones are not the most desirable... We just don’t need to be targeted like other tourists! I am also wearing a face mask for the smog/exhaust while walking around since I had an athsma issue right before we left the US (although it is much better now! Yay!).

In terms of attractions, we have visited the War Remnants Museum, the colonial district, and the former US Embassy where that one famous picture was taken of a chopper evacuating Americans and Southern Vietnamese refugees.

This next part of the blog is going to be a little disturbing, so if you don’t want to re-live the horrors of war for a minute as I discover them, please skip the next full paragraph.

The War Remnants Museum is amazing and devastating. It is a three-story building full of artifacts from the Vietnam War, or as it is referred to here - the War of American Agression. It was heavier than going to Hiroshima for us, especially the exhibits about Agent Orange and ‘ordinance’ aka bombs/mines/grenades. At the entrance of the museum there is a group of individuals who are children (some third generation) of people who were exposed to Agent Orange and were thusly deformed and injured and it is HEART BREAKING. One man who was born without eyes or eye sockets was playing ‘Imagine’ and ‘Let it Be’ on the organ the entire time we were there. There was an exhibit about the photographers (on both sides) who captured the war and died doing so, noting how important it is that journalists keep lawmakers and generals honest about the truths of war. It was refreshing to see how appreciative the Vietnamese people are of those even on the US’ side who captured pictures of atrocities just before they happened. For example, there are several photos of Vietnamese families begging for their lives (children, women, elderly), and often the caption says under the photo, “[the journalist] told the soldiers to not do anything while [the journalist] took the photo, and as [the journalist] walked away, gunfire was heard and the pleading stopped.” There were pictures of people after they had been shot apart by bullets or torn apart by grenades. It was at the site (I’m think? Or a reconstruction of) where a POW torture area was for the Viet Cong, complete with tiger cages and torture devices (and pictures and figures to match). It’s crazy to think that all of this happened not so long ago in this same city, but you can see the scars. You can tell that these are buildings that have been bombed out and rebuilt, the dirt and fire marks are still there. Quite an experience for someone who was taught in middle school (incorrectly) that the US had never lost a war. If anything, we all lost, and people still suffer on both sides. Really, if you are human, is there any side other than that of the living?

OK, end of the super heavy stuff!

Food here is amazing. We have pho (beef broth noodle soup, about $3 each with vietnamese coffee [extra thick coffee with condensed milk]) every morning for breakfast, 50 cent beers and water bottles to drink, and 75 cent bahn mi (skewered minced beef sandwiches) as a snack. We had a full-on feast last night with a friend of a friend who had recently moved here (Meredith) who is also an IC alum and former Ithaca bartender. She gave us lots of great tips about getting around and out of the city and how to haggle effectively, not that I have had any problem with that 😼. It’s part of the culture, and even if it’s just a matter of a few cents, you are participating in the game, and you may get a few laughs and more respect as well as a better deal in return.

We are definitely staying alert as we walk around the city. Taking cyclos/unlicensed motorbikes is inadvisable, as many are just scams to take you to a back alley and rob you. It rains often and unexpectedly, and on our first night we had to turn back during a walk because the streets were flooded over a foot high. That night, funny enough, as we were wading, I felt something on my leg, and it was a GIANT cockroach (I’m talking over an inch long), which I flicked off and it subsequentially SWAM AWAY. The Vietnamese people are tougher than us, they just wade through the water in their flip flops. I have yet to see any Vietnamese person in anything other than flip flops or thin flats, including construction workers. I lied, the trash guy working the street today was wearing rain boots. That’s it. There are also lots of exposed wires on telephone poles, although I’m not convinced that they are active rather than just being old and been replaced by covered wires with the old ones never removed. Either way, we warn each other every turn as we approach those at our height.

We took a stroll through the catacomb-like alleyways today looking for a new cheap/slightly sleazy spot to squat and drink (DURING THE DAY, MOM. Ok? We were being careful as well as curious) and saw what it is that I’m sure other tourists don’t realize some of the people live in... Apartments that are one room for many people, only four or five feet between the floor and the ceiling, just a cot on the floor and all kitchen supplies stacked around with no running water source that I could see. I’ve never witnessed this type of abject poverty, and I’m astounded that people can still be so kind to strangers from another country like we have experienced thus far despite where we are from. The Vietnamese are truly an amazing and tough people. That being said, we have to stay on our guard everywhere we go, because we obviously stick out from a crowd. We are definitely not the only westerners staying here though, this is the backpacker’s district, so once you hit the main road, it’s white people, Chinese tourists, and Vietnamese street vendors hawking knockoff Ray Bans everywhere you look!

Finally, I will leave you with a list of the craziest things that have happened to us thus far/weirdest stuff I’ve seen in our first few days of Vietnam: We took a 25 cent bus ride for 30 mins from the airport to our hotel, when all other foreigners were taking $15 flat fee busses to the same area (being the only westerners on the bus= winning!); On the 5 min walk from our bus top to the hotel we were propositioned for marijuana three times by roaming cigarette vendors; An old lady punched me in the butt yesterday to get me to move out of her way (she was hunched over, so it was in line with her hand, and she was probably about 200 years old, so I don’t blame her); We made friends with a Canadien named Brock who was “robbed” two days ago in Hoi An by a motorbike gang because he was dumb and didn’t have a fake wallet like we do; We keep on watching creepy middle aged Australian men hit on teenage waitresses when there are hookers LITERALLY EVERYWHERE in all of the massage parlors, but today we watched one shopkeeper’s dogs bark at this one guy who was hitting on the daughter till creepy dude shut up (yay!); In the same place met a very affectionate (and tiny!) cat who has doggy sisters that chase her into her ceiling bedroom; Last night a drunk person wandered into our hotel and must have tried to open our door, because we heard drunken stammering and our (obviously locked) doorknob wiggle, so Brendan and I, decked only in underpants, listened to the hotel manager calmly tell the guy to leave, while we (ears pressed on the other side of the door) were ready with empty beer bottles and a shoe ready for a fight (as if we needed it/would be ready for it... we must have been quite the sight if you saw us!😹)...

Despite the negatives/craziness, we are loving it here, but cannot wait to escape to the countryside soon in the next couple of days! Saigon/HCMC is the craziest of all the cities in Vietnam, or so we are told, so if we love the rough and tumble here, we have been told we will love it everywhere.