Next stop: Nha Trang. This is a beach resort type of town. The beach is nice and the water is quite clear, but we can’t get beyond the fact that so much trash ends up in the ocean. We have seen this everywhere from Halong Bay to the small fishing villages all along the coast. It is such a shame to see such beautiful crystal clear water and continually you are dodging plastic bags and whatnot. We were drinking beer at a sidewalk vendor one night and met a couple Vietnamese that were very friendly. We talked to them for a long time. They were cyclo drivers. (which is a common form of a taxi here. It is like a wheelchair attached to the front of a bicycle.) We drank with them for hours and they took us to have dinner with them. Chad gave them a break and drove them around on the cyclo. That was funny! We got along with them so well that we decided to go around town on a motorbike tour with them the next day. We didn’t see any awe-inspiring sights, but we still love cruising around like the locals. Now we are in Ho Chi Minh City. Yesterday we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels. They were dug originally by the villagers during the French War in the 50’s and expanded greatly by South Vietnamese Guerrilla’s (VietCong) in the 60’s. In all, it is a network of tunnels stretching for about 250 KM’s. They used these tunnels for communication, bomb shelters, hospitals, spying & reconaissance, storing and making weapons, and to launch attacks. Our guide was very informative as he worked as a translator for the US military during the war so could share alot of first hand knowledge. Virtually every Vietnamese we have talked to was personally affected by the war. We have met people from villages who were relocated, people who lost family, people who fought on both sides, and people who were sent to re-education camps after the war. It has been very educational. The day we did the motorbike tour in Ninh Binh was the 34th Anniversary of Chad’s uncles death in the war. While on the tour we visited a Pagoda that was maintained by an older man. We were talking about traditions honoring deceased ancestors, (ancestor worship is a huge part of the culture here: when they pray, they pray to their ancestors not to a god) and we mentioned Chad’s uncle. Our guide relayed this to the older man (who didn’t speak English) and it turned out he fought for the North Vietnamese Army in the same area, at the same time. It was an eerie feeling to say the least. He was very kind and hospitable to us before and even more so after we shared that. Even though people from the North refer to the war as the American war, no one seemed to hold any hard feelings towards us when we told them we were Americans. In fact we saw a few people wearing US Army paraphenalia that was clearly made in Vietnam. As we moved further south people refered to the war as the civil war or the North-South war. Everyone we have talked to here just wants to put the war behind them and look to a better future. The older Vietnamese have suffered through war most of their lives. They fought the Japanese during WWII when they invaded, then they fought the French for independence for nine years, then the Vietnam civil war for 10 years, and then they fought Cambodia for 4 years. All on their own soil, so they just want to see peace. A few final thoughts….. (no really) “It’s a small world after all”. Unbelievably, we have run into a few people that we had met earlier in our trip. In Bangkok we saw a Swiss couple that we had met at a hostel in New Zealand about two months earlier. And in Hoi An, at the post office where we were mailing our new clothes home, we saw a Canadian guy that we had run into a couple of times in Cairns, Australia. At the beginning of our trip we received a couple e-mails asking what we had been eating. You should have held your questions. Our response at the time, being in New Zealand, was an unspectacular toasted sandwiches, sausage rolls, pot pies, and any other cheap food we could get our hands on. A more interesting question now might be…”What are we trying not to eat?” In the North dog is a popular specialty eaten at the end of the lunar month for good luck. We saw heaps of restaurants advertising Thit Cho (aka dogmeat). We quickly learned to avoid those restaurants. Other foods we have seen include…seahorse, cat (which in vietnamese is pronounced meow, pretty funny), rat, snake wine (rice wine with dead snakes floating in it), snake, frog, pig brain, chicken feet, roasted crickets, dried squid, and incubated chicken eggs. Moreover, Vietnam is famous for inventing fish sauce. It is in almost everything here and we liked it, until we learned how it is made. Lets just say ignorance was bliss for us. They fill a barrel with salt and raw fish and let it ferment for two months. They have a tap at the bottom that they extract the fish sauce from, simple as that. yum. In Hue, we decided to try a restaurant without an English menu. We were aware of the risks so we ordered chicken, which we recognized from our phrasebook, thinking we were safe. Unfortunately we did not recognize the chicken as well as we recognized the word. It was white and looked more like squid, so after poking at it for a few minutes and wondering if he brought the wrong thing we asked the waiter if it was chicken. He said yes and pointed to his leg. Our best guess was that it was uncooked chicken tendons, ligaments, skin, or something unfamiliar to us that originated from the leg of a chicken. We have learned to order more wisely and for the most part we have loved the food here. Well, you made it, you are at the end. We leave Saigon tomorrow morning to spend 3 days in the Mekong Delta and then continue up the river to Cambodia.

Tam Biet,

Chad & Heidi