Vietnam for Spring Break

Warning! Warning! This post is very long. Lots of pictures. Make sure you are well rested and caffeinated before reading this post. One can make a travelog only so exciting. Although one will try. 

We Went to Vietnam. The end.

Just kidding (About it being the end, not about going to Vietnam). Although the above picture was taken in Ho Chi Minh (aka Saigon), it does look like it could be almost any big city in the world.  

We had by FAR the best tour we've ever had in any of our visits (Bali, Indonesia, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia are the other places we've taken tours). Learned a ton about Vietnam culture, history and local views.  Apparently there's still quite a bit of resentment in South Vietnam towards the "Government" in the north (Hanoi) while in the south, quite a bit of fondness towards the Americans. Our tour guide's father fought in the American Army during the war, so he was a bit biased to be sure.  Most of the people in Ho Chi Minh (named after the communist leader) still call it Saigon.

Vietnam borders China, and depends quite a bit on China Trade. Turns out the people aren't overly fond of the overbearing Chinese, but the government is quite accommodating to anything the Chinese  government wants.  

Vietnam came to be when the original small country Vietnam conquered it's neighboring countries all down the coast. This resulted in a few different groups of cultures in Vietnam, including the central highlands (nomadic people, this is where all the Gong's are used it sounds like), the Mekong Delta (used to be part of Cambodia). A large % of the rice grown in Vietnam comes from the Mekong Delta. 

Here's a close up of the Mekong Delta. Something like 50,000 Kilometers of water ways criss/cross Vietnam, a lot of that in the Mekong Delta region.  In the rest of Vietnam they grow 2 crops of rice per year, here they can grow 3 crops of rice.  They're heavily dependant on the upper and lower Mekong rivers, which flow through China, then Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and finally to Vietnam.  It used to flood yearly, bringing in the silt (fertilizer) and washing away a lot of unwanted salt water coming in from the ocean etc.  China recently built a Dam so their farmers could have more irrigation, which has much reduced the flow. 2015 was the first year with no flooding at all, and many of the Vietnamese farmers lost their crops to Salt water encroachment.  Our tour guide's sister lost about 70% of her crop, her neighbor's lost close to 90%.
Vietnam is the 2nd largest producer of rice in the world (next to Thailand).

Here was a local lunch stop we made.  They have these hammocks set up for anyone to take a nap in. Yes, that means a questionable amount of cleanliness, but who's counting lice right?

Out back of the lunch place they were drying fish.  So appetizing! Only a few flies due to the salt (that's what our guide told us at least).

The kids really liked the hammocks. 

Kate lost a tooth at one of the hotels we stayed at during our tour (it was a 3 day, 2 night tour, both hotels were great, better even than the one we booked ourselves in Saigon).

Here was a waterpark in Saigon we went to. The kids definitely had fun, but it was probably the most ghetto waterpark I've ever seen. At least they were pretty lax with safety and let Brighton and Jace go down the big waterslides by themselves (I was at the bottom to catch them). No way that would be allowed in Singapore. or the US.

The side by side slide was under maintenance for the first while we were there. I could see the guy working on it while I was watching Brighton in one of their kiddie areas.  He was using an Arc welder attached to a  large battery on the Ladder with him. Over a bunch of Chlorinated water.  Safety first! Yes, he was barefoot. 

The tube slide was easy to get stuck on. As Faith recounts.

We went to Kung Fu Panda in Saigon. It was only $20 for 6 tickets, and as long as you didn't mind the Vietnamese subtitles, or the cheese powder covered kettle corn popcorn (yes, salty AND sweet! so lucky), then you were golden. We had a great time, it was fun.

Faith, not looking quite as Angry as Jace.

Here was a daycare with parents picking up their kids. It was pretty chaotic. See the video below.

Everyone wanted to say hi to white kids! my kids just need to learn more manners.
https://youtu.be/6JhAkM8dnHg

They did have some cool architecture, leftover from the French colonization of Indochina before WWII happened.

Here was a view from a tower we hiked in the conservation (land set aside as wetlands). 

Here's a view from the Hotel we stayed at for our last night on the road. It was built on the side of a mountain in Chao Doc I believe (Victoria hotel).

The porter carried our bags down the steps for us. Luckily we only had 2.

This was one of the local markets we visited. It's like wal-mart, but open air, and each person is selling something sort of themed (fruits, veggies, life animals, dead animals, zombie animals).

Here were some live chickens and a few geese.

The kids got to hold some baby chicks, and loved it.

Lots of live animals. Apparently, everyone wants fresh, and wants to know that its fresh.  Also, notice the cheek touching.

 Brighton especially kept giggling, hers would jump down to the ground most often.

 Kate found one with whiter feathers that she really liked.

 This is a lady selling a pig. All of the pig. Including ears (in the upper left) and tail in the lower left (second, next to the ribs).  We at least have the decency to make those parts into a hot dog.  They do use EVERY bit of the animal though, that's for sure.

Jace was super popular with everyone.  They really liked the blond boy.  

Don't get me wrong, everyone else was popular too, but I don't know how many people touched Jace's cheeks etc.

They have a tradition of burning offerings to ancestors. If you look closely, you'll see that this "offering" has adidas sandals, an Iphone 6+, a wallet with US dollars etc.

Jace holding a stack of "money" to be used as an offering

Much of the Vietnamese way of life is centered around water. The rice paddies are dependant on the river and rain, much of their diet comes from the river or ocean.  We traveled around a "floating village". A Bunch of homes that were built on plastic oil barrels. Most of them raise fish underneath their houses. This particular house had close to 100,000 fish underneath it (they keep wire nets underneath to keep the fish in). They lose 10-20% or so during the raising process.  Watching them be fed is quite the experience. Let me tell you, I would not want to accidently fall in. I think that would be something not survivable as a whole person.

I thought this was a fun picture.Everyone should have one over their mantle. 

They were breading these to very large fish.  

Yes, Suzy went native.  She is still in Vietnam working as a carrier of things.  

Here she is wearing a most alluring hat. 

Did I mention that Faith also went native and accompanies her mom as another carrier of stuff. I will call her porter. Even though that sounds like a boys name.

Uber Cute! And I don't mean as cute as a some random taxi company.

This is Jace, Kung Fu warrior.  He looks like an unassuming young asian boy, but when you least expect it, he throws his hat at you like a giant ninja star and fights the bad guys attempting to do things that are bad. 

Jace and Brighton went for a wild ride with our tour guide (Quang).

Because Kate was wearing Pink, I didn't allow her to stay and porterize.

here are some floating houses.

The houses have motors on the front and back that they have to run at the tide change twice per day or else they move from their spots.

The guide picked some flowers from some plants in the river and passed them out to the girls.

We spent a lot of time on boats, it was pretty fun. Notice that Brighton and I have the same size life jacket. 

Here was a fisherman in his boat.

Jace "reading" a book of poems by Shel Silverstein

This was where we went for lunch, they of course had a few good hammocks the kids could lay in.

Every local meal was quite good, even by my standards. I asked for no Seafood before hand, so they were quite accommodating since that is one of their staples.  They usually had 2-3 kinds of meats each prepared multiple ways, a few veggies and some soup.

Here we are back on the river. This is at the conservation. I just got a drop of water in my eye. pretty sure I'm going to get amebic dysentery, and yes, I horribly misspelled that but spell check came to the rescue. 

The kids loved trying to also partake of the amebic dysentery (I just looked at the above spelling this time, so totally got it right) by putting their hands in the river.

Pictures really don't do it justice. There were tons of birds (you can see some if you zoom in on this picture).

At one point we changed boats to go into another part of the river with these cool spooky trees (See the video above). The poor lady paddling started crying when she saw me coming to her boat.

They have these nested pathways, it looks really cool in the picture, but more so in real life. I'm not one of those picture takers (some people call them photographers I hear) who can take photos that give you the real impression. I blame it on only using a camera phone to take pictures.

The nets were there to try to keep a pathway mostly open.

Back on the big(er) motorized boat

View from the tower of terror that we hiked up (about 5 stories I'd say, and not totally terrifying).

Our next stop was a village famous for their furniture. They are known as the best makers of this type of cabinet which is used as the "worship" spot in the house.  It also has an opening in the side that you can lock where you keep your money and valuables (many people do not trust the banks).  To me that doesn't seem that safe to always have your money in a spot everyone knows how to get to. When we questioned our tour guide, he was a bit surprised and said "well, you wouldn't be able to open it without someone hearing".  I think the base assumption here is that there is rarely a time when someone is not around the house doing something.  A foreign concept to us who travel, go out a lot to another part of town for dinner, etc.

Some examples of the furniture. 

The skill of making the furniture came in a few hundreds of years earlier when queen of Vietnam (the king has 100s of concubines, but only one queen) was from this village.  She brought her whole village to live in the Royal village with her.  They learned from the royal cabinet maker how do make such cabinets (inlaid with mother of pearl) and when she died and they went back to their village, they brought the techniques with them.

This was a cabinet door they were carving out the spots to glue in the mother of pearl.

Highlight of the Trip

So, our tour guide brought us to his family home. This is where he grew up since he was six years old. part of the family business is here as well, it's attached to the local school and they sell drinks to the school kids and provide a place for them to hang out (pool tables, foosball etc)

We took a short motorcycle ride to visit some rice patties from here. This was Jace in his helmet, which he loved.

Suzy and I in our helmets. So dapper. 

All the kids were ready to go.

We felt like true natives, riding two to a scooter with a kid in between.

We went to Quang's brother's house where the kids got to feed some goats. 

Brighton being taught how to get in a hammock by Quang (our tour guide).

Here was his neice, making offering packets that they would sell. They were so gracious to allow us to just waltz into their home to watch them. Their bed (example on the left side of the picture) is made of woven reeds (bamboo maybe?).

See the bags of rice off to the side.

During the dry season, there's no water. They collect the water in these big pots for the 6 months of dryness. The one's with plastic still have water in them (used for drinking). 

On the motorcycle ride, we got to this "bridge" that they got to go across. Brighton and Jace couldn't reach the safety bar so I stayed with them on the other side. You can see the dry rice paddies (the flooding didn't happen like it was supposed to). Too much salt water is killing some of the rice.

Here was a hike in someone's local farm.  They have a big "pond" in the middle. It serves as both an irrigation pond, and a fish hatchery where they raise fish for eating. I was VERY impressed with how inventive everyone was in making use of what was available.

The kids getting out of school, now we're back at Quang's mother's house.

You can see all the boys playing in the hangout area.

Suzy found one of Quang's nephews. Since everyone holds our kids, we felt it was only just that she got her baby fix by holding someone else's

Quang's mom cooked us lunch. His sister made us some sugar cane juice (they grow their own sugar cane, and sell the juice to the school children hanging out).  It was interesting, not my favorite by passable. 

She cooked SOOOO much food, and most of it was very good (Suzy liked all of it).

The floor looking thing behind Suzy is a built in rain water tank. Quang's dad built this house. he was a carpenter and bricklayer and so could do almost everything his self. 

Yes, that's a lot of food. Quang has 8 siblings, so none of it went to waste (he's the youngest). In Vietnamese culture younger siblings are not allowed to use older sibling's names, only numbers. He kept calling his brothers/sisters "Brother number 2, or Sister number 6 etc".  He has some nephews that are older than him, but they still have to call him "Uncle number 10" (They don't use the first digit to call anyone's name because a famous emperor of Vietnam had that as his name).

Seeing how the local people live was truly a highlight of the trip. Getting to see how Quang grew up was eye opening. His father served with the American army (mentioned before) and none of his brothers or sisters were allowed to go to college because of that. His dad and some of his brothers (Two if I remember correctly) escaped to the US. His dad passed away about 20 years prior, but one brother lives in San Jose working as a technician in a Semiconductor company.  One of this other brothers (#3) owns the tour company that we used (water buffalo tours).  Quang spoke very good English, learned from tourism school in college.  He was able to go to University (only one in his family allowed to by the government in Vietnam) when the government rescinded the restrictions on the families of those who served in the war in the early 2000s.

Here we are back on the tour on yet another boat of course.

We landed and got to see this giant snake (Python really).

Kate was Brave, the others were a bit too scared. Faith started to get under the snake, but it's head moved in her direction and she freaked out. It was pretty funny.

Waiting for a ferry (Fairy??) to land

This was 1st hotel we stayed at. Beautiful view of the lit-up bridge in the background. Many of the bridges were recently built (2005-2010), previously only Ferries would get people across. 

After swimming, trying to warm up in the 3 towels we found still available. Even though the hours said until 8, no one was around, and only 3 towels were left.

We had fun regardless.

Here we are heading out (5:30 in the morning!!) to the floating market. 

We liked this boat, it had cool lawn chairs.

This was a remarkable experience. All these sellers of foodstuffs in these boats doing business with others. I guess they start around 4:30 or so, in time for those purchasing to get the food to local markets to resell. The farmers bring their produce on these boats here to the middleperson. 

They have folks who sell coffee on the boat, our tour guide ordered some here.

There weren't hardly any other tourists here. We saw one other family, also with WaterBuffalo Tours.  This tour was very highly recommended, and I see why with so many local experiences. We rarely saw other tourists anywhere we went. No one tried to sell us stuff, much different than Bali.

Floating Market in the background.

We took a short hike through a local riverside community.  These folks planting stuff were pretty amazing.

Cute Brighton

They have these rolled up bits of dirt they plant little seeds in.

This lady came out to take pictures with the wee ones.

7-eleven boat selling some snacks (or toilet paper etc) to this larger boat.

These are the polls they drive into the ground before making a house foundation (since it's riverside sand you're building on).

This was the larger floating market. They advertise what they're selling by putting some of the produce on a pole.

Some piles of produce

Some more floating food.

Walking through a local set of houses.

Here's Quang teaching us a bit of Vietnamese. You've heard that Ma in Chinese can mean multiple things, here you go in Vietnamese: Ghost, Mom, East, Young Rice, Tomb or Grave, Horse

In the early 1900s this guy helped found a Vietnamese religion called Taoism (or Daoism). Our tour guide grew up as this religion, his mom still practices today. What I learned from him I'll try to write below.

This triangle has 3 circles, representing the major religions that Taoism takes from: Buddhist, Hindu and Christianity.  They have Taoist Temples around the world, Some in the US (LA, Chicago etc).

They all look similar, just variations in size.  

Taoism is the 3rd largest religion in Vietnam, #1 is Buddhism, #2 is Catholicism.

There are multiple services throughout the day

Everyone wanted pictures with the Americans.  The white headband means they've lost someone in the last 90 days.

I really liked this part of the tour, in large part because you could tell Kate and Faith were interested and engaged. They talked about seeing the temple and the folks worshiping as one of the highlights of their day.

Who wants a yummy breakfast buffet

Snake!!