Vietnam was, in some ways quite a lot like Thailand and, in other ways, very different and, back to back as they were, I can’t help but draw comparisons. My best Vietnam experiences were politically educational while in Thailand my favorite learning experiences were more experiential and focused on nature. Vietnam was a really important opportunity for me to learn about the Vietnam War (which of course in Saigon where we were is called the American War). It came to my attention that the Vietnam War is something a lot of American students think they know about, but don’t. And, in fact, I think that a lot of parents and teachers expect my generation to know a fair amount about it, having gone through it themselves. I came to realize that there was a lot I didn’t know before actually visiting Vietnam.
The other day this girl in my poetry class went on a rant when our professor asked us what we had thought of Vietnam. Preaching to the choir, she complained redundantly and loudly about her lack of preparation for visiting Vietnam, pointing an angry finger at the professors on the ship. It’s true that opportunities to really teach us about our country’s history IN depth were had and missed BUT this girl also needed to take a little responsibility for her ignorance. SO I guess the point is: I learned a lot about the war that I hadn’t known and I think a lot of people on the ship learned a LOT a lot about the war that they didn’t know. Terms had been thrown around in my education: fear of communism, guerilla warfare, Agent Orange, civilian deaths, anti-war activism. So I certainly had a vague outline of the events of the war but many of the war bullet points hadn’t been real to me before. Visiting the Cu Chi tunnels, for example, was the first time the words “guerrilla warfare” became concrete for me. I was able to imagine the desperation and anger of people forced to hide underground for years, cooking only at night. As I squeezed on my hands and knees through the tunnels, which had been enlarged by 40% in order to accommodate tourists, I thought about the creativity and immensely difficult labor it had taken these people to survive, not to mention to fight back. Our guide had an odd approach to the tour. Probably in his 30s his parents had no doubt been alive for the war and he must have been born not long after it ended but he led us through the surreal maze of tunnel entrances, breathing holes, bomb craters, and deadly traps for American soldiers with an amusement that overshadowed any reverence he must have also had. He described the ways in which American general Westmoreland had tried to coax the Vietnamese out of the tunnels: smoke, flooding, poison, and almost gleefully explained the reasons that none of these worked.
This leads me to another important series of reflections. In a lot of the lectures meant to prepare us for Vietnam, professors and Vietnamese guest lecturers talked about forgiveness. One person explained that the Vietnamese population is so young that the people literally don’t remember the war. Another talked about Vietnamese pride in having defeated the greatest military power in the world. All of them stressed the importance of tourism and encouraged us to observe the forgiveness. And it’s true that the Vietnamese were extremely nice to all of us. I still can’t quite believe that the war is forgotten and that the injustices inflicted on civilians and soldiers by the US have truly been forgiven but it was really inspirational and encouraging to recognize the progress that Vietnam has seen in the last thirty or so years. With the war in Iraq still unsettled, it gave me a great deal of hope to believe that a war-ravaged country can begin to heal, that US government administrations can change and people (my people who, as I couldn’t help but think about at the War Remnants Museum are STILL torturing prisoners of war illegally) can be forgiven to some extent. It’s hard to express the way I feel about it. I feel like I risk sounding like I believe that the US should be automatically forgiven for the wrongs they inflicted. Believe me I don’t believe that. After walking through prison cells that Vietnamese people were held in and reading the captions on pictures of people who had been exposed to Agent Orange and of people who are still, today, being born with severe birth defects because of what their parents went through at US hands, I don’t mean to celebrate the fact that Vietnam has ostensibly forgiven all. BUT witnessing the extent of the healing that that country has gone through really warmed my heart. And I’ll tell you my heart was pretty sad after visiting the War Remnants Museum which has an entire room devoted to American war crimes.
My time in Vietnam passed strangely. I feel like, in my telling of it, there will probably be gaps. During these gaps, I was shopping and eating and drinking and dancing, I guess. But those weird down-time moments are punctuated with cool experiences too. The first day was the day that I went to the Cu Chi Tunnels. I’ve sort of painted a picture of what that was like. The next day I went to the War Remnants Museum, which I also gave you an idea of. That day I had my first experience of Asian fast food (something I was to become much better acquainted with in China). I went with a few of my new friends (from Thailand, perhaps you remember we ate grasshoppers?) Steve, Hussein, Keith, and Alex to a burger joint called the Jolly Bee. Their Ronald McDonald is a big plastic red and gold-clad bumble bee who eagerly gestured us into the restaurant. The Jolly Bee’s menu offered burgers and fries but also rice and various dumplings. The funniest thing, to me, was the fact that the Jolly Bee was a three story building with seating as high up as the third floor. No elevator. Needless to say, this would NOT fly in the US. While I'm on the subject of nearly Western food, I should mention Tutti Frutti. Tutti Frutti was a frozen yogurt place that was SO much like Pinkberri or Kiwibear. They had more flavors though, including fruit flavors that were unique to Asia. AND you served yourself or, I should say, you softserved yourself. MMM.
The next day Kendyll and Colin and I explored on our own a bit. We went to a beautiful temple to Buddha. It was kind of obscure and didn’t seem like it saw many tourists. I think it was kind of like if someone from Vietnam had come to Portland and sought out Trinity Cathedral as a tourist destination… But we loved looking around and they let us take pictures. There was an enormous bronze colored (I don’t think it was actually bronze) Buddha Sitting in an altar in which the walls had been painted like a blue sky with clouds. In front of the altar area was a table laden down with burning incense, colorful flowers, and fruits and a number of smaller Buddha figures, Bodhisattvas, I think.
After we explored the temple, we headed to the Ho Chi Minh Zoo. The zoo had been described in a folder of possible activities on the ship as something like “derelict but the animals appear to be fed.” That’s my paraphrase. But it was bizarre. It was almost abandoned. There were a few Vietnamese people hanging out, just sitting on benches reading, alone… Apart from us the only other people who seemed to be interested in the animals was a group of about 30 children on a fieldtrip. They were seriously tiny and they swarmed us saying “hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi.” I bet they were ages 3 and 4. They were really cute. We wandered around. We saw a giraffe and hippos and elephants. That’s about all I remember with regard to the animals. The elephant area was cool because this woman was reaching across this narrow moat that kept them in their enclosure and handing them bananas. I got snot-sprayed by one because it wanted me to give it a banana. We spent most of our time wandering around this broken down little carnival in the middle of the zoo. We hijacked little tricycles with little wagons attached to them and pedaled around for awhile. We rode a little train that did a tour of the tiny zoo. We posed next to the garbage cans which were shaped like penguins with their mouths open to receive people’s trash.
So that was Vietnam in a nutshell.
8. China
Hong Kong: When I woke up the morning of our arrival in Hong Kong I was blown away. Looking out the window from the dining hall I felt like I was in a gigantic, extensive Millennium Park (like in Chicago). When I got off the ship, my wonderful friend Mark, from Pomona, was waiting for me! He’s spending the entire semester (and maybe summer!) in Hong Kong so he and his friend Meredith from the Hong Kong program were all set to show me and a few of Meredith’s friends who were on the ship with me around. Along with Hannah, Kendra, Braxton, and Riley (from Semester at Sea) we walked around for a bit and eventually sat down to Dim Sum with Ada, a Chinese friend of Mark’s and her mom. Ada and her mom ordered dish after dish for us. It was fantastic and such a wonderful way to kick off China. There were various dishes with pork and shrimp in different stages of mashed-ness, dumplings in soups, dumplings out of soups, vegetables, rices, chicken (all with difficult bones, but delicious if you could chopstick your way around it). Ada and her mother taught us to constantly refill the teacups of those older than you and that, if someone older than you refilled your cup, you should use the knuckles of your first two fingers to tap the table, symbolizing kneeling to them in thanks. Desert sent me into the oddest flashback. We ate this sweet tofu soup for desert. I had had it before when we ate authentic Chinese food with one of dad’s coworkers a looooong time ago and he had been obsessed with telling me it was just like ice cream… I remember thinking, even though I was really young that, as good as the tofu soup was, it was pretty much the antithesis of ice cream: it was tofu, so it was creamless, and it was warm, rather than iced. But it tasted delicious, anyway.
After Dim Sum, Ada and her mother offered to show us where they lived. They lived in the tiniest apartment I have ever seen. It was barely bigger than the apartment Maura had in Manhattan, and that had been a walk-up shared by two young college aged people. Ada’s home housed herself, her sister, her two parents and a Taiwanese maid. I’ve seen closets the size of the master bedroom. That said, it was immaculately tidy, extremely efficient in its use of space, and characterized by the warmest, brightest colors. They had a really nice view of Hong Kong (they were on a 20 somethingth floor). More than all the people jostling me in the street, seeing Ada’s home really demonstrated the immensity and the density of the Chinese population.
After our time with Ada and her mother, Mark took me to his apartment and let me use his computer to briefly videochat with Robbie. It is so incredible to me that I could see and hear Robbie SO clearly when I was in Hong Kong and he was in Edinburgh. It was really good to see/hear him.
That night, our group headed to… oh I forget what it’s called. The Peak! That’s it. We took a trolley-style gondola thing up to the top of a big hill that had the most stunning views of Hong Kong at night. At first, we had hoped to eat in the restaurant at the top of this giant building at the top of the hill. That restaurant, however, had turned out to be a Bubba Gump. 1. Bubba Gump is not very good and 2. it turns out it’s really expensive in Hong Kong at least! So instead we went to… Burger King. We enjoyed Whoppers and took in the beautiful city. From there we headed to the big night life street. There was a huge celebration going on, even though it was a Sunday, because Hong Kong had been hosting a Rugby event. There were men and women in ludicrous costumes. We managed to grab this one guy for a picture. He was wearing a catholic school girl outfit with a cowboy hat and had naughty underwear sticking out above his plaid skirt. His name was Ian and he was from Ireland. By this point, Mark and I had met up with my grasshopper friends: Steve, Keith, Hussein, Disha, and Lia. We decided it would be fun to go dancing at a gay bar and that is what we did. It went quite well.
The next day, I reunited with my friends Ali and Colin. Along with Mark, we set off to see the 10,000 Buddhas. The 10,000 Buddhas is a hill covered in Buddhas… We walked up a path lined, on either side, with Golden life-sized Buddhas, each with distinct features and a different pose. The path came to a big temple at the top with thousands of tiny golden Buddha statues lining the walls. We ate a little at the top in a little guest restaurant that had “Fried Jew’s Ear” on the menu (we later learned that the word for pork in Chinese is “Zhou” which is pronounced a lot like the word “Jew” and that was probably where the error came from). We did not order the “Fried Jew’s Ear.” And then we descended. We spent the last little bit of our time in Hong Kong exploring the Shoe Street where fifty gagillion little stores sold all the coolest high tops from Nike and Rebok and Adidas.. And I think they were all real, actually, I’m not kidding. So I didn’t buy anything because it was quite expensive.
Mark was the most excellent host. He led us around like a committed tour guide and really shaped our experience of Hong Kong in SUCH a good way. So here’s a shout out to Mark: Thank you! You were so good to me!
In transit: It bears mentioning that Ali and I opted to take the ship from Hong Kong to Shanghai. We were allowed to travel the distance off the ship by train or plane if we chose, but, in the interest of saving money, we hopped back on the MV Explorer and had the most relaxing two-day trip ever. We camped out in my room. The first day, we slept in, waking up just in time for lunch and then got back in bed immediately after lunch. We stayed in bed the rest of the day and watched probably 10 hours of TV and movies (10 hours is a conservative estimate). Dinner was wonderful. Because only 100 people stayed onboard (out of 700) it was a formal and fun event. We ordered off of a menu (usually it’s buffet) and were served free wine (usually we have to pay for wine) and the food quality was really stepped up. The next day we woke up just in time for our free 15 minute massages at the ship spa and then, following the massages, went BACK to sleep. You get the idea I think. It felt great to catch up on sleep before Shanghai.
Shanghai: I was sad in Shanghai not to have someone like Mark to tell me what to do. OH WAIT: Mark sent me a super detailed email about all the stuff to do in Shanghai. He is soooo nice. So the first day my friends Colin, Ali, and Heather and I headed out to explore. We quickly located a Starbucks only to learn that they did not serve chai there. After a terrible experiment with a green tea latte, I tried a local coffee place and had my first actual Asian bubble tea! It was delicious. The big event of our first day in Shanghai was this wacky meal we had. We stumbled upon this place called “O My Dollar.” Contrary to the assumptions one might make upon hearing/reading that name, it was pretty fancy and really cool. The food was served raw and we were given little pots and flames to cook it on. The pots were full of a pre-composed soup and were complemented by dipping sauces we assembled ourselves as well. I have so much to tell you right now I don’t even know what order to do it in. First of all, the pre-designed soups had hilarious names. I ordered the “Frygyrant Beer Pot” and there was also a “Frogrant Carb Pot.” Colin selected the best menu item of all, however, the “Bovine Pizzle and Chicken Pot.” The menu also offered up a number of meatball dishes with unfortunate names like “Funny Balls” and “Play Balls” (in both cases, that is all that the menu said….). We had a great time ordering and laughing. Our waitress had to help us a LOT in her very limited English because the process was so confusing. We ordered our pots plus Wontons, Dumplings, beef, and broccoli, all of which came raw. We dumped the raw stuff into the pots and waited for it to cook so that we could eat it with rice and our dipping sauces. The dipping sauce ingredients also had weird names. For example, I opted out of the bowl full of white powder marked “MSG” as well as the brown sauce labeled “One Fresh Goods.” And we thought “Fried Jew’s Ears” was bad…
After a fun-filled lunch, we went to the art museum, which was really cool. There was only one exhibit on display but it was free for students so that was nice. That night, however, came the best adventure of all! We went to Karaoke. In Asia, karaoke is not something you do in front of a bunch of strangers in a bar or at a party. It’s something you do in a private room with a group of friends. We went to this place spelled “Haoledi” but called “Holiday.” It was a maze of private rooms on the tenth floor of a building downtown. There was a little store where you could buy snacks and drinks and the music from the rooms played in the hallways. Ali, Colin, Heather, and I were joined by our friend Tim and this boy Briton who had sat with us at dinner… We all thought he was a friend of Tim’s but, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure Tim thought he was a friend of ours. We sang such classics as “Shut up and Drive,” “Ghostbusters,” “Like a Virgin,” “Sexyback,” “Superstar,” “Mama Mia,” “Oops I Did it Again,” etc. We had a BLAST. And then we went to McDonald’s…
The next day we did a bit of shopping and explored the oldest street in Shanghai (I forget what it’s called). That’s about it.
China is really cool. I would really like to go back someday.
UP NEXT: Kobe, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Yokohama!
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