Oct.15, 2018 Ho Chi Minh City (Phu My) Vietnam

We were up at 7a.m. to get ready to go on our individual excursions. Annie was going on an 8 hour trip to Saigon and i chose a 6 hour visit to Ho Chi Minh aka Phu My.
This area seems a lot cleaner with less litter around than Nha Trang but still a very poor city. The tour guide was very good with his English and the bus driver was an excellent driver. We were on a 6 lane highway for the first 10 miles or so; there were 3 lanes marked on each side of the road but quite often there were 5 lanes of traffic on each side with the 2 extra lanes being on the lane lines! It seemed bizarre at first but it worked. It looked to me like it may have started because of the vehicles attempting to merge into the next lane and then being kind of stuck on the line for awhile unable to go either left or right because it's bumper to bumper. So you drive on the lines and it becomes another lane.  During the trip today as well as yesterday in Nha Trang i didn't see any accidents or dead animals on the roadside. These people sure know how to drive with zillions of trucks and scooters and bikes galore all travelling so fast but easily and they cut in and pass with mere inches in between. There was only once when we almost rear ended a truck. We were about 1/4” away from it. It made me aware that i drive like a little old lady merging only when necessary to exit while these people use every inch of the road, back and forth to each lane even though they’re not planning to exit. I guess they value their time more than i do as it did seem that they made more headway. In a few areas the motorbikes, scooters and other types of bikes drove on an outside lane that had a barrier between the road and as well each lane was supposed to be for certain weights of vehicles but i don’t think many followed the rules. In all the travels today i saw only one police car, no accidents or ambulances.

I was told yesterday when i asked the guide why so many people wear mouth/nose masks and he said it’s only the women who wear them and it’s to prevent sunburn and windburn and to prevent wrinkles. I kinda figured that was bs because just about all the people driving a bike wore them, both men and women. Today’s guide said it’s because of pollution and lung cancer. I thought probably also to prevent bugs from hitting them in the face. No helmets here and no law that prevents children from riding either nor is there a limit as to how many people can ride on one bike. I saw 4 people on one bike and others said they had seen a family of 2 adults and 4 kids on a bike or scooter. I saw a young woman driver with a very relaxed grandma holding a small baby with one arm and her other arm relaxed by her side. Anyone can drive here, there’s no testing to get a drivers license.

We drove on out into the countryside and stopped to see a few workers working in a rice field. I had seen terraced rice planting’s that looked so beautiful in the travel brochure but on this tour we saw only flat fields. The terraced rice planting’s was a sight that i’d seen years ago in China and had been looking forward to seeing again as it's one of my favourite memories. The guide talked about the different types of rice and the different qualities. He mentioned Jasmine scented rice and that’s the kind i’ve always liked the best and i’d eat it every day if i could. He spoke of sticky rice and i hadn’t known it was actually a variety. I thought it was sticky because of a different method of cooking it. Nearby was a dense area of latex trees. He explained how the latex is harvested from the trees at a certain time of year only on the trees of a certain age. Those trees are then cut down and new ones planted. The latex is used to make tires amongst other things.

We then stopped at a family’s home to see how they live. This family must be quite wealthy as there house sort of went on and on and their property was quite large as well. They had several dogs, cats, birds in cages and a rooster. There may have been more that i didn’t see. The home owner was a retired military man. Knowing nothing about the military i hesitate to say this but i think i heard that he was something like a three star general during the Vietnam war. He was very friendly and kind and he seemed to enjoy showing his home. I didn’t hear if there was a wife or children or anyone else living there with him but did observe a sewing machine, a kids corner with Barbie dolls and very large cooking vessels so i presume the whole extended family lives there.

It was a relief to be able to use his bathroom which in Vietnam is called “the happy room” it was a separate building near the main house and there were several other buildings as well. Unfortunately no toilet paper but that’s what i’ve noticed in many happy rooms here. The toilet did flush all right but some of the others we’ve encountered didn’t flush. Sometimes there were a couple buckets of water nearby which i presume could have meant you were to pour enough into the bowl to make it flush. But nobody did that as everyone thought perhaps the owner was to do that........awkward.......!
We stopped at a temple with a beautiful, very large golden Buddha. It was a place of worship which meant you had to slip off your shoes before entering. There were no chairs or any place to sit to put them back on afterwards. I had a heck of a time getting mine back on not to mention how walking barefoot is difficult for a lot of seniors but we were all respectful. All around was lovely and clean with beautifully manicured trees and many buildings that i didn’t get near enough to but a lady who did said each building had a name painted on it and she thought it was for the monks. The trees were beautiful here and the sky was full of dragonflies which i thought was a good omen. The property did have a very nice serene feel to it.

We then drove on and stopped at the Cho Long Thanh Market. This market was very different from the one yesterday. This one was very clean and the sellers had a lot of textiles to sell. Anyone into fabrics would have had a field day as they had gorgeous displays of what i thought looked like very good quality fabrics. There were many sellers selling clothing, both adult and children’s wear, shoes, purses and luggage, dolls and other toys, cookware, dishes, fruits, vegetables and dry packaged foods. I didn’t see or smell anything awful like in the morning market yesterday in Nah Trang.
And then .....BINGO.......i found what i was looking for......paper goods......i’m a collector of paper things and it matters not the quality of the paper. In fact i love even the lowest quality of paper and have actually saved bits of toilet paper on my travels, as well as things like paper napkins, tissues, old maps and newspapers, scraps of flyers etc. A very elderly lady was looking after this stall and she was most interested in selling me some coconuts and other fruits which i had to turn down because they’re not allowed to be brought onto the ship.

I'm so glad i lingered at her stall and the first things i spotted was fake money in packets, small paper booklets with each page the same design and the more i dug the more variety i came up with. I also ended up buying two large pkgs of a variety of patterned tissue paper, more fake money (i don’t know why but it was my last chance to get some Vietnamese paper) I found a slab of small papers each with a gold square on it, a colouring book or two and i can’t remember what all and it’s already packed away carefully. Total price of my haul was $7. U.S. by the time i finished sorting out what i wanted to purchase. Suddenly there was the woman’s grandchildren (or whatever, i don’t know, they didn’t speak English)
I think they had been notified somehow that a sale was going down and to come immediately to make sure grandma got the correct price. The bill i offered was a $200,000. Vietnamese bill which is equal to about $10. and when the young ones started digging out money to give me my change i waved them off because i felt that i got a super good buy for $10.and i was happy with that. Then grandma smiled and laughed and the young ones did too and so did i and all of us were happy. It was awesome to finally find some paper to buy as it evaded me in Japan and everywhere else i’ve been in the last 28 days so a win/win for all. I’ll treasure my collection of misc. paper and these memories of Vietnam and these gentle people forever. I got out to the bus just in time. I wasn’t last; i was the second to last one onboard lol!

The return trip to the ship was uneventful except for a sudden, out of the blue downpouring of rain. There was not a hint of it happening, it just suddenly poured out and most of the bike riders stopped by the road and were putting on their rain gear. Who knew they carried their rain gear even when it certainly didn’t look or feel like it was going to rain. Soon it stopped and very quickly it was sunny and hot and dry once again.
The guide showed us a map of Vietnam and it looked so small and narrow. He said the population was 95 million. I just about fell over because Canada is so huge but our population is only 33 million.

We then stopped at an outdoor restaurant where we could order one free drink each of either beer, pop or coconut. I chose the coconut and it was delicious and served in the coconut with a hole in the top with a twirly straw and long handled spoon to scrape out the coconut meat.

I forget if i’ve mentioned the fact that NCL has banned straws on all their ships and they’ve been incredibly missed by many people. I guess there’s a lot of plastic straws in the ocean killing sea life. Now, i’m ok with saving the world but they still serve water and other soft drinks and fruit juice in plastic cups. Got to wonder where all those plastic cups go. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
In any case i prefer a straw to drink with and so my coconut milk was a real treat.

We arrived back at the ship at 2:30p.m. and after a bit of a rest and freshening up it was time for dinner where i found Sujata, the lady from India with all the problems and i sat at her table along with two ladies from LA. Sujata's son was not able to board the ship here in Vietnam but she couldn’t explain why not. First he was supposed to get on in Hong Kong and for some reason he couldn’t and then it was Vietnam where he still wasn’t allowed to board. There’s something really wrong with this whole scenario and now Sujata has talked to a lot of passengers who all feel sorry for her and wish they could help but nobody really knows why it’s happening. Everyone agrees that we should all talk with the customer service people and write more notes to Steven the cruise director too. Everyone who already have written to 'Dear Steven" had chocolate covered strawberries and other treats sent to our rooms but no word if he’s doing anything for her or not. It’s possible that he is working on it but geeze, it’s been 10 days now that she’s been cruising alone even though she paid the fare for her son too.
Aww well, none of my business i guess but it’s so sad and now to top it off Sujata is feeling down and is coughing with a bad cold and she was crying the last time i saw her. She left in a hurry and i didn’t have time to tell her there’s a hospital with a Dr. onboard......but horror of horrors, maybe she didn’t buy medical insurance. I don’t know what to do for her or how to do anything more to help her out. It's the saddest encounter i've ever had on a cruise ship.