Ho Chi Minh City: I've spent the last day and 1/2 wandering in and out of cafes and parks and being a general bum, but this is about my first day. It begins on the overnight train from Hoi An. At 2 a.m. when I woke up itching - bed bugs. It's amazing to be attacked so hard and so thoroughly by things so very small (I couldn't even see them).
4:30 a.m. Arrival in HCMC, formerly (and still on many shop signs and t-shirts) Saigon. Train announcement introducing the city includes something about 'Anti-American Day'; I think it's on March 19th. (mind, when I talk to Vietnamese people they all say some version of - oh, you're American; I love America; my brother is in California).
5:00 a.m. On the road with all the backpacker's delights, having coffee in a bar still open with a few very drunk pathetic young tourists (It's my blog, I can be slightly mean and condescending if I want to).
7:30 a.m. Showered and out the door to the Reunification Palace, formerly the home of the South Vietnamese President before 1975. My lovely English-speaking guide talked to me about how wonderful is the American-Vietnamese relationship now; mentioned Bush's recent visit; told me to forget various factors of 'American imperialist aggression' as she pointed them out; and spoke a bit about how rude Koreans are (forgive me Donna, I didn't quite know how to correct her) - NB Korea is the number #1 investor in Vietnam.
10:00 a.m. War Remnants Museum. Interesting to note that many of the pictures on display were taken by an American source, LIFE magazine. I was disappointed in the content and quality of the museum as a whole, which I can say now that there's not a museum official standing next to me (this relates to the interview I'll mention soon). But I was also feeling grumpy because the museum - hence my impression of the government - does not acknowledge the North-South dimension of the war. It is strictly portrayed as a war of defense against American attack. Not that I want to defend America's foreign policy at that time...and oh my, where's my friendly, tourist brochure blog headed now... but portraying the people of the South as mere puppets is degrading and I think does nothing for national reconciliation, which I think is still a relevant issue. Obviously I think this because I'm a peacenik; but also because during my short time here (maybe because I'm American?) people have resentfully - and yet quietly - told me that the North has been the equivalent of carpetbaggers after the American Civil War. Then there are moments like when the former English and French teacher (which fab pronounciation in both languages, I might add) told me she can't get a job because her husband was one of the boat people - and then she says, shhh don't tell or she'll go to jail. I asked for clarification - even now? "Even now." Maybe I should hope she's mentally ill. I can do that because she was trying to sell me postcards, right? ANYWAY. Because of the spillover hype from Bush's visit, there was a guy interviewing Americans visiting the museum. Look out for me on Japanese television!
1:00 p.m. Lunch at Pho 24, a hip chain serving various types of pho = noodle soup.
1:45 p.m. HCMC museum where I didn't have to buy a ticket because it was wedding picture day. I watched women take pics in a Western white bridal gown then visited an exhibit of traditional Vietnamese wedding attire (yes, I'm pointing out a contrast).
That's it. Hot part of day fades into coffee and just wandering. I will note that the parks both here and in Hanoi are fabulous early morning and early evening - filled with people doing all sorts of exercise. Tai chi is a favorite. I like this flying hackey-sack type game and the (seemingly) married couples playing badmitton. Are you bored with reading this yet? Post and tell me to shut up! hehe. I changed the settings so anyone can post now - without having an account (I think). Oh, and even HCMC has a Louisiana cuisine restaurant ('Bourbon Street')! I somehow passed up cajun chicken though and went out for spring rolls.

Randoms and Loose Ends: Lest you think Laos is all serene beauty and pious Buddhism, let me add that the festival in Vientiane (see first posts) included the likes of a ferris wheel and a pop concert of Eurovision quality. * The dragonflies in Thailand and Laos are red; in Vietnam they seem yellow; (in Louisiana they are green). * Yes, I ate the grasshoppers; actually, I represented America very well, as the guide handed two more to me after the German and the Dutchman turned them down (and this was significant as I was the first American to do this guy's trekk, and before I signed up I was given the absurd doubt - "Well, I'm not sure if Americans will like this...the Germans like it because they have mountains." * I have also read The New Rulers of the World by John Pilger. Part of it is about the aborigines in Australia: incredible how poorly they are treated. Not two days after reading about it, there were some Australians on my boat that brought the subject up. I was a bit sick listening to seemingly compassionate folk use words like 'half-caste' and 'genetics' in the conversation. * I told you happy stuff about Sarnelli House, but I think it's significant to mention that in addition to caring for the children's health - HIV medication for 60 kids twice a day, trips to the hospital, etc., the staff and Fr. Shea have to protect the kids from being stolen or 'claimed' by those that would sell them for trafficking and/or sex work. There are armed guards at the house for older girls. Fr. Shea told me that sometimes after parents die, relatives drop off kids when they are babies and toddlers then try to pick them back up when they are around 11-12, whatever age of sale is. * I am now reading The God of Small Things. It is set in India and was recommended to me and the next day I found it on the small bookshelf of a travel agent. I love coincidences; even more than I like metaphors. * If you're reading this, I probably have thought fondly of you in the past week - awww.

Hi folks. I'm in Hoi An now, as I move down the coast of Vietnam. Another UNESCO beauty. I went to the beach today. Yay! First day at a beach. This one was a nice metaphor for tourism. The hill separating beach from road was decorated with signs advertising a restaurant with the added words "Go to beach." At the top of the hill, the restaurant patio directly in my path offered free chair under umbrella when you buy lunch or you can pay for it. My fellow tourists were laying out in traditional Western swimwear. Not a bad price for chair and I would have stayed there, but I felt like a bit of a walk, during which I noticed that not far down the beach there was a small ?grove? of palm trees under which all the Vietnamese folk were sitting for free. Only thing was on that side of the beach I had to swim in my clothes. Long story short, I ended up spending a couple of hours with some 15 year olds practicing greetings and preliminary questions in English and being fed biscuits. I happened to have some question hearts in my bag (last pack Kat, thanks!!) and they were a big hit: I made the kids read them out loud - "Hot Lips, Email Me," etc - before they ate them. Then - "you want go in beach with us?" - fresh from the sea and off of my guard, I was accosted by a woman selling pineapple. It was sweet how the kids seemed concerned for me as they walked by watching the woman tell me all the reasons why I just HAD to buy some. Then later as I distributed the pineapple, they asked me how much I paid for it and seemed bothered by the fact that I (knowingly) paid 10 times what they would have paid. It's all very complex; contrast the kids' reaction with this short story (sorry, this is long and I haven't even given you any pictures!): A woman walked away in a huff when she didn't like my rebuttal price for her offer to thread the hair off of my legs (effect=waxing) while I sat on the beach. Fed up with being treated (not all the time of course, but too often of late for my sensitive soul) like I'm a bad person for not buying everything that everyone sells -and at their asking price - I asked her, in so many words, "What, are you angry?" Her friend, selling necklaces, replied, "She not angry, she hungry." Whether or not this was true is not the point. (A stone necklace with your Chinese calendar sign for anyone who can figure out what it is and let me know.)

I'm arrived in Hue, Vietnam today (near the middle), having spent a few days in the north of the country, namely in the capital Hanoi (which President Bush also visited this week) and in beautiful Halong Bay (pics forthcoming, I can't be bothered right now). I wasn't going to stop here, but a bartender in Hanoi convinced me - she's from Hue, and she gave me the card to her parent's cafe/tour booking/all around kinda place. I spent the morning and early afternoon there, chatting with her mom (and a couple of other English-speakers who came along), who convinced me not to take the Demilitarized Zone Tour that her little business offers. It's long and there's not much to see she says - with the exception of the tunnels that the Vietcong army (and their families) lived in - lots of people living in tiny, dark, damp space 12 meters below the earth. Nonetheless, I think I'll just hang out and not take the 2 1/2 hour drive to see them. One family fun fact is that their poverty during the 1975-1986 'subsidized years' inspired Ushi and her husband to nickname their children Dollar, Bijou, Gold, and Rupee (This I had already heard from Dollar in Hanoi). Their grandson is nicknamed Euro. Ushi talked alot about the corruption in the government. She told me that the people in the South still hate the people in the North - she actually called the governing communist party the Vietcong in explaining her point to us. For what it's worth, that's how I spent most of my day. Since arriving in Vietnam, I've been asked by a few of the older people if I speak French. It makes me so sad to say, "No, je ne parle pas francais." Sigh. Maybe I'll try with Dollar's dad; he looks patient.

Re: books (yet another big cheesy grin!). I've managed to accidentally read novels infused with two regionally appropriate religions: Buddhism (because I bought Siddhartha during my last vacation but didn't read it and it was small enough to go in the backpack) and Hinduism (Life of Pi because it was the only book I recognized on the English language shelf at the only bookshop in Vang Vieng). Cool, huh? Also, go to www.mulberries.org if you want to see a nice cooperative-type company that sells Lao products. You can also see the mulberry-dyed scarf I bought, and all the things I would have bought YOU if I had a bigger backpack. Tomorrow, I fly to Hanoi, Vietnam.

This post is about my day trip out of Luang Prabang. It began with biking. About 20 minutes in, a taxi truck came too close for my comfort, so I rode over to the shoulder which turned out to be soft dirt, rolled off the bike, off the road and butt first through two horizontal strands of a barbed wire fence. Are you laughing? It was very funny. Mildly scratched and very dusty. But look where I got to wash my hands and face! Riding on we came by some rice fields where people asked us (so our guide translated) to take their picture. They then gathered in the bunch you see and I yelled "Neung 1-Sorng 2-Sahm 3." The waterfall was a collection of rock formations and trees - like a river, waterfall, forest combo. The paddle wheel contraption is used to pound rice. Walking away from the falls, I saw a group of Laos men with an AmeriCorps VISTA bag! Guide-facilitated Q&A followed in which I was told the bag came "from China" and during which I probably failed to convey the assumedly foreign concept of needing a 'program' to get young people to help in communities. They do know, however, that I have 'same-same' bag at home.

It's hard for me to do justice to Luang Prabang (the old capital of Laos). I've spent 6 days here, pottering about French architecture and Buddhist temples, frequently visiting the Royal Museum photo exhibits and soaking up lazy heat and cafe atmosphere (along with baguettes, a guilty pleasure left0ver from French colonialism). Here you see the view of the Mekong River from a hilltop temple, the happiest Buddha I've yet to find, a glass mosaic of Laos life, and an angle of the Hmong textile market that doesn't show you the beautiful quilts or mulberry lamps or...

This is Vang Vieng, a place I passed through for one night on my way north. Some bridges like this have to be re-made every year because during the rainy season the river washes them away. Vang Vieng is gorgeous landscape and a simple village on which the tourism gods have vomited (the few commercial streets littered with restaurants with - literally - identical - like photocopied - menus serving pizza and fish'n chips not shown). But there is an organic cafe' serving great mulberry-based foods; its the offshoot of an organic farm a few km out of town - where, if you stay awhile, you can volunteer in farming or in other community projects (that needs another cheesy grin, doesn't it?)

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

On November 3, I left Sarnelli House and Northeast Thailand to travel to neighboring Laos. My arrival in the capital city, Vientiane, (by chance, not forethought!) coincided with the That Luang Festival, one of the biggest in the country. In the slide show below (more technology! courtesy of slide.com), you see me wearing a (rented) Lao skirt over my own - required to enter the temple area. Behind me are offerings of flowers, etc. placed as people circle the stupa with candles, stopping to receive a blessing from monks and nuns (who tie a string around your wrist in the process). This is the night before the big day. Next you see morning pics (~6:30 am)...of people preparing their alms and waiting for the prayers that will begin the almsgiving...of people giving sticky rice, money, cakes, etc. to the monks...Thanks to zoom on my new camera (who remembers when I used to cry for the lack of it?!) I take all of these pics from a culturally sensitive distance (cheesy grin) unlike so many of my fellow tourists (grr).

Because discussing stomach problems is part of traveling, I'll have you know that the morning after the camp-out I had rice soup with ?minced pork? that was very tasty going down, but came back up in what I thought was record time just three minutes after I lowered my spoon. Lesson learned: farang bellies are different. There's no point in trying to be brave or adaptive, and there's risk in assuming your hosts know what is okay for you to eat. Pics here are of the church attached to aforementioned school and of a nearby graveyard (people in this village - and at the school and Sarnelli House - are both Catholic and Buddhist). Other commonalities with South Louisiana in addition to Catholicism - fondness for whiskey/coke and Scotch/water and the knowledge that neighbors are for visiting. Part of my regular schedule was riding on the back of the volunteer house cook's scooter - always stopping to say hello to family and friends on our way to and fro. Also, Fr. Shea gives her a monthly allowance to cook or buy for the sick and elderly, so we did that from the back of the scooter too.

Sarnelli House is a home for kids with AIDS. (http://sarnelli.siam.de/pages/sarnelli.htm?sp=en - site created by volunteers; http://sarnelliorphanage.org/ - site created by the Redemptorists) My job as a volunteer was to play with the kids and let them sit in my lap or hang off my back and legs like 'ling bas' (crazy monkeys). I also helped with English homework and appeared as a 'guest English teacher' at the village K-12 school. The latter involved teaching Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and answering over and over - I am 27 years old and, no, I do not have a boyfriend. Pics are of a Thai bbq held during an overnight Halloween camp-out (for which we drove from the countryside to the mountainside). Notice that the talcum powder for the heat doubles as face-paint. Most of the kids show no signs of poor health, though some are very skinny. This little girl with the bat on her head was disfigured by shingles, but a doctor in Bangkok has offered to do reconstructive surgery when she gets a bit older. Because the kids and the staff couldn't say Heather, my Thai name was Gulab (meaning Rose-I bet they didn't realize when they named me they were sticking to a flower theme!).