Wrapping Up Vietnam

So I just spent another few days in Vietnam. The last day in Hanoi was uneventful until the evening. I got out for dinner a bit late, and couldn’t find the restaurant I was planning on eating at. By the time I gave up on trying to find it, I realized almost every other place was closed as well. This is probably my biggest peeve with Vietnam: all the restaurants close so damn early. Even in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, you’re pretty much SOL if you want some good authentic Vietnamese food after 10:00 PM, even on the weekend.

So I started wandering around aimlessly looking for any place were I could get fed something other than pizza and spaghetti (the bullshit tourist places tend to be open later). I saw one place that had a bunch of people in it and the lights were still on (at this point it was around 10:30), and popped in. I asked if they were still open for dinner, and after some guy from the big group of Vietnamese dudes that was filling up the place jumped in to translate I found out that the kitchen was closed. However, the translator guy asked if I’d like to join them. They had a bunch of leftover grub (water buffalo and pork, kick-ass!) and I ended up socializing with them for about an hour and a half. They even ended up picking up the whole tab for the meal over my objections, which I felt particularly bad about since I likely make more money than all eight of those guys put together. It was a really great experience.

After Hanoi, I went to Hue, a medium-sized town on the coast in the middle of the country. They had some tombs from the Vietnamese emperors, and a couple interesting pagodas, but not much else. It was definitely worth the day though, as I went to this dive-y little hole-in-the-wall where I got these lemongrass skewers make out of some kind of pork paste that were served with all the standard Vietnamese accoutrements (rice paper wrappers, sliced unripened baby plantains, bamboo shoots, herbs, and the ubiquitous sweet-sour-spicy dipping sauce). Killer.

I had a tour guide driving me around the city on scooter. This was really essential, as the tombs were 10-15 kilometers outside the city and I had a fair amount to see and had to do it all in just one afternoon. He was a pretty friendly young guy that spoke respectable English so it was a nice time. At around 5:00 I offered to take us both out for a 2nd lunch (well, might have been his first but it was my second). We had a soup cooked with a whole fish (just gutted) with all kinds of great crap like woodear, pineapple, chilis, yadda yadda. After that the guy spent some more time driving me around, doing things like dropping me off and picking me up from a massage, asking me if I’d like to be introduced to any of is Vietnamese lady friends, etc. He actually got a little clingy, so much so that it started to creep me out a little bit, and I ended up ditching out on him in the evening.

After Hue I spent a day and a half in Hoi An, a picturesque old trading port a couple hours to the south. I rented a scooter and went to the beach, but when I tried to part some Vietnamese guys started yelling at me. I never found the right place to park, and after driving around for another 20 minutes the sun went away and it got really windy, so I just drove back to town. I didn’t really want sand up my butt crack anyways, and it was sufficient just to take a scenic scooter ride and check out the beach.

Hoi An is renowned for all the custom tailoring and cobbler work. I spent some time checking out suit and overcoat options, but just ended up ordering a shirt and a pair of custom-made shoes. After the initial sizing and 2 separate fittings the shirt came out pretty good, although in regards to the quality it’s nothing special. If nothing else it will be a good travel shirt (i.e. a shirt that fits really well and looks decent yet I don’t care if it gets trashed) and will come in handy the next 3 weeks.

The shoes were a different story. When I went if for the fitting I saw what he had put together and it wasn’t impressing me very much. I told him I wouldn’t be keeping the shoes and to just keep my 50% down and not bother making any adjustments.

After Hoi An I caught a flight to Saigon. It didn’t impress me all that much. It’s quite metropolitan, and doesn’t have the charm of any of the other places I’ve visited. I took a day tour of the Mekong delta, and that was a bit of a snooze as well. The best part of the tour occurred when the bus was delayed for 90 minutes and we had to kill time in town. I spent it shopping for dress shoes (I brought the wrong dress shoes to wear out at night and was able to get a more appropriate pair for a paltry $15) and skarfing down street-food. I was a little concerned that the street food would give me traveler’s diarrhea and I’d be crapping my guts out during the 6-hour ride bus ride I had the next day, but so far so good.

During the Delta tour I met a guy from Sweden that was also travelling alone. We ended up grabbing dinner and hitting the Saigon bar scene. Unfortunately the normally pervasive Australian backpacker girls weren’t out in force (not the cute ones at any rate), so it ended up being just him and I getting boozy all evening.

Because it wasn’t all that exciting and because I wasn’t able to arrange a half-day cooking class, instead of spending 4 nights/3 days as planned in Saigon I just stuck around for 3 nights and 2 ½ days. Which brings me to where I’m writing the post on the bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I should be crossing the border into Cambodia at any time now. It’s probably a good thing, as I already spent 1 more day than I was planning in Vietnam. I should be able to make that day up in Cambodia or Laos so I won’t cut into my Thailand time, though. I’ll let everybody know what the deal is with Cambodia in a few days. I’ll probably just be in Phnom Penh for 1 day and 2 nights, after which I’ll have a long ride to Siem Reap, so it may be pretty soon assuming my hotel in Siem Reap has WiFi.

Now that I’m leaving Vietnam my temporary cell number will no longer work. If you need to get a hold of me urgently, call me on my regular cell number.