The past few months have been winter break in Korea, which is the the equivalent of the American summer vacation. Students move onto the next grade, and the break itself is 2 months long. This being said, I took a two week backpacking excursion to Vietnam and Thailand. The experience was amazing! I saw some amazing sights, got a nice tan at the beach, had some of the best food I've ever tasted, and learned about a part of the world that has always intrigued me: Southeast Asia.
I really had no idea what to expect from Vietnam. I knew it was a country that is in the midst of rapid economic development, and I also knew that it was not a democracy. In fact, I had to get a special visa to enter the "Socialist Republic of Vietnam." I had never been to a non-democracy before, not to mention a "Socialist Republic," and it was very interesting to see all of the Soviet-era red flags and other various references to Communism that scatter the country.
Ho Chi Minh and I
I stayed in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for the 5 days I was in Vietnam, and never have I seen a more fascinating city! It is extremely vibrant, with beautiful French architecture (Vietnam is a former colony of France) and amazing nightlife. The streets are lined with cafes, bars and restaurants, and most of the places are open-air with outdoor seating that stretches all the way to the end of the sidewalk. Food and drinks are EXTREMELY cheap, and the cuisine is amazing. By the end of my stay in Vietnam, I was used to sipping on $0.70 cent beers and eating a feast for under $3.00
Pho Noodles, My Favorite Vietnamese Dish
One of the most interesting things about Ho Chi Minh City is how westernized it is. There are more English television channels in Vietnam than there are in Korea, and most menus are in English and Vietnamese. Most restaurants I went to had Western as well Vietnamese food. On a side note, there were even a few Korean channels on our TV at the hotel, which is a testament to how influential Korean pop culture has become in the region.
For all its merits, Ho Chi Minh City is also home to both infrastructure problems and heartbreaking poverty. For one, traffic is a MAJOR issue. Saigon is a massive city of 8 million people, and yet there is only one public bus line and no subway system. There are also very few cars due to the lack of an auto manufacturing sector of the economy. Thus, everyone rides motorbikes. Secondly, traffic laws either don't exist or aren't enforced. It's very rare to see a traffic light, a stop sign or even a cross walk when you're walking around the city. So in order for a pedestrian to cross the street, he literally has to weave through traffic, dodging numerous motorbikes. When I first arrived in Vietnam, I was pretty nervous about crossing the street. By the end, however, I was a pro, casually bobbing and weaving through oncoming traffic like I was in a real-life game of Frogger.
Poverty is another issue in Vietnam. Every night I was constantly being harassed by peddlers trying to sell whatever products they could. The worst was the 8 year old kids trying to sell flowers into the early hours of the morning. It was like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. These kids probably don't go to school, and I watched some of them report to an older man, who probably exploits them and takes a big chunk of everything they earn.
While the Vietnamese people are all very friendly and nice, there is some obvious left over animosity towards America held by the
government due to the Vietnam War. For example, the Vietnam War Museum is a showcase of "American atrocity" towards innocent Vietnamese people. Some of the things I saw there were really disturbing, such as pictures of Agent Orange victims, and pictures of US troops massacring innocent civilians. What the museum left out, however, was the horrible things that the Vietcong did during the war. I know the US isn't innocent, that certain platoons did unspeakable things, such as the Mai Lai Massacre. However, if I recall correctly, the Vietcong used to store weapons and military apparatus under civilian villages, effectively using innocent people as human shields. This side of the story was completely left out of every Vietnamese historical site we saw, which I assume is a product of the "Socialist Republic."
The most interesting piece of propoganda I saw was after we toured the Vietcong Cu-Chi tunnels. At the end of the tour, the guide brought us into a video room, which was draped in red flags, with a statue of Ho Chi Minh above a small TV which must have been from the 1980s. He then proceeded to play a movie which he said dated back to 1968. It was in black and white, and was obviously made by the North Vietnamese to rally around the cause of the war. It referred to the US as "devils," and displayed young women wielding machine guns, claiming the title of "American killer number 1!"
HIGHLIGHTS OF MY TRIP:
1) VIETCONG TUNNELS
I crawled through 100 meters of dark Vietcong tunnels! These things were tiny, and they had been enlarged twice since the end of the war to allow for the fat Western tourists! I could barely fit; I even had to get on my stomach and crawl through the end because it kept getting smaller. The tour guide said that because the Vietnamese were so starving during the war, they could maneuver easily through these things! He also said that whole villages lived in tunnels through most of the war in order to protect themselves from all the bombings. There were bedrooms, kitchens, etc!
2) FIRING AN AK-47
They let us fire off machine guns at the end of the tour, which was amazing. I've never fired anything before, not to mention an automatic weapon. An example of how lawless Vietnam is: they sold beer at the firing range, which kinda freaked me out...I also heard that in North Vietnam, they have tours where you can fire a rocket launcher. We didn't make it up there though...unfortunately
3) RIVER TOUR DOWN THE MEKONG DELTAThis was a truly awesome tour. We went down the Mekong River on a small boat, explored an island on the river, and ate an amazing seafood lunch.
All in all, Vietnam was an amazing time. I highly recommend travelling there to anyone who wants to see amazing sights, live like a king while spending little money, eat the greatest food ever, drink 70 cent beers that are actually delicious, and see the world from a completely unique perspective. It's by far the greatest place I've ever been to!
Over the past month, I've been watching a lot of Korean cinema. The movies have been really entertaining, and have also helped me learn the language (maybe). There's a great website called www.mysoju.com that has streaming Korean films with English subtitles. It's definitely worth checking out. Anyway, I just finished watching one called "A Dirty Carnival." It was so good that I decided to officially endorse it on my blog. It's a gritty Korean gangster/film-noir flick with a great plot and awesome action sequences. Many of you know that I'm a sucker for mob movies, but this one was especially cool because there were no guns! Most of the "hits" and fighting were done with Sashimi knives, baseball bats and spiked clubs! I'm used to mob movies where someone gets whacked with a revolver or gunned down by machine guns, but this was more like "Braveheart", with rival gangs engaging in hand to hand combat on the streets of some shabby Korean city.
