#209 Vietnam Vacation

Just got back from Vietnam.  Following are snippets from the trip:

• We arrived in Hanoi, and our first stop was Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum.  Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, and despite his wishes to be cremated, his remains have been professionally embalmed  in Russia and put on display in Hanoi.  A line stretched for more than a mile around the mausoleum and through Independence Square until it led inside a cold, dark chamber lined with military personnel, who urged us to keep moving.  We were in the room less than a minute.  The sight of Ho Chi Minh's body was as eerie and reverent as the sobbing women who had to be dragged away from his remains.
• The Water Puppets.  These were strange puppets in water.  Enough said.
• Hao Lo Prison.  We walked through the remaining sectors of an old prison dating back to the 1800s.  The prison was used primarily for political prisoners in the early 1900s.  But, it was the prison that housed American pilots who were shot down over Hanoi.  This includes John McCain and Butch's dad from Pulp Fiction.
• Drifting through Ha-Long Bay.  We stayed on a boat in a cabin at water level with our door open and the picturesque scenery drifting by.  One of the few places in the world where you simply sit and feel serene.  In the evening time a woman rowed up to our window and screamed at us that she had cheap beer.  She was from one of the nearby floating villages.  I bought a sixer.  When I tried to negotiate, she wouldn't budge.  Those stubborn, floating village people!
• Moped Street Food Tour.  We rode on the back of mopeds through the streets of Saigon, where guides took us to various street corners to try the local cuisine.  The food was interesting, and in some cases disgusting (fertilized duck egg...), but the value of the tour came with the guides. The guides were college students running the tour to make extra money.  They spoke good English and shared much of their personal lives with us as well as their culture.
• Chu Ci Tunnels outside of Saigon.  This was perhaps the most interesting and historically significant part of my vacation.  For nearly 20 years, Vietnamese fighters lived and operated below ground while American forces bombed and sprayed herbicides across the jungle.  Their guerrilla tactics included miles and miles of underground tunnels connecting villages to strategic wartime targets.  L. and I crawled through the tunnels, and it was a unique and terrifying experience.
• Many Vietnamese people we spoke with declared rice was 75% of local population's diet.  But most restaurants and street vendors served 15 different noodle dishes and only one or two rice dishes.
• Dong is the national currency.  So we saw "Dongs" everywhere we went.  
• Buddhist nation with only a handful of buddhist temples.  Not like other nations we visited in southeast asia.