South Vietnam

Mekong Delta

Phu Quoc Island

We heard a lot of stories about thieves in Ho Chi Minh City, so at first we thought we'd spend very little time there and looked up images of cool places to go near the city. As soon as we saw pictures of Phu Quoc we booked flights and a room, with a pool. From the quaint, but modern, airport we rented a scooter for about $5 per day and enjoyed the country roads to our homestay, which was just on the outside of the touristy section of the city. The best part of the tourist section was the German bakery, where we discovered butter cake, which is a butter rich spin off of coffee cake with sugary, buttery crumbles. My mouth is watering as I write this. We ate here four times and were never disappointed.

Phu Quoc has a night market that is all things seafood and other local treats. We walked up and down the main street, the market is not that large, until Jason found the perfect red snapper. I found a roasted sweet potato and watched him eat his fish, which was tasty, but nothing like the one he had at the night stall in Krabi, Thailand, five years ago. All roasted fish will forever be compared to that. The price was right, the fish was fresh and the staff friendly. We found a street cart with homemade organic ice cream and called it a night.

Our ride on Phu Quoc

Phu Quoc has been discovered and like all great tourist spots, we tend to change the exact landscape that we went there for. Phu Quoc, in our opinion, is being destroyed, the forest is being clear cut to make room for massive resorts and suburbias. These resorts are like cities unto themselves, they don't blend in, they reek of over indulgence and how this island will be able to manage this influx of tourism is beyond me. Garbage already lines all the streets and alleyways. Cows climb through the dump, standing on top of the garbage heaps, eating. What they are eating is beyond our best guesses. We drove by a flooded, possibly abandoned rice field covered in styrofoam waste. If you want to see this beautiful island, with it's gorgeous beaches, get here quickly as it will be unrecognizable in a couple years. We recommend staying in one of the original hotels or homestays. You'll enjoy some incredible sunsets here too.

Long Beach sunset

It takes less than an hour to get to the southern most tip of the island, on a scooter, and the same amount of time to get to the northern point. The landscape and water seem cleaner and clearer on the southern side. Sao Beach, in the photo above, is in the south. We didn't actually get in the water up north because of all the river run off, which made the water an unenticing color. They are putting in beautiful new roads to allow for the massive increase of tourists who will be visiting these soon to be built resorts. So we did enjoy some fresh pavement.

One of the beaches on Phu Quoc

Our homestay was within walking distance of Long Beach. We swam here once, during a rainstorm. After drying ourselves, with white towels, we discovered large brown spots on the towels and didn't return to swim here. If your mind is anything like mine, it would have wandered, in this instance, to thoughts of raw sewage and diesel particles alive and well in the sea water. I waited for sickness to impale my bowels. Luckily we were spared any seaborne illness and ate more butter cake.

Ho Chi Minh City

We spent two nights in Ho Chi Minh City, which I will call Saigon going forth because HCMC is too much to type. We were in a local part of the city and enjoyed some of the best food from a street cart in what looked like the projects. We only saw two other white people here, on a guided tour. We still have no idea where we were, but this street cart served up the best bot chien I had in the city and I had a lot, always trying to recreate the first time. Some of our other favorites were bun thit nuong and "one dollar, one noodle", pictured below. This lady makes a killing and it's super delicious.

"One dollar, one noodle"

The second time we were here, we stayed in the tourist area, albeit down a narrow side street. This area is compared to Ko San Road in Bangkok and it is bustling with shops, restaurants, bars and tour booking offices but way more contained and clean than Ko San Road, although we were never out past 9:00pm, so don't take our word for it.

We had some amazing stuff in our little alley, the best smelling laundry, massages, pedicures, haircuts, smoothie stands (we were partial to one, and had about 10 smoothies here), home front cafe's and restaurants serving up some of the most affordable and delicious foods in the city.

Yum!, smoothies

Saigon is huge and traffic is terrible. We walked most everywhere in the city, including to The Sinh Tourist to book our trips to Cu Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta. The Sinh Tourist has offices in all major cities in Vietnam and offer professionalism and affordable prices. We only booked tours through them. These tunnels are extensive and remarkably functional currently and during the American War. Google them and brace yourself to be wowed. It's a testament to how even the most powerful weapons, fastest planes, biggest bombs don't and won't always work in fighting and winning war.

Cu Chi Tunnels

Throughout the walking tour you can hear automatic weapons ringing in the distance. It is eerie. For an astronomical fee you can chose your weapon, with live ammunition and shoot at targets at a far away dirt mound. We shot an M-16.

We hopped off the bus on our way back to The Sinh Tourist office and visited The War Remnants Museum. After paying a nominal entrance fee ($0.65) you have the option to enter the museum or turn left and wander the outside courtyard, filled with US war machines.

The museum is beautifully designed, informative (if you like to read) and user friendly. The material housed within is extensive and intense. This was one of the first wars where photojournalists were able to report back to the American public in near real time. Although anti-American propaganda is heavy, it's impossible to deny the raw footage on display. Jars containing Agent Orange affected fetus', photo upon photo of human figures so disfigured by the chemicals we unleashed, burned villages, crops and the "casualties of war" in the form of women, children and elderly. The effects of Agent Orange (thank you Monsanto and Dow Chemicals) continue to cause horrific birth defects, four generations later. The US soldiers who handled this poison have higher rates of cancer, among other health issues and some of their children have been born with birth defects, physical and/or mental. It was more difficult for me to be here, to come face to face with what my country did, than being at Auschwitz. It's one thing to tour a site of horrific manmade atrocity and be able to blame the other and entirely different when you are the other. It's embarrassing and shameful. I felt small, sad and sick. I was angry that our soldiers were called up, against their will, to do this to other human beings. I also felt grateful for the existence of this museum because I believe it is imperative to continue to display the horrors of war, so as to put an end to them.

Mekong Delta

Mekong River Tour

You have options when it comes to touring the Mekong Delta, we chose the one-night tour because it takes about 5 hours to get there and it's best to be at the floating market first thing in the morning. We left Saigon bright and early and drove about 2 hours to our first stop, a boat ride to a family run coconut candy operation, a jaunt down the river to a waiting truck with seats in the back which brought us to a backwoods restaurant, where we dined on the worst tasting food in all of Vietnam, including a fresh Mekong fish, which we did our best not to actually taste, just chew quickly and swallow. The Mekong Delta is filthy. On our boat ride out to the floating market I asked the guide if we could stop at the floating toilet, he laughed and pointed to the back of the boat. I will never eat another thing out of this river.

We stayed at a stunning hotel and had a tasty dinner, which happened to be our Thanksgiving meal, including a fresh Mekong fish, which I proudly did not eat. We shared our table with a young couple from Germany and another young couple from Holland, of course. Breakfast was an extensive all-you-can-eat buffet before heading out to the Cai Rang floating market. We were reading Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour and could not wait to get a coffee and other treats. The market was nothing like we have read or seen in pictures or heard from others who have been. It was disappointedly small, lacking variety and polluted, both the water and the air.

We bought nothing. I desperately wanted coffee, but already had to go to the bathroom and didn't want to risk it. From here, we returned to the hotel and swam in the pool in our underpants, with our new friends from Toronto. We did some other stuff on this tour, but it involved a lot of sitting. I don't like giving negative reviews, and it's a good thing this was very affordable, because the best part of the trip, for me was the fancy hotel and meeting Chris and Tara from Toronto, who were fully supportive of me in accomplishing one of my life goals: swimming in my underwear in a fancy hotel pool, in the daylight.

Cycling somewhere along the Mekong Delta with our friends from Toronto