Sorry about the delay everyone, its Winter Break at my school, but that's really a paradox. In Korea when the public schools are on break the private schools (like mine) work harder and longer. I've been pulling 10-13 hour days for the better part of 3 weeks now. Its finally over but I'm in dire need of a break just to cure myself from the Winter Break I was just on.
Anyway, I'm going to tell you all about the rest of my time in Saigon, before I headed to the beach for New Years. Enjoy.
The last thing I talked about was my day of tunnel crawling and my night of dancing with my new friends. The rest of the story is more solitary, but that's the way I like to travel. You experience so much more when you're all alone, plus it makes meeting people a hell of a lot easier. These two on the right are Quinn (American studying abroad in Singapore) and Yael (an Israeli backpacker on her way to China).
As it turned out, all of Pham Ngu Lao was in a total blackout. Luckily for me though, capitalism continues even when electricity does not and all the shops remained open. The bad side was that none of the fans, air conditioners, or even lights were working anywhere and the insides of these places were stifling. Considering I had been surviving sub-freezing temperatures in Korea just 3 days before I was dying from the heat and humidity. Within 15 minutes I had sweat through my shirt and was literally dripping. Every time I went into a new store one of the patrons would walk over with napkins and a flashlight. A part of me wonders if they did it out of courtesy or the desire to make a sale and get me the hell out of there. Neither would surprise me.
Now, one of the bad things about living abroad is the lack of any real Christmas/birthday presents sent by anyone. My mom and sister will usually get me something but no one else has in 3 years. I was expecting this when I left for China, but it still sucks. So this time, I decided to make up for it by buying myself a bunch of gifts. Somewhere Santa Claus is upset with me...well screw you fat man, you didn't bring me anything either!
Here's the entire spread (above). I ended up getting a huge backpack (80 liters), a swiss army knife, a multi-tool, sunglasses, a flashlight, and over 30 books (on the right and below). About 15 of these were novels that they sell all around Saigon. Most of them are non-fiction and pertain to topics about Vietnamese history and culture. The rest of the books through are traveler's bibles...Lonely Planet guides.Now when I decided to go to China I wanted to take with me a reference that could take me anywhere in the country...I couldn't find one of those, so I settled for Lonely Planet's China guide.
However that was a great decision. The guide got me out of many scrapes in China and helped me with some great finds in a host of places. I swear by them now and don't even bother with any other brand. Whenever I go to a new country I always take my LP along.
Before you ask, hell yes, I'm going to all of these countries; just don't ask me when.
But the best part of that day was when I opened my new Vietnam guide. The last time I was in Vietnam I found an awesome bookstore in a city called Hoi An. It wasn't listed in the book I used so I e-mailed Lonely Planet and told them about it. Well, they included the bookstore in their new edition and cited me saying thank you.
I know its a really bad copy, but you wouldn't believe how hard it is to take good photograph of a book page. Here's what it says though:OUR READERS
Many thanks to the travelers who used the last
edition and wrote to us with helpful hints, useful
advice and interesting anecdotes:
The list of names goes on for a while but my name is listed right there near the top right of the photograph, its underlined in red in case you have trouble seeing.
That makes it official, another thing taken off the Life's To-Do List: Get my name in Lonely Planet. And all this time I was afraid it was going to be from one of those horror stories about the idiot backpacker who falls off a cliff while trying to impress a girl.
I spent all day shopping and that night I met a whole new group of travel buddies and I talked them into truly experiencing one of the many gastronomical delights that Saigon has to offer...Snake and Scorpion Wine.
Yes, those are real, and yes I've tried it before. I have never seen a Vietnamese person try it, but I've seen plenty of Chinese men drink themselves stupid off of stuff that looked a lot like this, so I don't dis-believe it. As it was though, some buddies and I decided to try it and we spent most of the night trying to slowly finish a small bottle of the stuff.
It was horrible, and I swear to you that I actually tasted the venom in addition to the alcohol. It made for a fun evening of everyone taking a small sip and passing it on in hopes that someone else would drink the rest of it. Finally after we'd finished off about half of it we decided to call it a night and just go have dinner. Its probably still sitting in our hostel, everyone else who saw it was afraid to even touch it.
Over the next few days more people came and went but nothing memorable really happened. I spent most of my days in Saigon exploring pretty much everything, hanging out with new people, sharing stories, and relaxing. I hadn't been to the beach yet and I really wanted to hang out poolside for a while so I decided to say goodbye to Saigon (temporarily) and headed to Mui Ne Beach Resort.
That, however, is another story.
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