I am happy to say that my first solo international trip was wildly successful! Vietnam is a beautiful country with quite an interesting history and the people (aside from the aggressive shoe shiner) were incredibly welcoming and so sweet. This may get lengthy but I will try and tell my stories in the shortest way possible so you guys don’t cry from boredom. Here we go!
Friday was my first day in Vietnam. I reserved this day for leisurely exploration since I had just completed a 22 hour flight. Which by the way – I bought Bose noise cancelling headphones prior to this adventure and WHAT A LIFE SAVER. It’s unreal how amazing they are. I could not hear the airplane engines at all and muffled out most other talking/baby crying etc. Absolute magic.
Anyway, so Friday morning I just wandered around Saigon. This country has been invaded and taken over many times and one of the countries that had control for about 100 years was France. So there is quite a bit of french influence in the architecture there. I visited the Opera House, Notre Dame Cathedral and Post Office – which was designed by Gustave Eiffel. Last stop of the afternoon was Independence Palace also known as Reunification Palace. This was the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the war. This was also the site of the fall of Saigon. Tanks crashed through the gates in 1975 and this ordeal was the end of the war and unifcation of North and SouthVietnam. Super interesting site!
So, one of the things I was very nervous about my visit was trying to navigate through the millions of motorbikes. There are 14 million people in Ho Chi Minh City and 8 million motorbikes and ZERO road rules. No joke these bikes are just coming at you from all directions all the time. Most the blogs I read (yes I read posts specifically on how to cross the street) said to go at a slow steady pace. This actually turned out to be one of the best pieces of advice I had. If you ever go there, do this. Despite the fact that it is terrifying to have bikes coming at you inches away from running you over they really do navigate around you. Quite the adrenaline rush. Also people get fairly impatient and will just ride up on the sidewalk and continue to ride down the sidewalk beeping at you, the pedestrian, to get out of the way…on the sidewalk. Sure. Makes sense.
Speaking of pushy people. Let’s discuss the gentleman who walked up to me and asked if I wanted my shoes shined. I said no to which he responded with bending down, taking out his toothbrush and trying to take my shoe off. My shoe, by the way was a leather strap sandal…good luck shining that bad boy. I basically had to shove him away. No means no, bro. That being said, a lot of people make their living down there by selling anything that they can. I was shocked by the amount of people who sat all day on little pieces of cardboard trying to sell whatever good it was they had. I went on a motorbike food tour Friday night and we went to a lot of back alley places, which I loved. I was basically the only tourist at these places which was so ideal. Anthony Bourdained the crap out of Vietnam. Almost every place we went to we ate on tiny little stools in these TINY little places which I’m pretty sure were both the family’s restaurant and place of living. As we were walking down some of the streets I saw families laying on the floors of these places. So crazy. I can’t imagine.
Saturday I had booked a “social” tour to the Mekong Delta. This meant that I went with 9 other people in a van down to this region which is about two hours south of Saigon. It was so much fun because it was mostly solo travelers and one couple. There was an Australian woman, a northern Vietmanese woman, myself and another American chick from Cali, a German couple and a solo German guy. I got lucky with the group – we had a ton of fun together.
On our way down to the delta we drove through Coconut Country. These people’s entire livelihood is based on coconuts. Anyway, there was a guy back in the day who formed the Coconut Religion. It sounds like this was more of a cult. He built his house in the shape of a coconut, tied his hair in the shape of a coconut, worshipped a coconut and managed to convince his followers that they could ONLY eat coconuts. I was dying over this. The religion ended up being outlawed due to the fact that people were malnourished from only eating cocunuts. Laugh out Loud.
Driving through the countryside you will notice random above-ground grave sites. Families worship their ancestors and when a family member dies they bury them right smack dab in the middle of their rice fields. Nothing like a little dead body aroma to your rice 🙂 ..but they believe that by doing this it brings them good fortune. It was so bizarre though to see all these random small grave sites in the middle of people farming.
Hilarity ensues on this next day of adventure. Sunday I booked a motorbike tour to see the Cu Chi Tunnels. For those that aren’t familiar these are the underground tunnels dug (by hand) by the Viet Cong to combat the Americans during the war.
So first of all. The roads in Vietnam are not the most smooth in the world. So we were about 10 minutes in to this bike trip and my spine was basically jolted through by head and my tailbone was probably broken into 4 little sore pieces. We stopped and had bahn mi for breakfast – I also found it interesting that this is a breakfast dish there. So good though. Anyway, after breakfast we drove for awhile to fully make sure that my spine was all the way through my head. At one point my guide asked if I liked offroading. Before I had time to respond we made a sharp turn onto a small dirt road and went through all these fields to then make a pit stop at a cafe. I had some coconut water here and I’m not sure if this upset my stomach or what the deal was but by the time we reached the tunnels I was basically on the verge of pooping my pants. I got so nervous because we were in the middle of the wildnerness, hour away from home and I was wearing light colored shorts. I was sweating profusely both because it was 100 degrees out and because I was getting those waves of pain/urge to poop my pants. Luckily I had brought two tabs of immodium with me incase this happened. So my guide went to go grab something and I popped one in. Thank the good lord this helped..for the moment.
So we proceded into these TINY tunnels. To even get down into the tunnel I had to swivel my hips because they barely fit. Then we get down to the tunnels and there are bats. Please keep in mind that I am fully on my knees with nowhere to turn and I had to walk up to these bats which refused to fly away until I was about half an away from it. It then started flying and I screamed. And then it flew BACK towards us! At this point I’m like hell no. I’m about to get rabies from a vietmanese bat all while I’m trying not to have diarrhea and sweating liters of fluid. My tour guide was so casual too. He was probably getting a kick out of this either that or he was real annoyed. Bless his heart, he didn’t say a word.
So we get out of these tunnels and I look and sound like I just ran a marathon. Sweat is pouring down my face and I can barely talk. Turns out running crouched over through a small hot tunnel is hard. Anyway, we ate lunch and started the trek back home where the diarrhea sensation started to kick in again. Also, my guide had a little trunk box on his bike and which acted as my back rest. Except it had two notches on it where my back was resting. So now my tailbone is mince meat, my spine is through my skull and I have two huge bruises on my spinal discs. And I’m about to poop my pants. My butt was completely numb and I needed a break so bad but I refused to ask for one because I needed to get home. But! My guide was like oh we are going to stop for a drink. Super. Anyway, I managed to make it home without a code brown but definitely bruised and battered.
I had only booked a hotel for the first 4 days and left the last 3 days open ended. I decided to fly about 8 hours north to Nha Trang. This is a city that sits on the South China Sea and also backs up to the mountains. Really pretty!
I had told my tour guy the day before that I was going here and he told me that it’s pretty but it is a huge mecca for Russian and Chinese tourists. I did not know this and he was not wrong. It’s such a huge place for Russians that they are starting to open up their own stores and restaurants there and the Vietmanese people are starting to leave the area. It was a gorgeous place but not somewhere I would return. You can tell that in the next year or two it is going to be like a Wisconsin Dells type situation. Super cheesey and touristy. Such a bummer. But! I really enjoyed my time there.
The sea was so pretty, the colors were awesome! And the mountains were gorgeous. I also had quite a humorous day here – although at the time I wanted to cry. I wanted to hike this one mountain trail that I kept reading about. There was a major language barrier while I was trying to tell the hotel staff and then the taxi driver where I was trying to go. The cab driver ended up just dropping me off at a random place along the base of the mountain and told me to climb up. What. So I start walking up this sidewalk and get stopped by a herd of goats who are being chased by someone on foot and someone on a motorbike honking at them. Hilarious. I turned around and started back down to where we came from to find the start of the trail. I never found the trail. I ended up in this back roads village where I also ran into a herd of cows. Accompanied by no one. Three of them started growling at me and coming towards me. So then I was like, cool, I’m not going to die from rabies but I will get trampled by angry mountain cows.
I walked for four hours in 100 degree heat but finally made it to this Po Nagar temple I had been wanting to see. Temple was gorgeous – those are the pictures I had posted on insta. I got back to the hotel and didn’t even care about life after all that walking. I decided to go lay at the beach for a few hours which was super relaxing and I swam in the sea a bit too. The best medicine!
So this basically rounded out my trip. I would defintely return except next time I would explore northern Vietnam! But I feel pretty proud about doing all this by myself and it was really rewarding. I highly recommend a trip there if you ever get the chance!
Next order of business and then I’ll stop this novel. Two days before I left for Vietnam I accepted my next assignment for travel nursing. Tomorrow morning I am heading to Billings, Montana for 13 weeks. This may seem odd but I was really hoping to be out this way for summer. Billings is close to Yellowstone and a several hour drive away from Glacier National Park! I am so happy about this! It will be so fun to be out there for summer. I am hoping to make a trek up to Banff in Canada as well. Also! My good friend, Jared, from college lives out there and I got in contact with him and we plan on hiking and doing several things together this summer which will be so fun 🙂
My next post will be my welcome from Montana post!
I added a few pictures below. Enjoy!
