Day Three

Our third day - where do I start.  We truly are experts here now...  Well, sort of.

First, some extraneous details.

1.  The toilet paper here feels like extremely thin - 2 layer - textured - rice paper.  It flakes all over the place when in use.  Also noteworthy, you're not supposed to flush your TP - just put it in the small garbage next to the toilet.  Their septic system can't handle TP - not even thin rice papery TP.

2.  The shower in our hotel must use an instantaneous water heater.  It swings from very cold to very hot every 20 seconds or so.  Much of the time showering is spent attempting to tame the water temp.

3.  We get a lot of stares, and we're assuming it's because we're white - over weight - or blonde haired.  We're not sure which yet though.

4.  The street air smells like humid - sour - fish saucy - moth balls mixed with delicious smells of grilled meat.

We went to the war museum today.  It was moving.  Very interesting to see it from their point of view.  They view the war as America's war, and they view America (or at least did) as a country flexing their imperialism on the world.  There were a lot of statements like 'we don't know why America is here fighting us'.  They showed the atrocities of the war, and painted American's as criminals.  I agreed with a lot of it.  Shame on our government for using Agent Orange (and several other dioxines) causing horrifying birth defects in several generations of people.  Shame on our government for putting America's youth in such a horrible position in a war they couldn't win (and shouldn't have been fighting).

I was approached outside the war museum amongst the helicopters and tanks from the war by a man who was born without arms and only one eye.  He was very sincere and asked me for help.  He extended his arm for a handshake gesture. His arm extended just below his elbow and then stopped - rounding off with no hands.  He told me how he was effected by the war and asked me to buy a book from him.  He pushed two books on my and demanded 300,000 Dong - about 13 bucks.  I was moved by him and his story, and intimidated when he pushed me on the sale.  I just went with it and walked away.  I felt ripped off immediately after, but looking back on it - I hope that helped him and his life or even just his day a little.

Our travel book says that a lot of people's income here is around 100 dollars a month.  I feel a bit awkward walking around in 100 dollar nikes that we bought for the trip.

We found another woman making sandwiches on the street.  They are amazing!  This one had 3 different kinds of meat - loaf like stuff on it, with fresh herbs - sauces - and vegies.  One woman made the sandwich and then handed it off to an older lady next to her to bag it up for us.  Jade snapped a quick photo while she was making the sandwich, and the old women started giggling to each other.

I forgot to mention, while we were in the war museum, a group of 6 or so young Vietnamese girls and a few boys approached Jade with huge smiles and giggling.  They wanted their photos taken with her.  They stood, one by one - taking photos with her with their respective camera phones, and then group shots, all the while smiling and giggling.  The peace sign was the preferred gesture and Jade followed suit.  They approached me after and took photos with me in the same fashion.  Jade and I were pleasantly taken back by the transaction. A little confused - was it that we were white - or blonde - or...  I think Jade's curly blonde hair is a focus of a lot of the stares that we get.  Whatever the case - it's delightful to be the center of attention, even if we don't know what it's from.  It has given us a real escape from the reality back home.

We went to two restaurants for dinner - one for appetizers - one for dinner.  The dinner was traditional Vietnamese cuisine.  Very fresh - very tasty.  The soup that we got was purple and simply amazing.  Kind of a  salty eggdrop soup kind of taste.  We were stuff and walked home sweaty from the heat.  Another great day and happy to retreat to our air conditioned room once again for the night.