We have made two stops in Vietnam. The first was a lovely beach area mid-country in an area called Nha Trang. We toured a local kindergarten and the four year old boys and girls lined up and sang to us. The boys were lined up in two columns of about four each and the girls in columns of four each in the middle of the boys. Each class has two teachers. The kids were happy and loved singing. Our guide suggested we sing a song for the children and someone suggested “you are my sunshine” and we had at it which prompted the closest boy to immediately put his fingers in his ears. We then mingled together and took pictures and hugged and then a little girl decided to try and kick Sandy in the shins. Sandy responded by tickling the little girl in her stomach and then all the little girls wanted to be tickled keeping Sandy busy avoiding kicks and giving out tickles.
The school, which was set in a courtyard and not air-conditioned (The temperature was in the 90’s) was clean and well organized. The backpacks were hung up with care and of course Disney characters were well represented.
We left and toured the local market that ranged from fruit and vegetables to clothing and books and random other goods but was overpowered by the smell of fish. On a scale of 1 to 10 for cleanliness the market was below zero. We left quickly to go back to the bus and ran into our group of aggressive salespeople selling “Polo collar shirts – 3 for 5 American dollars, postcards for 1 american dollar, fans for one American dollar” and so forth. The same people would show up at every stop on our tour.
We then went to a typical Vietnamese home. The entrance leads to a somewhat large room that is divided into four parts. Two walls extend out about five feet from the back wall making three small rooms. The center room is a shrine for the ancestors of the family. The room on the right with a small bed and a TV on a stand is the bedroom of the wife and mother. The room on the left was where the husband/father slept but he has passed away so now that room is a shrine to him.
We saw water buffalo working the rice fields and workers hoeing the fields. Overall, it is not a very clean place in-land and away from the beach. It is a very meager living and very poor with little sign of progress.
Our second port led us to Ho Chi Ming city/Saigon. It’s about a two hour drive from the port to the city. The city has a population of six million. There are motor scooters everywhere and traffic is always at rush hour levels. Vietnam has a helmut law but doesn’t seem to have anything but a go where you want to go mentality and keep your head down. A motor scooter will hold one passenger or one and a baby, or two, or two and a baby or three adults or believe it or not four adults speeding along on one motor scooter. I also saw two guys on a motor scooter with the guy in the rear extending his leg out to a bicycle beside them and pushing the bike along the road. All along the road into the city are Buddhist shrines and restaurants and shops. Almost all opened on the front with no air conditioning. Trash and dirt and junk are everywhere. Sandy said it best when she described the conditions as “wretched”.
We saw a water puppet show in Saigon that was original and fun. We enjoyed a buffet lunch at a very nice air conditioned restaurant and were entertained by musicians and dancers performing songs. The rest of Saigon was disappointing to me. I probably carry a bit of baggage about Vietnam from the war but I would rank this area just behind the devastation of New Guinea.
On reflection I keep mentioning air conditioning not from my own comfort level as we are out in the heat on our tours but as a sign of progress for the country as a whole. There are wonderful, modern hotels and shops in the city proper but the rest of the countryside appears not to have progressed in decades. Unless you count the scooters!