Good morning for Vietnam!

Well, it's not actually morning here, but it is morning in North America.  So strange that the end of the day here is the beginning of the day where home is.   We have been in Vietnam for almost 4 weeks, and although the first 2 weeks it RAINED all day every day, it has been a great trip.    We have been to the beach, which made Nathan very happy, but honestly, the waves were SO big, that I was afraid that I would be swept away every time we got into the water.  And in fact, we both lost sunglasses to the surf (but only cheap-o ripoffs, so that was a good excuse to buy more sunglasses) and I nearly lost my Tilley hat, which would have been a tragic, sun blistering loss, but happily it washed back up on shore, true to the hype, it floated back to me.    We have also gone to a great mud bath that left my skin very soft (I should have bought some of the mud, darn it) and I had some very pretty clothes made in Hoi An, though I'm not sure that I'll EVER get to wear them, unless I get really dressed up to go for dinner, or to have people over for dinner, or something, because there are just so few occasions to wear silk in Dawson.  However, it was fun to do and the colours look great on me, and really, why not?  So cheap it was almost criminal NOT to have something made.   We have eaten some great food, though not all of it Vietnamese, since they use a lot of MSG here, and it's made us sick a couple of times...not sick sick, but nauseated sick and having hot flashes sick. We have discovered Korean restaurants here in Vietnam (who'd have thought?) and can I say, Korean restaurants are great when you're really hungry because after you order your main meal, you get all of these little plates full of appetizers that you didn't even order! So you get to eat right away and not have to wait for your actual meal to arrive.  This was very good for us, since we are generally only eating 2 meals a day and are ravenous by the time we actually sit down to supper.  Anyway, Korean food:  fast and good. Most people had leftovers, but not us.  We ate everything.  And the spicy food was good to eat our garlic with.   We were in Mui Ne, which is also the beach, same problems with the waves, and it was packed with Russian people! There were so many Russians that the signs and the menus were in Russian.  I realize that English speakers don't have the monopoly on, well, monopolizing the tourist trade, but it was so interesting to have touts speak to us in a language that we didn't even think to understand.  Nice to be able to legitimately ignore the touts because we couldn't understand them, too. Did I mention that they make fish sauce in Mui Ne?  Vats and vats and vats of fish sauce.  Mui Ne is permeated with the smell...it's actually kind of a good smell.  Reminds me of green mango salad and Thai food, which is strange, but there you go.  I don't really see a lot of fish sauce on the tables here in the Vietnamese restaurants.   I have noticed that I am talking about food a lot in this email.  We try to eat as much as we can, but we have still lost a bit of weight and Nathan is a RAKE, though I'm not (don't worry mum) though I have lost some weight.  I should advertize a new and exciting "See the world, walk for 8 hours a day and eat anything you want" diet.  Actually we started losing weight in India, where we almost stopped eating altogether because it was so hot and we were drinking so much water.  I think we actually sloshed when we walked.  Sloshed with steam rising off our bodies.  Anyway, back to talking about food...:)   We are now in Saigon which is a hip, happening town.  Lots to do, lots of places to eat, LOTS of motorbikes.  Motorbikes in Vietnam are so ubiquitous, you can't actually go anywhere without seeing one.  There are motorbikes in the living room of our guesthouse.  And when you cross the road, because there are very few traffic signals and because the traffic signals that are there are ignored anyway, you have to literally dodge motorbikes.  Or better yet, have them dodge you.    Picture this:  you approach the road from the sidewalk.  You get to the edge and you look up the street:  motorbikes as far as the eye can see.  No break in the throng.  No light to allow for pedestrians.  So you step off the curb.  No slowing of traffic.  So you just start waking across, and an amazing thing happens.  You don't get hit.  You just keep moving at a steady pace so that the bikes can see you and avoid you.  It's a bit disconcerting to have 2000 motorbikes bearing down on you every time you step off the sidewalk, but really, I've seen very few pedestrians hurt...none,actually, though I can't say that about the cyclists themselves. They seem to crash regularly.  Usually on the bigger roads, though.    Here in Saigon, we have walked all over the town. We went to the zoo and the giraffe came over to be pet and to get leaf snacks.  We went to this big waterpark and stood in line with about a billion little kids who all said "What is your name?" and who were very happy to be able to say "My name is..." (usually something totally unpronounceable to a native English speaker like myself).  The park was fun though and the slides were fast and we only had to kick a few kids to the back of the line after trying to butt in front of us.    The Vietnam war, or the "American War", as the Vietnamese call it, is a history that I'm sure many Vietnamese recall.  We don't have the language to be able to speak with them about it, but yesterday we went to the "War Remnants Museum", which is a memory to the Vietnam war.  The Vietnamse are proud to have repelled the oppressor, the USA and France, and judging from the carnage that was depicted in the pictures, they are probably right to be proud.  That war lasted 17 years.  The pictures show acres and acres of craters caused by bombs.  The dioxin content of Agent Orange is apparently still causing birth defects in some areas.  And all for what?  The Vietnamese still went communist after the USA left, and they seem to be doing okay despite that.  Do you know that the War Crimes Tribunal accused the USA of crimes against humanity and genocide as a result of that war?  And was restitution ever made?  Was an apology ever forthcoming?  I don't know.  Maybe there was.  Certainly diplomatic ties have been re-established with the US.  But from what I read, originally the US got involved to support France in their bid to continue to get cheap tin and tungsten.  It is only too familiar a reason to go in to a country, take over a more primitive culture and then rape the land.  Isn't that what's happening in Iraq?  When will there be a new way of thinking?  A more constuctive way of life? Ugh.   From here we are going back to Thailand and then on to India again.  BUT we are going to the very peaceful southern area, Kerala, where people rarely get shot at, and the majority of people are Hindu, and don't even eat meat, much less blow it up.    If you have read this far, you may be willing to put in a few more minutes and just drop me a bit of a line and let me know how you're doing.  I need CONNECTION every so often, with my near and dear ones.   ACDB