Hoi Ann, how charming you are indeed!

Tag lined in guidebooks as "the place in Vietnam to take your time", I'd have to say that Hoi Ann lives up to expectations. Quaint, small, and oozing charm from every corner, I really can't resist the temptation to use the word cute in this instance.

With great food, cheap accommodations and wonderful markets, Hoi Ann also boasts a beautiful riverside walk. I found many lovely shops and restaurants to relax and live life just a tad bit little slower.

Hoi Ann is also the place to get clothes and shoes tailor made. There are many styles on display, as well as many stores with signs reading "we have internet! you choose, we make!" With debates in the fashion industry precisely concerning the infringement of intellectual property, a place like Hoi Ann would definitely add to the heat.

Given, they are no tailors of haute couture. But they sure can make lots of wonderful things. Pick your style and fabric, they will measure you head to toe for about 5 minutes, and you pick up your order the next day. I recommend not asking them to make anything too far from the styles in the store, because you probably won't get what you want. With many great cheap tailors in Hong Kong, I opted to have some fun and design my own dress for about $12. Check it out!

Me in my red creation, and my rented bike on the streets of Hoi Ann.

From here, I decided to fly to Hanoi instead of enduring the 20+ hours train ride. I would do it actually, but I'm kind of short on time. There's something very strange about domestic air travel in Vietnam. The national airline, Vietnam Airlines, is subsidized by the government and render the oddest pricing scheme I have ever experienced in air travel.

What is this oddity? It is that the price of tickets is the same everyday, no matter of the date of purchase. This complete disregard for consumer demand and preferences was shocking to me. My only suspicion for the airline's lack of interest to maximize their profits is that it makes it easier for the employees of the airline. No pricing model, no mess for anybody. It rather fits the socialist attitude, easy air travel for all. I paid $65 for a ticket to Hanoi for a flight less than 24 hours before departure without a wink. After all, I'm just a free rider on the perks of an inefficient system.

Plus, paying $20 more to save 20 hours sounds like a deal to me.

How to travel 1000km in 14 hours?


Night train of course! Lock your bags, rest easy in the sleeper class and enjoy the train ride through the mountains. There's something extremely nostalgic and romantic about being on a train: the whistle at the station, the ka-conk ka-conk of the wheels hitting the rail and softly rocking you to sleep, the passing of beautiful landscape for hours on end.

The main plus of being on a long haul train in Vietnam, is that there is pho in the food compartment. Oh pho! (and it wasn't bad). I'm on my way to Hoi Ann, a small coastal town in central Vietnam on a tip that it is one of the most enchanting places the happy middle has to offer.

Cu Chi Tunnels Trip, also known as the day I shot a gun

After the Cao Dai temple, we went onwards to the main course of the Cu Chi tunnels. Our tour guide, being a true Vietnamese of the South, went ahead to make fun of the communists and discourage us from paying anymore than the admission fee as the Cu Chi tunnels is an attraction ran by the army.

For anyone who has ever heard about the Vietnam war, the Cu Chi tunnels is a must hit. Of course, in Vietnam this is known as the American war (of course it would right!). The Cu Chi tunnels is a proud national park symbolizing the tenacious efforts of the Vietnamese in defeating the Americans. But actually, the park is more like a military diorama complete with mannequins, and demonstration of various traps and weapons used in the American war.

At the start of the tour, a fairly communist (and fairly hilarious) video depicting the people of Cu Chi region during the war is mandatory. I was very amused by the commentary: "With brave Vietnamese men and women fighting to the end from the amazing Cu Chi tunnels, the Americans had no idea what was going on!" (cue footage of Americans running around wildly)

Going into the Cu Chi tunnels, I could understand how confusing it would be to fight a war over the 200 km of complex tunnels stretching over the entire region. With trap doors at strategic positions, shooters could come out of nowhere. Without a map of the tunnels, you could have no idea when or where the enemy would show.

Interestingly, the Vietnamese place a lot of emphasis on the participation of women in the war. The images of women performing domestic activities with rifles around their chest were a stark contrast from the typical Western depiction of war time woman consisting of moms, nurses, and factory workers. Apparently Vietnamese women were out there, shooting it up like the men. Plowing rice fields with guns on their backs.

With that thought in my mind, combined my personal yearning for understanding such women, I went along with my Australian friend Lisa to shoot a gun as part of the Cu Chi tunnel tour. I have never shot a gun before. I despise American gun culture and I have personally never had the desire to touch a rifle. I allowed myself this time, not only because it's the only chance I'll ever get to shoot an M16, but to explore what it must have been like for those women in the war and the "say I've done it" factor.


So in the end it was actually pretty anti climactic. Perhaps I built it up a little too much in my mind, but it was very easy. You pull the trigger, a ear deafening bang follows, and gun powder sprays on your shirt. It is actually very safe, a member of the Vietnamese army has his hands on the mounted gun at all times so that no live ammunition goes flying where it isn't supposed to. If anything, the ease made the idea of guns much more disturbing to me, as all inventions that can take away life should be.

Cao Dai's play at religious harmony
(oxymoron alert)

Being on a tight schedule in Vietnam, I reluctantly signed up for a tour of the famous Cu Chi tunnels through my guesthouse. These tours are very appealing for a couple reasons: a) pickup and dropoff at your guesthouse b) lots of other eager tourists without fail, so you're sure to pickup a few new friends c) they are dirt cheap.

If you're short on time, tours will not only save you money, but time and the hassle of finding a fair deal. Since tours are a dime a dozen in backpacker areas, prices are at equilibrium level. Though there are things to beware of, if it's too cheap you'll probably get what you pay for and be packed like sardines in a small van with a somewhat shady tour guide (but aren't they all a little bit?)

With a stop at the Cao Dai temple, the tour started on a early bright Saigon day. The Cao Dai temple ended being a very very interesting place. I ask you, where else can you find a congregation that worships Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, and Muhammad AT THE SAME TIME. Saints also include Pericles, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo.

Think I'm kidding? Check out this mural, they're all there.

In addition, Cao Dai also worships the all seeing eye. The temple wasn't short on colors at all, contrasting the pale palette of most western religions the temple was filled with wonderful pinks, yellows and blues. In a world where religious conflicts have caused much hatred, the harmonious synthesis of faith at the Cao Dai temple was truly a refreshing eye opener.


In fact, Cao Dai claims that "religions are not different and if we take enough time to study deep --deeply enough in each religion, we would see that they have one same principal, if not identical principal. That's the reason God has founded Cao Dai, in order to bring harmony to different religions."

Truth that this is a fairly simplistic, not to mention idealistic, view. But with the core belief that the purpose of life and existence is in fact peace, Cao Dai fusion strangely seems to make sense. But only for a moment when you're there.

Saigon stories

Saigon is a tough town. I totally got burned by a cyclo driver this morning, as we had agreed on 15,000 (about $1) when I got on but he tried to charge me 150,000 ($10) when I got off. Lucky for me, some other cyclo drivers came to my rescue as my cyclo drive made a scene screaming on the street that I was a cheating lying Chinese American.

That did it. That crossed the line for me, I paid him $5 just to make him leave in peace.

So there goes a quarter the money I saved from haggling earlier today over art, bags, train tickets, food and moto rides. But really I had a couple funny encounters in the morning amidst the insanity that is Saigon traffic.

Moto traffic in Saigon, where there are reportedly over 3 million motorcycles.

My guesthouse thinks I'm an American Vietnamese and thus they really don't try to rip me off too much. In fact, when I showed them my passport for check-in they looked at me like I was one of the Vietnamese boat people who escaped and had made it bigtime. The manager is very eager to do business, but is unfortunately not very good at it. He tells me he doesn't bargain, that's not the kind of business he wants to run. He wants a solid business with fair set prices. "Just like the Westerners," he would say.

And it's true, I saw him quote the same price for many customers. Although when I nearly bought the night train ticket from across the street for $15 less, he definitely did a double take and stepped up to give me the same price.

Southern Vietnam is full of anti Viet Cong sentiments. (read: Vietnam Communists. Or as Vietnamese seem to think Americans like to say, Victor Charleys). Locals often told me to "becareful" around national buildings. Or joking about cultural differences by simply saying "but that's because we're communist!" In fact, Saigon has outgrown the old world post-colonialism flavor that once filled its streets. Instead, I found rapid capitalism spreading in the veins of good natured locals.

My luck in cyclo drivers came later. I met a toothless man who spoke very good English, and drove a cyclo. I immediate suspected that he was one of the educated Vietnamese men who Viet Cong stripped of their rights and citizenship on grounds that they sided with Americans. And it was true. Traung refuse to call Saigon by it's current name, Ho Chi Minh city, and he use to be work for what he calls a "respectable American firm" back in the 70s. He was then arrested, jailed, and sent to reeducation camps for 2 years. Now he's technically an illegal immigrant in Saigon, working as a moto driver because it's the only job he can do.

Traung shows me a photo from 1972, when he was a war photographer for the South.

After a tiring day of sight seeing, Traung brought me to an amazing local pho restaurant in the back streets of Saigon call Pho Boa. The food in Saigon is truly amazing. Freshly made, with the aroma of nature and more than adequate flavor make for the best bowl of pho I've ever had. Traung refused to let me buy him dinner because "You're just a girl," he said. "Plus my wife would kill me if I didn't eat her dinner!" With that, I laughed approvingly and instead bought him a beer. Traung also said he had a fun day with me, and almost didn't accept all of the money I had promised him. Fully appreciating his old world kindness, I sent him off with $13 for the day's work. These are the characters you meet on the streets of Saigon.

Sihanoukville

A beautiful ocean side beach town in the south coast of Cambodia, Sihanoukville is the place for vacation for Cambodians. It's become a bit of a tourist spot, but in low season where the sun isn't exactly shining (instead, a couple hours of sunshine and mostly crazy rain) it was a nice quiet town to swim out and ride the wild storm waves on rented inner tubes.

Doesn't a nice quiet town sound nice? Not to Cambodians really. And now, not really to me. Even though I enjoy the luxury of unspoiled tourists spots, the people in Sihanoukville were much pooerer than those I saw in Siem Reap or PP.

I had a very interesting conversation with a Spanish humanitarian worker name Nuria in Sihanoukville. The often unseen reality of nice quiet towns is the people. Truth be told, I thought the people in Sihanoukville seemed pretty happy. But they live in the past, a time reality different than mine. I still remember how shocked Cambodians are every time I take out my contact lenses. They looked like they just found out I was really a robot.

This is a concept I kept struggling with while in Cambodia, that I felt like someone turned back the clock on this country. The traditional quality of the people, their way of life, and the things they cannot buy even if they had the means. The reality I live in, is not only drastically different from theirs, but utterly unavailable. I myself am guilty of romanticizing the past, but when I think about the availability of technology to me, I must agree with Nuria that a nice quiet town, isn't very nice at all. Equality is impossible, but equal opportunity isn't.

Now comes my rant on prostitution. I didn't see much of it in Siem Reap or PP, but Sihanoukville is the beach and seeing beautiful 20 something Cambodian girls with old foreign men still gets my blood boiling. It reassured me that this bothered Phil and Tola as well, but they couldn't understand how poverty could cause more prostitution. Phil felt sorry, he said something like: "Even if I was a girl, I wouldn't sell my body no matter how poor I was."

There are two things here. First is poverty we cannot understand, I think this is self explanatory. The second is that the idea of the prostitute lives with every woman from the moment we hit puberty. Maybe even earlier.

In our presentation of self, women must decide how much of the prostitute they want to embody. No matter our social status, when we put on a particularly revealing outfit or socialize with men we are face to face with the idea of the prostitute. Is this outfit too sexy? I don't want to seem like a prostitute. Or from the other side, rebelling against society's female conventions for equal sexual liberty. Just listen to Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous Girl, it's absolutely about the negotiation of the prostitute and the modern woman.

The prostitute haunts and liberates the modern woman every moment of everyday.

With that said, it's easier to see that being a prostitute isn't a far stretch for some women as it is a concept society has put us up against since the beginning of time.

Why Phnom Penh is a ballin' town

Going back to Phnom Penh after being in the country side, I realized what a wealthy town it was in the great scheme that is Cambodia. Siem Reap, despite its massive tourism industry, has managed to stay clear of big supermarkets and malls with escalators. In fact, there aren't many tall buildings in Siem Reap save for the 5 star hotels. The local town consists mostly of wooden houses and small huts.

Reaching to outskirts of PP by bus, I saw many large houses built from cement. Some complete with garages, gates, and fountains in the front yard. And it hit me: PP is a ballin' town.

We went to my favorite restaurant in PP, around the corner of 130 street where a waitress name Ah Ling spoke Cantonese. I was a little shocked at the $10 bill, having been spoiled by $3 meals (for 3 people) in Siem Reap. Phil quickly reminded me that this was the restaurant we nicknamed "the baller restaurant" last time we were in PP. The nickname spawned from our first time here as the tables near us popped down Benjamins for football bets, leaving us shocked in the midst. They also demanded Ah Ling to bring them every single item we, the foreigners, had ordered on top of their food. These were shot callers my friends.

I was quickly reminded of how cruel the city is, when Ah Ling laughed that it was Tola's first time in PP. City dwellers have forgotten about the country side; where there's no houses, no electricity lines, no AC or hot water, and no way make it to the city.

With Tola, our tuk tuk driver from Siem Reap, with us we rented a moto to get around town. Tola sat still as the rental service guy explained to him in English how to drive a moto. I could hardly contain my laughter, as Tola is a professional moto driver who speaks perfect Khmer. With us, Tola was no longer viewed as Khmer. People now saw him as a Canadian tourist, which was very strange but always hilarious.

I asked Tola why he's assuming the role of a Canadian. It was such a curious thing to do. He told me: "It's the chance to be a tourist in my own country! To see how tourists are treated. And now I can understand."

Not a bad reason at all.