Singapore and Vietnam

When you think of Singapore, you imagine a clean and efficient city that sticks out in Southeast Asia like a sore thumb and for the most part it is true. Singapore is the business and financial heart of Southeast Asia. It is made of of majority Chinese although there is a large population of Indians, Malays, and Westerners as well. The official language is English and its clear to see English is quickly becoming the worlds language. It was nice to be in an actual city again. The subway system was extremely efficient and overall the city was very clean. Every time you bought a subway ticket you had to pay a $1 deposit and you could redeem it after your trip by putting the ticket back in the machine, a great way to minimize waste and recycle. I was lucky to find a Japanese guy living in Singapore on couchsurfing for my whole 4 day stay. Kuni, my host is really an incredible guy. He is softspoken and quiet but has traveled to over 100 countries including many in Africa. He lives in a luxurious but small studio/ 1 bedroom apartment and hosted 4 people every night. In fact he says in the last few years, rarely a night has gone by where he hasn't hosted at least one person. He truly lives for couchsurfing and I think for many middle aged men especially couchsurfing gives them a community to feel part of. You can never feel lonely with new people staying at your place every night but I don't know if I could do what Kuni does. He just moved to Singapore a week or so before I arrived and was already hosting people. I owe him a great deal of thanks. Not having to pay for a room made me able to enjoy Singapore a little more and not be so concerned with my spending. I booked a hop on hop off bus/boat tour and was able to use it for 2 days. So I hopped on and went around the city. I learned many interesting things, for one it is extremely expensive to buy/own a car in Singapore. You first have to pay for a permit just to be allowed to buy a car and then taxes are insane as well. It's something like $10,000 just for the permit. They do this to minimize traffic and pollution in the city and it definitely works. Singapore reminds me a little bit of San Antonio as all the action is on the riverfront. However the buildings in Singapore are a lot bigger and I would say the river is a little nicer.

I visited Chinatown which was just another Chinatown, nothing special, every big city has one and also the Asian Civilizations Museum which was very interesting. There are exhibits on the history of Southeast Asia as a whole and Singapore in particular as well as specific exhibits on Chinese and Indian history and the influenced they have had on SE Asia. It was a very interesting place but after a few hours your brain is on overload and you can't retain any more information. I also visited Sentosa Island, which is kind of a mini island with a bunch of attractions and amusements on it like an aquarium, different 3-d shows and other things. They only thing I wanted to do was the luge which is basically just this go cart type thing and you go rolling down a road. It was pretty fun but was over quickly. They also have beaches on Sentosa but it is not much. They ship in the sand from elsewhere, and it is not really paradise as there are many oil tankers in the ocean. I did, however, visit the southern most point in mainland SE Asia, which was on Sentosa. This too, however, was not very interesting, just basically a platform to overlook the ocean.

The next day I wandered through Little India which was right by Kuni's place. It was actually pretty interesting and authentic. I had some delicious chicken briyani and definitely want to learn how to cook Indian food when I get home. There was also a pretty neat Hindu Temple in the middle of Little India which reminded me a lot of India itself. Everyone inside was making offerings to the deities or something and there was a lot of music and gathering. I'm not really sure exactly what was going on, Hinduism is the one religion that confuses me most. For the rest of the day I just relaxed at Kuni's and that night I went out with Sven who was a Hungarian guy also traveling at Kuni's and about 20 other couchsurfers that we met. We went out clubbing in Singapore and I would say at least half of the people at the club were white. I lost Sven halfway through the night which sucked because I was relying on him to get us back to Kuni's. I like going to clubs now and then but overall it's not my thing. I have to be either really drunk or with good friends to enjoy myself and I was neither so I was ready to go home by about 2:00 AM. Unfortunately cabs are very expensive at that time so I ending up staying out with everyone till around 6:00 when the metro started running. Although Singapore is known as a clean city, when I left there was trash and beer bottles all over the place. The area we went out was called Clarke Quay and it is basically an area on the river with a large concentration of bars and clubs. It's actually a really cool area and a cool spot to go out because everything is close to each other, I just would have preferred a cool bar with maybe some live music. I made it back to Kuni's dead tired and luckily was able to get inside the gate as someone was leaving. I got inside and passed out on the couch and got about 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up for my flight to Saigon.

Saigon was the first place on my trip that I had been to before and I was curious what that would be like. Would I remember the streets at all? I first came to Saigon on Semester at Sea but when I got there this time it was completely different. I went right to the "backpacking district" and there was many hotels and restaurants catered to backpackers all over the place. I definitely didn't see this the first time I was here. It is very interesting because on SAS we mostly stayed on the ship so we avoided the main backpacker areas which was cool because it made things feel less touristy in a way. I didn't quite expect the amount of backpackers that I would encounter in Saigon. In addition to backpackers, there were many older tourists in Saigon as well, a much older crowd than Thailand or Malaysia for instance. I walked through the city trying to recognize streets I had probably been to before. I finally found a familiar spot when I saw a statue of a man on a horse and a kind of grassy park area near by. I had remembered being in that area the first time I was in Saigon. The first night I just wandered around and walked to Apocalypse Now, a bar/club that I had fond memories of. I found the club after walking around for about half an hour but everything seemed so different. I certainly don't remember seeing so many nice stores and buildings. Saigon has all the latest stores and even has a Louis Vitton. There was an opera going on in the opera house and a row of motorbikes lined up outside watching on a screen which was pretty cool. One thing I do remember about Saigon is the crazy traffic. There are really no street signals and there are hundreds of motorbikes going in all different directions. There are no crosswalks and to get across the street you just start walking and hope the motorbikes avoid you in time. I met up with another couchsurfer the first night, an English DJ/model type that seemed to have a lot of amazing couchsurfing experiences but who was not the type of person I would typically be friends with. Nice as hell but a little bit to into himself. We ended up at a club and I didn't feel like doing the club thing 2 nights in a row so I left early. I will so the girls in Saigon though are absolutely beautiful. I can see why so many westerners come here to teach and find themselves a nice Asian girlfriend. I don't know if I could do it and respect myself though. I had a lot of conflicting emotions and thoughts about the whole thing, my latest gf being Vietnamese and all.

The next day I visited the War Remnants Museum which I didn't get a chance to do the first time I was here. It was truly a powerful experience and the whole time I felt myself shrinking inside as an American. We really did some terrible things in the Vietnam War but it is really interesting because the Vietnamese that were for the South feel very grateful towards America, many escaped and lived there after the war but many old Vietnamese probably still hate Americans. The young people in Vietnam seem to hold no grudges against Americans though. My tour guide for my Mekong Delta trip which I will go into said Vietnamese have three prevailing opinions of Americans: 1) They all want to learn English so they think America is good, many want to go there 2) They just want all the world to live in peace now, and 3) The American military men had no choice of where they went, they were just following orders so most like Americans but don't like the American government which is perfectly understandable. The War Remnants Museum was very interesting with some graphic photos of the terrible affects of Agent Orange. There were also many photos of all the countries around the world protesting the war. I really don't know much about the war and the world opinion at the time but I am interested now to read a lot more about it. After the War Remnants Museum I visited the Reunification Palace which was the home of the President of South Vietnam during the war. Unfortunately it has not been taken care of very well and much of it was dirty and falling apart and overall it didn't really have an impact on me. The rest of the day I just relaxed and walked around and booked a 2 day trip to the Mekong Delta leaving the next morning.

On a sidenote, being in Vietnam, I definitely had to step up my bargaining compared to Malaysia and Thailand. In Thailand bargaining is friendly and cordial, they get offended when you get upset, in Malaysia there is minimal bargaining as everything is fixed price but in Vietnam if you don't bargain hard you will get taken advantage of. The prices they quote you are five to ten times the actual price you should pay so you have to bargain hard and usually if you walk away they will come chasing after you and agree on your price. The Vietnamese of made copies of pretty much every Lonely Planet book that exists and hundreds of novels as well so you can buy copies for cheap prices which is nice if you want a book to read and get rid of when your down but which wouldn't last for any prolonged amount of time. But the accomodation in Vietnam, at least in Saigon, is much more expensive then any other place I've been so far. Maybe it's because the high season is starting but I had to bargain hard just to get a single room for $10, most places wanted $15 or $20 which is a lot for this area. I hope other parts are cheaper.

Back to the Mekong Delta trip. First of all there are many different travel agencies in Saigon, I went to about five or six of them looking for the best trip but it turned out to be a complete wast of time because they all are the same. All the travel agents use the same company and everyone is on the same trip. So about twenty of us got on a bus and started our tour. Our first stop was My Tho and Unicorn Island an Island on the Mekong River where we saw a bee farm and had some honey and then saw locals making coconut candy. The candy was pretty delicious but pretty much the whole island had been set up strictly for tourists. There were merchants selling T-shirts and souvenirs and I felt like a cow just being herded from one activity to the next. We took a boat and went through some canals but it was all pretty touristy. The best part of the day was after lunch we were able to take bikes and explore the area on our own which was pretty cool. Then we got back on a bus for many hours and eventually on a ferry. The bus ride was pretty bad because half the people on it were just complaining about how long it was taking. I just wanted to punch some of them in the face. This is not Germany or Canada people, you're in SE Asia and you have to go with the flow. I was glad that I had signed up for the homestay option for $10 more because when everyone went to the hotel I was whisked away on a motorbike by my host. After about a half hour ride on the motorbike I arrived at my homestay. The place had been set up to host tourist about three years ago. There were separate rooms for tourists to stay and hammocks laid outside in the common area overlooking the river. Nonetheless, it was an authentic experience. The dad was the only one there for a while and I spoke to him for a while. He was a high school Chemistry teacher and had a 14 and 19 year old son. They came home a few hours later along with one of their friends who heard their was a foreigner staying tonight and wanted to practice his English. So I talked with him for a while and tried to help him with his English. He was trying to study in Singapore and had to pass exams to test his English and was having trouble. English was the way out for so many of these people in these countries the way to study in other countries and to make something out of their lives. Everybody wants to learn English these days, I guess I should be thankful that it is my first language. In Asia, with knowing English comes opportunity. You can work as a tour guide or in tourism in some other way. Everybody wants to know it. Kids and adults alike will walk up to you on the street just to practice. I could see myself teaching English for a year or two when I'm done traveling to try to help these people out. I realize that teaching English is really giving people opportunities and it would be a cool thing to be a part of. The maid or housekeeper served me a feast for dinner which could have easily fed five or six. The next morning Viet, my host lent me a bike and I biked up and down the path that he lived on. There was basically one long path with houses on either side and a river behind one side. Viet's house was right on the river. I rode to the local market and passed many houses on the way, I was able to observe real Vietnamese people in real life and see their houses. Nobody spoke English and I ended up sitting with a group of men having tea for a while which was nice. After my bike ride the maid drove me back to meet up with the rest of the tour group. The rest of the morning we took a small boat and was able to witness the largest floating market in Vietnam and maybe all of SE Asia. This market was as real as it gets, sure there were tourists there watching but the buyers and sellers weren't there for the tourists. The farmers come from all over the area and bring their fruits or vegetables by boat to the floating market. Our guide said if they were lucky they would sell everything in 3 days and then go back home and come back a few days later and do it all over again. Sometimes it took as long as a week to sell everything. Some farmers specialized in one thing, maybe pineapples or potatoes while others grew a few things. To let the buyers know what they were selling they put up a giant stick on the front of the boat and tied the fruit or vegetable they were selling to it. A very basic system of wholesaling. These farmers live on their basic wooden boats while they are waiting to sell their supply. It is a very basic life but a respectable one. Most of the Vietnamese men and all the farmers are in perfect shape because they are doing physical labor all the time, they all have six packs and perfectly proportional bodies. They know how to use their hands and build and fix boats, all things I will never know how to do. I respect their ability and almost envy them in a way. I could definitely live of the fresh fruits and vegetables that people in Vietnam and all over SE Asia by from their local market every day. After touring the floating market we visited a rice noodle factory and rice husking mill, both interesting places. They are pretty much small family owned businesses that just make the rice noodles and rice for that region. After lunch we returned to Saigon on a bumpy ride and after bargaining and checking out 6 or 7 hotels finally settled on one for $10 which was more than I wanted to pay but the best I could do. Tomorrow I go to Mui Ne which is supposed to be a nice beach town with world renowned Kite boarding and cool Sand Dunes. I am excited to explore the rest of this country with so much history and to talk to the people to learn more about the feelings about the current situation in the country.