Final Email

OK... this is it. This is my final email. At last I will go back home in a couple of days. Not that it hasn't been great, but I want to sleep in my apartment. I'm sick of hotels.

Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City). Pretty cool city. It has everything. Besides Bangkok, it's the closest a Southeast Asian city gets to being Western. It has everything. It's actually the biggest city in Vietnam, even though it's not the capital (but I think I mentioned that before). But, unlike Bangkok, it has a small-city feel. I can't think of an American city like this, but for those of you that have been to Guadalajara, Mexico, it's kind of like that.

Yesterday we decided to veg, so we didn't get much done. After a day of travel we need one day (at least half) to recuperate. I think the trip is getting to me because we have a very hard time getting up early. But, anyway... yesterday, we went out to dinner. Our hotel is very far from the tourist area because we decided to splurge. We're staying at a 4-star hotel that, even though it's not a 5-star hotel, it's still better than the $15-30 per night hotels we stayed at. After Cambodia, where I picked the hotels, Lorena refused to go along with my selections in Vietnam, so we've been staying at pretty nice hotels... you know, the kind that have hot water in them... or clean sheets... or that are lizard-less. It's not as bad as it sounds, but we did stay at pretty nasty places in Cambodia (although I think we didn't have much of a choice).

Anyway, as I was saying, we went out and looked for a place to eat. Since we were the only foreign devils around, nobody spoke English. So we wandered into a Vietnamese version of Hooters. A lot of girls is very skimpy outfits trying to sells us beer (or "bia" in Vietnamese) like there was no tomorrow. They had to go get a special menu that was in English. I think they may have ordered it from a sister restaurant because it took them about 30 minutes to give it to us. But, that was the most authentic cuisine we've had since we started our trip. Some of the selections: suckling piglet, snake (and snake head under a different heading), unborn piglet, pig's feet (I must admit I've had these in Mexico... they're OK), eels, chicken's feet, frog (with or without skin), cow tail soup (or was it ox), some animal's kidney, etc. I tried to convince Lorena to get the suckling piglet (I imagined a pig with an apple in its mouth; plus, it was about $15 bucks), but she didn't go for it. The girls had fun watching us eating and ordering rice (apparently they don't eat rice normally). It was fun. [Alex, era como ir al Negro Durazo o Carnitas Uruapan]

Today we walked around Saigon and went to the Reunification Palace. It used to be the building that housed the South-Vietnamese government before "reunification." It's a building frozen in time. Some pilot bombed it in the 60's and they completely rebuilt it, so picture mustard colored shag carpets, Ikea-looking chairs, orange-colored tables... you get the picture. Then, in the basement, they showed us a short documentary telling the "truth" of the Vietnamese conflict. It's interesting to get the other point of view, even if it's a bit (or a lot)on the propaganda side. It was OK. There's not much to see in Saigon in terms of culture. It's just a big city. We did have a pretty nice lunch today, though.

Yes, my fellow aggressors, occupiers, imperialists, etc. (I think they indoctrinated me in the basement), this will be my last email about my travels, unless you guys want me to describe our life in Fresno. The next email I'll send will be of pictures.

Oh, and remember, go to Thailand (Bangkok for a couple of days or more if your budget is huge and you can afford a really nice hotel) and concentrate on the beaches. Then, go to Cambodia (Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat before it's pillaged by the petroleum company I was telling you about) but try to avoid Phnom Phen (at least for the time being). As for Vietnam, you definitely should come, specially to the north. You need at least two weeks (at least, but a month would be ideal) to see the country. I think we're coming back in a few years.