The Hoi An children's festival was interesting - various swarms of children, some in dragon garb, one on drums, one as a scary looking red faced buddha; the dragon / evil spirit would invade all houses, shops and restaurants; the owner put money onto the buddha's paddle, which - to a frenzy of drums - would be fed to the evil spirit to drive it away from the house for the next year. Millions of moon cakes for sale all round, it also being full moon season; and lanterns rather than electricity being used for a while during the night.
Bus to Nha Trang was vaguely uncomfortable overnight experience, but nothing drastic - middling roads, working air-con, and I've grown quite adept at sleeping in a horizontal lotus position, with legs neatly bent and crossed vertical against the window, and just enough room for my back and head on the two seats. Nha Trang itself was a seaside town of modern uninteresting buildings, and a tiny amusement park for children next to the beach, with rides from the 1950s soviet era, or so they looked. The main thing to do there was go for a boat trip - so I did: a little snorkelling and a lot of drinking, it turned out to be. Unless there's something really spectacular to see / do, any tour depends on the quality of the guide and group - and in this case, both were excellent; a deadpan humored guide, and a cheerful set of Californians; all drank the mulberry wine (foul: cheap alchohol and nasty fruit juice taste) and sang our hearts out sitting in liferings in the South China Sea, with a crate of wine and fresh pineapple on floats next to us. Met up with them and some others from the previous night in the Sailing Club bar later that evening, and had a fine session of dancing for the first time in months. God, I have missed it. I was surprised when I checked my watch during a dud session of garage and found it was 5am.
On to Saigon - or Ho Chi Minh city as it's now called. Similar trip, no worse or better, but when I woke up at 2pm after crashing on arrival at 6am, my eyes were streaming, sinuses acting up and I felt like hell. Some kind of allergy or something, but it's left me doing nothing much off my own bat for the last few days. Saw the War Remnants Museum - the views on Americans are pretty much what you'd expect, but always unexpected as a contrast to the normal view. All phraseology was geared towards the 'liberators', the viet cong, with many references to American brutality; much was made of the anti-American-in-Vietnam movement worldwide; the prison cells where viet cong were kept and tortured by americans and the pro-American army were graphically displayed, as were two deformed pickled embryos (the result of Agent Orange), and numerous horrible torture instruments and pictures of people after torture and their accounts of what happened. There was also a display of pictures by children done last year, on various topics to do with war and peace - again, angry nasty soldiers with USA emblazoned on their uniforms, doing terrible things to sad looking natives, predominated. I met some Australians who had been talking to a Vietnamese about the World Trade Centre bombings - his reaction was that it was kinda nice to see the Americans having to suffer for a change, after inflicting so much suffering on others and never having to endure problems on their own territory. A reprehensible attitude, but understandable.
Went on a trip to the Mekong Delta the next day. The bits of scenery I saw while my eyes were open seemed nice - lots of lush palm trees, water all around - actually, more than normal, it being flooding season here, a large proportion of the houses were slightly flooded. The locals just move out during this time if necessary, without giving too much thought to it.. though why they don't just use the stilt houses that predominated in Laos is debatable. Went around a forest area where the viet cong had congregated, by canoe - most of their tunnels and meeting places seemed submerged; I assume they met elsewhere during the wet seaason. A 3 hr boat trip down the Mekong, with a really spectacular sunset was followed by landing in Can Tho, the provincial capital. This seemed a lot more capitalish than anywhere in North Vietnam or Laos - dull architecture, giant light signs advertising drinks all along the riverbank. At least the dinner was interesting - snake - cobra - stir fry. My first time trying snake - pink as salmon, and rather flavorless, but not a bad stirfry. The next day was a long tour along the small waterways of the area, passing through areas swamped by waterspinach and waterpalms, past tiny poor houses and kids all waving hello at us. Wound up in a floating market - all the locals pile their boats high with things to sell and barge up and down a small stretch of river plying their wares - and went on to a ricepaper making factory (pretty simple - crush rice, boil it to a paste, steamfry it like a pancake, let it dry and shred it into noodles or cut it wahatever way you want). Went to Vinh Long market later - even better than normal; as well as the usual peculiar local fruit and veg, pigs in pokes, hens in baskets, bowls of writhing eels, wicker baskets of toads and frogs, they also had big cages of snakes and tortoises which I haven't seen elsewhere.
And yesterday, went on yet another tour - this time to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels, both standard touristy places. The Cao Dai temple I hated - okay: the temple was nice, colourful and picturesque, and the idea of a religion which had Victor Hugo as one of its three patron saints, and which manages to fuse Catholicism, Buddhism and Hinduism into a harmonious whole which has obtained 2million followers in 80 years - all that was attractive, but the hordes of western tourists trooping around taking pictures any time a monk tried to pray, was horribly offputting. The Cu Chi tunnels were interesting though - more fighting oriented than the ones near Hue; booby trapped and tiny - you have to bend into a low crouch, with knees at full bend, to walk - or rather, waddle - through them. And these were the ones which were enlarged for western tourists.. god knows how they made it through with full fighting gear, guns etc. Also got to drink some local snake wine - alcohol with snake bile added; it tasted like sherry with a bite (har har.)
Saigon itself is okay.. mostly modern buildings, but haphazardly piled around, with plenty of streets of corrugated iron shacks; the place is big enough that you don't get a second look everywhere you go. I'm staying in a homestay off a shoulder-wide alley near the main tourist area, way up on the roof, 5 floors up ladder-like rickety stairs, with a small bedroom, balcony, and cold water shower. It overlooks a prostitutes flat - or so I judge from the red lights and glitterballs; haven't seen any action there but the householder's expression when I asked her about it suggests my guess is right. On to Cambodia tomorrow.