Cat Tien National Park: A Breath of Fresh…er Air Than Saigon

When you visit a tourist site, there are multiple ways to experience it and tick it off your list.  You can see the headline sights from the safe cocoon of your tour bus, getting out to stretch your legs at designated photo opportunities and get exhausted from the sheer amount of transiting you have to do.  On the other extreme you can grab your obscure guidebook which has all the super-secret inside tips, do it all on your own and potentially get stuck in a dangerous situation, or completely miss the main point of what you’re trying to visit.

Our visit to Cat Tien was in the middle – we were guided by a well-informed guide who truly cares about the national park we were visiting, and was willing to create a custom tour for a group of friends wanting to explore Vietnam.

The General Ridiculousness of Vietnam

In Vietnam there are plenty of English-language news websites, that are translations of popular newspapers in Vietnam.  There are even a few newspapers which are translated into English, although I haven’t been able to buy them on the street – only in fancy hotels.  Regardless, there’s a good amount of Vietnamese news that expats can read, even though it’s quite clear that we get a highly curated selection of articles.

There’s generally something surprising and a little bit out of left field on the front page of these news sites – today’s article of 7200 people in Saigon having the same ID number was one of those cases.  Generally the first thought is “how does this kind of thing happen?”, at which point anyone who’s lived in Vietnam for more than a month could easily respond with the off-hand response “TIV” (This Is Vietnam).  It’s great to have this kind of comedy popping up on a regular basis.

Other recent gems from this fine land include:

• A new security team patrolling Nguyen Hue, the recent walking street in the centre of town, has been given rollerblades, to stop people skating around Nguyen Hue on rollerblades.
• Not quite so recent but one I particularly enjoy, some positive news from a local community: a drainage pipe that was used as a shortcut since it goes under a highway gets replaced with a real road!
• A more typical Vietnamese aviation story: a popular Vietnamese singer gets her son to urinate into a sick bag on a Hanoi-Saigon flight.

Brilliant stuff.

It is definitely the rainy season

I look down at my phone for a minute over lunch, then look back up and it’s suddenly raining.  Typical Saigon in July.

5 minutes later it was all clear to walk back to the office.

An Exercise in Futility: The Vietnamese Language

Vietnamese.  A language that is largely unknown in Australia mainly due to Vietnam’s relatively small stature on a global scale, but more likely due to its complex combination of tones, accents and strange sounds that simply don’t exist in English.

For any tourist getting into Vietnam, all these odd words on street signs and storefronts initially look like any other Asian language.  I mean, you’re only going to be in the country for a week or two, what need do you have to learn the language other than a few basic phrases?  Actually, hang on – they seem to use quite a lot of words for simple things, and they’re all really short, and there are all those symbols, but surely you can just speak it like English when you read out of a phrasebook and it’s fine, right?

WRONG.

ANZAC Day 2015

For Australians and New Zealanders, April 25 is ANZAC Day – the day when we reflect and remember the sacrifices our soldiers have made, in particular those who fought in World War I.  This year was the 100th anniversary since the first major military action of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) when they landed at Gallipoli in Turkey, so the events at Gallipoli itself, around Australia and New Zealand and other locations around the world were quite special.

In Vietnam, the major event related to ANZAC Day was in Vung Tau, the peninsula a few hours southeast from Ho Chi Minh City.  Currently it is a beachside retreat for many people in Saigon, but in the late 1960s and 70s this was the location of many Australian soldiers during the Vietnam-American War.  About 10km north of Vung Tau City, the Long Tan Cross – a memorial site of the many battles between Vietnamese and Australian soldiers – is where many diplomats from Australia and New Zealand go to attend the dawn service, along with many soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War itself who make the trek annually.

HCMC From The Sky

From the various flights we’ve taken in and out of Saigon, here are a few photos looking out onto the city and surrounding areas.

From memory this was descending into HCMC from the east.

Vietnam-Lite: A Weekend in Dalat

Want to get away from the relentless heat of Vietnam’s summer?  Had enough of the chaotic traffic that defines Saigon and Hanoi?  Need to use some of the cold weather clothing that you inexplicably brought to a country which almost always enjoys tropical weather?  You should go to Dalat.

Hanging Out in Neverland

Neverland is a pretty well known fictional place to most people, and just mentioning its name will either invoke images of Michael Jackson holding a baby over a railing or of a wonderful happy place where your worries drift away.  Of course, in the traditional version of Neverland, Peter Pan and his Lost Boys spend an eternal childhood never growing up, and in general having a grand old time on their tropical island in the middle of nowhere. Neverland was their fantasy island, a place of endless freedom and no responsibility.

A few months ago, whenever I was asked how our life in Vietnam was going, I started responded simply with “it’s a playground”, purely due to the freedom and ease of living that being an expat in Vietnam provides. That statement still holds true, and I imagine it will for the remainder of our stay here. In a way, Vietnam is our version of Neverland.

The ideas around growing up (and delaying it as long as possible), lifestyle differences between various countries of residence and the general ridiculousness of Vietnam was the basis of a couple of independent conversations we had the other weekend, both with good friends as well as some random expats who we will probably never bump into again. (If I had a dollar for every expat that I’ve met in this country and never saw again…)