Bike inside one of the old Hoi An family houses.

Hoi An market

Gorilla arms. While not what every girl wants to be called, it is a somewhat accurate description of my gangly limbs. Such arms attached to a tall and thin body make it hard to find dress clothes that fit right. If the torso fits, I’m practically baring my midriff and full-length sleeves become ¾ sleeves. I suppose everyone, gorilla arms or not, has trouble with this and that in terms of clothes fitting properly. In comes the tailor. And those are quite plentiful in Hoi An, where its easier to find a cloth shop than a bowl of pho. So I got a shirt made yesterday to see how it would turn out, and then today I bought four more…and a blazer. Matt placed an order for two shirts (we had to show the seamstress a pre-trip photo of him before she understood that she really did need to add a few inches to his current measurements) and a custom pair of leather shoes. We definitely succumbed to the custom-made craze that permeates the air in Hoi An. All of our new duds will all be ready to pick up by tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we could have found a cheaper place in the city or somewhere else, but frankly, I just tell myself that it’s cheaper than at home. My gorilla arms will hence forth be covered by sleeves that fit.

It was gloomy all day. Despite the rain, we decided to go for a walk before our 12 bus ride. We passed by this street stall selling something that looked like rice or some sort of spring roll that had been cooked in a banana leaf. I wasn’t really sure what it was though, but decided to try it. We walked back to the stall and I asked what it was. She was unwrapping the food from slightly charred banana leaves. “Bananas,” the woman replied. Rice seemed to be a part of the dish as well. Can’t go wrong there. Matt and I took a seat, waiting for our banana and rice. The stall consisted of a small table housing the ingredients with a large pot warming over a coal bbq. Short tables accompanied by ever shorter stools were placed nearby. To our surprise and delight, the woman lifted the lid off the pot to reveal a milky coconut and tapioca sauce which she liberally pour over the slices of grilled banana and rice. We each took a spoonful of the warm dessert. It tasted wonderful. The banana was soft and sweet, complemented by the crispy stickiness of the grilled glutinous rice, and the warm coconut sauce pulled the simple flavors together and warmed up as we sat in out wilted raincoats on those little stools.

When our bus arrived in Nha Trang several nights ago, we stepped off it into the Eastern Monsoon which batters the south from May to September. Joylani darted across the sidewalk with our daypacks, while grabbed our big packs from under the bus, trying not to slip in the flooded street. We took a room at the hotel the bus stopped at, which luckily was a good value place. Not so luckily, that night kind of defined our time in Nha Trang. It rained a bit everyday we were there and it was pretty dreary the whole time. Kind of a bummer, considering that the main attraction in Nha Trang is the beach. So how else did we spend our time? Joylani went to a nearby hot springs to indulge in a mudbath and soak in mineral water. We tried a lot of food and found a few treats; delicious BBQ pork and rice for breakfast and fried bananas with glutinous sticky rice and coconut milk for an afternoon dessert. With all the rain, we killed a lot of time at cafes and drank a lot of Vietnamese ice coffee (ca phe sua da), a delicious concoction of coffee, sweetened condensed milk, and ice. We found beer stalls on the street that served pitchers for a mere 14,000 dong, only around .85 USD. Eating aside, Nha Trang was unimpressive. But I feel that even had it been clear and sunny the past few days, it would’ve disappointed. The long stretch of beach is not very pretty, not too mention its full of hawkers and is only separated from the busy city by a busy road. Urban beaches aren’t too great in the first place, and even worse in stormy weather. I’ll try not to dwell on the past few days though.

I had a mud bath today. The Thap Ba Hot Springs are just outside of the city of Nha Trang where we’ve been the last couple of days. It’s supposedly well known in Vietnam for its mud baths, so I decided to give it a try. (Matt adamantly refused saying, “why would I want to go in a hot spring when it is already so hot?” But he was kind enough to be my moto driver and wait outside until I was done.) I went in the morning and there were only a dozen or so other people there. Even though I didn’t pay for the individual tubs, I still had everything to myself. After a quick mineral water shower, one of the attendants filled a hot tub sized bath partway with mud. It was much more watery than I thought it would be, but nice. It was the color of a latte and had a gritty texture. After soaking for a while, I headed back to the shower to rinse off. Then it was off too a little soaking tub with wonderfully hot mineral water. Thankfully, it was actually kind of overcast and cool that day, so the hot water felt nice. I skipped the waterfall and swimming pool since Matt was waiting outside, but with a group of friends, it could have been a fun place to hang out for an afternoon. So, is my skin noticeably exfoliated and radiant? Um, I can’t actually tell, but it was fun to try the whole hot springs mud bath thing. It was a completely different experience from my first (semi) mud bath: 3^rd grade at my friend’s new house where there was no grass, only freshly tilled soil. Much to her dad’s horror, we found a hose and made a huge mud puddle, but I think it caked up the soil when it dried. Oops.

…we conceded to the schemes of the tour company and stayed at the hotel next to the office where our bus dropped us off. It was pouring rain. Sheets of rain. The gutters on the street were filled. We didn’t want to get soaked. Instead of walking a few blocks to find a hotel on our own, we dashed next door into the adjoining hotel. Our room was a few floors up (ie lots of stairs), but walking into our room, I didn’t mind so much that we stayed at the tour company’s hotel. It was nice. Not just one, but two large double beds, fridge, hot water, cable tv—but the best features are big windows on two walls and a balcony, all overlooking a block of roof tops not yet high enough to block a wonderful view of the ocean and a few of the surrounding islands.

From top left, clockwise: mangosteen, soursop (and open soursop), rambutan (and open rambutan), longan (and open longan), snake fruit, and custard apple.

It’s about time I wrote a fruit post. I think it all started last year when Matt’s sister returned from a quick trip to Vietnam. She told me about how she had eaten this strange and wonderful fruit—dragon fruit. I knew I wanted to try it during Matt and my trip. During one of our first few days in Thailand I picked up a dragon fruit at a local market, but was disappointed to find that it wasn’t very fruity. It tasted more like a watery kiwi, pretty plain for its striking appearance. Not letting the dragon fruit get me down, I was determined not to give up on my quest for good fruits. Bananas and oranges are always good, but it was due time to start branching out.

Things began to pick up in Cambodia where I tried longan, rambutan, and tamarind (in a sauce) for the first time. We also tried a couple new varieties of bananas—one with round black seeds at the bottom (like b-bs) and the other so small in size that each banana could be eaten in 2-3 bites. I gained more courage for venturing out after chatting with another fruit person after hearing about the exciting fruits he’d tried during his travels. Back in Thailand I tasted water apples, jackfruit, mangosteen, yellow watermelon, and dried tamarind for the first time. Tamarind is delicious and chewy; it’s got that sweet and sour thing going on.

In Brunei Matt had a bite of soursop and raved about it, back in Malaysia I tried a soursop shake but still need to try the real thing. I decided to give dragon fruit (also known as pitaya) another shot, particularly since I’d heard the red dragon fruit is far better than the white variety, which is what I’d tried before. The red ones are indeed sweeter and juicier, about what I’d expected when I first heard of them. I also had my first crack at freshly roasted chestnuts, which aren’t exactly fruit, but they come from a plant and taste really good so it sort of counts for this list.

In Indonesia we both fell in love with the crunchy and tart snake fruit as well as re-tried mangosteens, this time ripe and incredibly amazing.

(inside of snake fruit)
The flesh of a mangosteen is very silky, soft, and juicy. It tastes fragrant like a mixture of flowers and fruit, but not too overpowering. I tried jackfruit again, this time in a curry. I don’t really care for it, but the trees it grows on look pretty interesting.

Walking past the fruit stalls at a market in Saigon, I realized that almost every fruit being sold could not easily be found at home. Since arriving in Vietnam I’ve tried custard apple, langsat (it took me a while online to figure out what the name), pink guava, and the infamous durian, which wasn’t exactly bad, just interesting (though the smell in our hotel room after a couple of hours was pretty bad). I think the thing with durian is that it has a really nasty, fleshy, almost custard-like texture.

Paired with the smell it just isn’t so good. Maybe if it was a firm fruit I would have liked it better. Langsat looks similar to a longan from the outside, except that the color is slightly different and it is not round. Once opened, you can see that it is very different.

Instead of a juicy round flesh, the langsat is divided into segments and has a more citrus taste (almost like a really mild grapefruit) than the longan, which is very floral and juicy. Once peeled, longans look similar to the inside of a peeled grape. Rambutan, like longans are in the lychee family. Though they look exciting on the outside (kind of like a koosh ball), the fruit inside has never impressed me much.

Good water apples are similar in taste to a regular apple, only, as the name suggest, more firm/watery in texture than grainy as even crisp apples can be. Custard apples don’t taste like an apple at all, but are delicious nonetheless. The trick is to buy a ripe one—the scales on the outside should be easily peeled back to reveal a white, moist, pulpy flesh.

Black seeds dot the interior, but are easily spit out as you enjoy the distinct flavor and custard-texture of this fruit. I tried a soupsop, which is in the same family as the custard apple, but it was not ripe and unfortunately not very good. The soupsop juice I had though seemed to be similar in flavor to the custard apple, only more tart and tangy.

I’m glad that I’ve been able to taste so many new fruits. It seems like I have tried a lot, but there are still so many more out there. My favorites so far have been: passion fruit (in abundance at the buffet on Embudu), mangoes, custard apple, mangosteen, snake fruit, longan, and langsat. So maybe you’ve said in the past that you don’t want to travel because you don’t care about seeing anything, but you really should visit SE Asia for the fruit if nothing else.

Here’s some websites I used to help me identify the langsat. They have some pictures of fruit I mentioned above but don’t have pictures of myself.

http://www.indoindians.com/food/indfruit.htm
http://www.bangkokcooking.com/fruits.php

Massive structures made from such small grains of sand, dunes have always intrigued me. The beach a few minutes away from where I grew up has them, and their slopes gracefully frame the rough sea. The dunes where why I wanted to come to Mui Ne. Red dunes. I’ve seen grey ones and tan ones, but never red. So we decided to stop here for a day since it was on our way north anyways. In the morning we caught two xe om (motorbikes) to take us to the dunes.

In hindsight, we probably could have found the place on our own, but at the time we weren’t sure. I read a book once (I think Monkey bridge by Lan Cao) that described a few places in Vietnam, one of which was a fish sauce village. We passed through one on the way through the dunes—I could tell by the smell before I saw the shops, and could picture the scene in the book happening in a place just like that. Shortly afterward, the dunes were in sight. As Matt and I got off the bikes and started walking toward the dunes, we could see a handful of little kids running towards us with plastic sleds. They followed us up the dunes, pitching their services. “My name Kim. If you go twice, go with Kim.” “Where you from? I from New York,” said one little girl (obviously not). “How old are you?” I gave my age. “Oh, you look so much younger,” nice try kid, I thought, but I’m not trying to look like I’m 19.

Despite all the sweet talking and their natural cuteness, Matt and I declined to pay their inflated prices for unlimited sledding, but still decided (well, I made Matt do it) to pay a little bit to have one try each. The girls began to prepare a path for our sleds by throwing sand down the dune to decrease the friction for when we slid down. Matt went first, with the help of a push from one of the girls, and I followed. It was fun. The kids got all pouty when we refused to go again, but were quickly distracted by a large sand beetle I found. Matt and I continued roaming the dunes for a little bit. It was beautiful to see the wavy marks in the sand caused by the strong wind, echoing the larger shape of the dunes themselves. But it was hot and after about 30 or 40 minutes at the dunes, we walked back to the road to head back to our hotel. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try rolling down one of the dunes. It was a bumpy and sandy way down. Somewhat thrilling I guess, but mostly I was just dizzy and very sandy. I didn’t try it again.

Mui Ne was going to be a one-night stop to break-up the journey to Nha Trang. But after a few minutes staring out at the wavy ocean and thinking about how flexible our itinerary is, we quickly decided to stay an extra day. It was well worth it too. We stayed in a nice little room on the second floor of a guesthouse overlooking the green South China Sea. Most of the time here, the wind was strong and the waves were up. We walked a couple kilometers down the windy beach our first evening there. It felt like our shins and calves were getting sandblasted, but at least we were entertained by the dozens of kitesurfers flying around just offshore. Closer to shore, teenagers surfed in on the small waves. The windy, green-watered beach was unlike most of the picture-prefect beaches we’ve been to as of late, but the wind, surf, and activity made it a dynamic and enjoyable beach.

While we spent yesterday and this afternoon at the beach, the coolest thing we did here was visit some massive sand dunes this morning. We took a pair of motorbikes 15 km north, through villages along the fishing-boat-filled bay, to the huge dunes. Hopping off the bikes, we slippily hiked up a mountain of sand from the road. A group of small girls ran to us with plastic sheets, which they hoped we would use to slide down some dunes in return for a few dong. They followed us as we walked up the dunes and along the ridges past giant bowls of sand. The dunes were much bigger than I had expected and it seemed almost like a scene out of Lawrence of Arabia, with the huge dunes overlooking the sea. It was really windy up there, so for a second day in a row, our legs got sandblasted, but the wind continually altered the texture of the surfaces. We did eventually slide down the dunes which was fun, but my favorite part was taking in the unique scenery.

Besides the beach and the dunes, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to do in Mui Ne. It’s pretty much a tourist enclave strung out along a road of tour agencies and restaurants. On the plus side though, Mui Ne wasn’t very crowded and it was a quite place to relax. It wasn’t a bad place to stop for a few days.

Given what we’ve seen the past few days, its amazing that we’re even in Vietnam. Just a generation ago, American was engaged in a bitter decade-long war here. And now, we’re welcomed as any other nationality would be. In one sense, I’m grateful that so many places we’ve visited are so forgiving of the US and the West in general. And on another hand, its amazing to see how much places change, how fluid situations are. Forty years ago, Vietnam was arguably the worst place for an American to be in the second half of the 20^th century. And now look at it. Makes me wonder what Baghdad will be like in 40 years. Similarly, Laos was closed to all foreigners only fifteen years ago. What will North Korea be like in 15 years? Ten years ago, there was still fighting going on in Phnom Penh. How many of today’s hotspot will be safe in a decade? Perhaps there’s still hope…

One of my highlights in Saigon has to be our tour to the Cu Chi tunnels today. Cu Chi is about an hour and a half north of Saigon and a center of resistance during the war. Just as it was a few decades ago , it’s a forested region with pockets of rubber plantations. During French colonial times, rebels hid weapons in hidden holes and underground storerooms. But during the American war, these were expanded into an extensive tunnel network, comprising 250 km! We learned that the tunnels were built along three levels at 3, 6, and 8 meters, complete with stairways, air ducts, kitchens, sleeping quarters, wells, and booby traps. They were ingeniously designed with thousands of hidden entrances surrounded by booby traps, along with secret submerged entrances only accessible by swimming underwater in the Saigon River. Smoke was filtered and dissipated through various systems, so cooking could commence undetected from above. Air ducts were built into termite mounds, which provided camouflage.

model of tunnel system

B-52s destroyed nearly 80% of the tunnels in 1968-69 and defoliate/napalm was used extensively in the region, but it was from Cu Chi that the North launched effective offensives on Saigon. We got to go down into a couple of the tunnels, which were really really tiny. Many of the tunnels were built incredibly small, so Americans and other Western troops wouldn’t be able to enter or would get stuck due to their larger build.

it was tough for this little Asian lady to fit in this hole…imagine a GI trying to infiltrate the tunnels

We learned of all the horrors that the fighters faced below ground, along with the problems intruders encountered. One of the scariest things were tons of booby traps that we saw. Here’s some photos and descriptions of how they work:

false floor with metal spikes below

more spikes…yikes!

this set of spikes would swing down and impale any GI kicking down a door

Walking through the woods, it sounded like we were in the war, since there was also a firing range at which you could choose to use any of the weapons used by Vietnamese or American troops. Short bursts of AK-47s continually pierced the air. When she heard that there was a firing range, Joylani turned to me and said (seriously), “I want to fire an automatic weapon.” When we got there, she decided maybe not due to the super loud noise and the 1.5 USD per bullet price (minimum 10 bullets). Anyways, the tour of the tunnels was really interesting, between seeing and going in the claustrophobic tunnels, seeing the scariest looking booby-traps, and learning about the nature of the fighting that raged here.