A Fastpack through the Big One

DAY ONE!!!
I'm going to TRY to blog SOMETHING every day while traveling.  Sometimes it might be small, sometimes it might be a ramble, and on some nights, I may have more time to put some decent effort into a post.

This morning started early with my darling roommate zipping me off on my last DaNang motorbike ride to the airport.  I tried to soak in the trip as much as horn-honkingly possible, but I knew I would be in HCMC soon anyway and get a good dose of motorbike terror on the backs of random nice-smelling xe-oms (moto taxis).  Sitting on the hard steel chair in our dinky airport, I tried not to be too sentimental.  I gave my roomie a giant hug, and some of the people from the restaurant I volunteered at showed up at 6am (bless them!) at the airport to give gifts and see me off.  They and the rest of my DaNang family were on my mind when our boarding call sounded throughout the terminal.  I slowly stood up and stood in the chaos of an attempt at a queue for plane ticket ripping.  Being a temp resident in Vietnam, I knew better than to expect a line - this is the closest I get to unintentional moshing these days.

The flight was fast!

Ho Chi Minh has some beautiful parks, right in the middle of urban life

Today I wanted to take it easy because a) no offense HCMCers, but I'm not huge into big cities and after living in VN for nearly a year, I'm excited to see other countries!  So I'm visiting a select few museums and calling it a day!

I might have started my day in a more cheery place, but my couchsurfing host was working in District1 and she said she'd look after my rucksack while I meandered around.  Her work was walking distance to the War Remnants Museum so that's where I started.


Sometimes my pride and love for my country is overshadowed by sadness and discomfort.  It was a strange feeling being American in a building filled with evidence of unjust murder.  I couldn't help it - looking at the  pictures and the guns and grenade launchers and agent orange-affected floating fetuses (What?! Yes, floating deformed fetuses) gave me a feeling beyond words.  I would swim through currents of guilt and discomfort, then come up for a breath of change and modernity, then sink through agony once again.  There was an overwhelming collection of memories from a decade of mass sadness.  I can't say I was willing to stay for too long; I don't even like looking at guns, much less what they do to people.  Any people.  I think it's important to visit, though.  It's important to not bury the past and to learn from what war does to a culture, and how a country must rebuild itself from dust after a travesty like the American/Vietnam war.  One section of the museum had a very cool installation of photographs of what certain towns looked like during the war and what they look like now.  I saw a picture of an intersection I've stood at in Dong Hoi.  The old photo of mass destruction is shocking to look at, knowing I stood at that exact place a few weeks ago.

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My next destination was a personal must - the Fine Arts Museum.

I saw the theme of war affecting the modern pieces heavily.  Artists are often part of the way we catalog history.  2D and 3D artists can capture emotion so intensely, and it was jarring but so amazing to look into the faces of these pieces and see what they must have been feeling at the time of creation.
My main intention of heading to the museum, however, was to see HCMC's extensive ceramic collection.  Wow - the Vietnamese hand building and wheel thrown pieces blew me away.  I want to document historical ceramic work in each of the next five countries, so this was a fabulous start, even if it wasn't practicing artists.





My couchsurf host lives on the 19th floor of an apartment building in District5.  You can see a beautiful panorama from her balcony.  We went out for some yummy Bun Thit Nuong (noodles, veg, pork and special sauce) and smoothies before coming back home to work on a puzzle that I had brought from DaNang!  A puzzle?  Yes - we had a very adventurous and fun night watching Pitch Perfect and working out the tedious beginnings of a 2000 piece puzzle of Neuschwanstein that my dad got me last Christmas.  Party.  Animals.  

Tomorrow morning I take a bus to Cambodia!  Tạm biệt Vietnam!  

My host's view.  Not too shabby.