Last night a few of us went to Train Street, in Hanoi. It is a street so narrow that you can reach out and touch the trains as they go by (not that you SHOULD, Mikey). What a perfect way to end the trip. Afterwards, The Husband and I pretended that we’d meet The Others for dinner but then secretly bailed. I hate goodbyes.
The Husband and I are on the first leg of our flight back to the USA. I eagerly ordered from the Western Menu and got a gelatinous mixture of kidney beans and coconut. I enjoyed the trip but, I’m not going to lie, it’s time for a burrito.
There were many eye opening occasions that as a Westerner I haven’t felt free to write about it till now.
At the beginning of the trip we were told that cameras and microphones were on us and to ask any sensitive questions away from the group. At Ha Long Bay one man opened up about the Communist Party (hates it) and his father who was Vietcong (hates him). The ubiquitous cameras and microphones of the Vietnamese Communist Party are apparently turned off in the middle of a bay in the South China Sea.
Another person said she was essentially a slave to her mother-in-law and was forced to leave her own mother to take care of her husband’s family. People who only have daughters in this culture die alone.
All private land in Vietnam was seized by the government. People can still own structures but the ground on which they are built is leased to them for 49 years.
The Cambodians hate the Thai people, the Vietnamese hate the Cambodians. North Vietnam and South Vietnam still feel like two different countries. There is a cloud of pessimism hanging over the people who must believe a new war is brewing.
Cambodia still has the world’s largest concentration of land mines near the Thailand border (despite those hero rats that help to find them).
Infrastructure inside the cities is poor. Masses of people live in homes as small as 100 square feet with a bathroom that’s good for No. 1. If you have to do otherwise, you share a ground floor toilet with your neighbors.
Infrastructure will get better though, with the help of neighboring Russia and China paying billions for improvements.
Just sayin’. God bless the USA.
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Postscript:
I have been writing stories since I was a little girl. My debut book at age 7, Triplets for Niplets, was not widely circulated so it means the world to know people read what I write. Thanks to the 4.2K visitors from 58 countries and six continents who followed my blog this trip. #FrickingAntartica.
To my “Green Family”, thanks for enriching my life.
And to Cap: Thanks for the friendly blog competition. It was fun to mentor you from your start as a mere writer of newsletters, then watch you graduate to blogger, and now achieve success as a foreign correspondent with a website of your own. Fly away, my butterfly, you have your wings.
These photos “never before published” (by me anyway):
A Pierman Sister 