All that's missing is Dick Clark...

Maybe it’s fitting that my journey should end with a tiger after a terrifying beginning and my tenuous toe throughout the trip...this time the experience was a little tamer. "Chuc Mung Nam Moi" was plastered on most billboards and could be heard everywhere as celebrations for Tet 2010, the year of the Tiger were in full swing throughout Ho Chi Minh City.

We arrived in Vietnam knowing that Tet, the lunar New Year, celebrations would be underway. We were NOT prepared for the extent to which then Vietnamese celebrate this holiday. On the days leading up to the big day the locals prepare by decorating their homes with flowers, cooking up a storm and cleaning. For the tourist strolling the streets this means a unique opportunity to see flower vendors that stretch for blocks, markets open for 24 hours a day and not a speck of garbage or dirt anywhere.

One of our biggest decisions this entire trip was deciding where to ring in the lunar New Year. To help with this momentous decision we turned to the 'Book' - 1000 Places to See Before You Die - and reserved a table on the roof of the Rex Hotel. This hotel served as a home base for many news correspondents during the Vietnam conflict.

As you can imagine it was a party like no other. It was one of those absolutely surreal WTF moments. I sat at one point and looked around, wondering what I am doing on a rooftop in Saigon, eating crocodile while a man in a white leisure suit sings Frank Sinatra classics. My deep and pondering thoughts were interrupted by a fantastic show of fireworks to cap the evening.

Just a few hours later Christopher was departing back to North America leaving me alone in the city to face the day of Tet, which happened to be Valentine's Day. I don't think I realized just how alone I would be. It turns out that the entire city shuts down to celebrate at home with their families. Walking the streets is like strolling through an abandoned city; tumbleweed blew across my path as I entered the ONLY open restaurant in the city - the KFC.

So I ended my fantastic 3 week trip through SE Asia with a bucket of popcorn chicken in my hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City. It wasn't a bad ending; it gave me a chance to think back and reflect on everything that I was able to see and do. I slept in a tiny capsule in Tokyo. I held a tiger cub (and almost lost a toe to one). I rode a bike, sort of, over the world's longest bamboo bridge. I visited another 7 of the '1000 places to see before I die'. I survived third world public transportation. I rode an elephant. I accidentally interrupted a cock fight. I dined on some delicious street food. I watched the sunrise over the amazing ruins of Angkor Wat. I learned to scuba dive (and almost drown). I relaxed in a hammock in the heart of the Mekong Delta. I almost vomited on a monk in Thailand. I saw amazingly ostentatious palaces and temples. I watched the Olympic Opening ceremonies in a bar in Saigon. I fed a monkey. I ate the leg of a tarantula. I let fish nibble the dead skin off my feet. I met simply amazing people in every country.

I know I commonly write about the missteps that I encounter on my journeys and to those who read the glimpses that I finally get around to sharing it must seem like a nightmare. I want to assure you that many times it is. I have yet to be on a vacation that I haven't wanted to abandon at some point. But there is so much more...I don't have the ability to communicate to you all the amazing things that I have the chance to see and do. I am truly luckily to have the chance to experience it all and I am so thankful that many of you choose to be with me along for the ride...until the next time.

I wonder if it's the coconut that makes you crazy...

No visit to Southern Vietnam would be complete without an excursion into the 'rice bowl' of Asia, the Mekong Delta. Fed up with public buses and people in general, we opted to hire a private driver and guide (Vo) for this excursion. It turned out to be a fantastic idea; we had an amazing day lazing about the area.

Just a few short minutes after leaving downtown Ho Chi Minh city and we entered a new world, vibrant green rice patties as far as the eye could see. There is one disturbing fact that I will bring to your attention however - the rice patties are dotted with...graves. It seems that it is customary to bury the dead on the homestead. It's an odd site to look out and see hundreds of tombstones surrounded by a lush crop that will ultimately end up a side dish on my plate.

As I am learning in SE Asia, getting to any location will require several forms of transportation. Our van dropped us off at a port where we boarded a boat to cruise through some of the thousands of Mekong waterways, eventually arriving at an island that housed an unexpected treat...a candy factory. A little bit like a creation out of Willy Wonka right there in the middle of nowhere! These resourceful Vietnamese had figured out a way to squeeze apart the coconut and milk out all the liquid from the meat. The dried shells would then be used to fuel the fire that would heat the coconut juice into a creamy liquid. Once the desired consistency was reached, the mixture was poured out onto a table, cooled, cut into bit-size pieces and then voila - coconut candy!

Tummies full of coconut toffee, we hopped onto a metal wagon pulled by a moto and scooted through the 'suburbs' of this remote area to a local restaurant. There is one thing you must learn about Vietnam - the food is amazing! I couldn’t tell you everything that we dined on, but I can tell you this – it wasn’t spider. A delicious lunch later and we were off for a paddle down some of the local waterways in another tiny boat...to complete the whole experience we donned the traditional inverted cone hats. (The Vietnamese must have different shaped heads then Canadians!) I am sure we looked like idiots but I felt like a princess.

Our final boat ride took us past a truly unique site, the home of the Coconut Religion. Proving that crazy exists in all parts of the world, here is the home of an unusual group of devote believers...in the coconut. Dao Dua, or the Coconut Monk as he is commonly referred, resides on an island in the Mekong Delta in a sort of abandoned looking amusement park decorated with various religious icons. He continues to invite many world and religious leaders to his floating pagoda home, in the name of finding world peace. He and his people survive solely on coconuts. As you can imagine, this kind of free thought is not embraced in a semi-communist society...it is tolerated...sort of...as long as the Coconut Monk remains on his island. Visitors are welcome but people don't seem to be flocking to the area...there’s still more than Euro Disney at least.

Kam ung for reading...

Pho is me...

Its been a few years now since I set out on my goal to see 100 of the 1000 Places to see before you die. What this goal means for my travel partners is sometimes they are dragged to odd locations for a promised once in a lifetime experience. Poor Christopher was the latest victim of this obsession of mine.

Our first mistake was trying to follow the recommendation of the guidebook with respect to transportation. Up to this point we had been traipsing through Ho Chi Minh city on foot, navigating the streets and sidewalks which really seem to be one in the same. I haven't really told you much about the traffic here. It is stupidly insane. There are literally, as in not my usual exaggeration, 1500 motos per block. The street lights seem to be merely suggestion. Motos drive on the sidewalk and people walk on the street. If I chose to stand on the road and wait for a break in the traffic, it would take me an average of 4 months to cross the road. For any future travelers to the area; to cross the street simply point your body in the direction that you wish to go, stare straight ahead and go. Never, never, never look at the traffic bearing down on you - it shows weakness. Think about it, if I can make it across without dying...you should be just fine.

Anyway, we decided to abandon walking for a night and take a taxi. These taxis were unlike any other that we had used so far on our trip. They were clean, metered and they didn't stalk you down the street for your business. We finally flagged one down that had "Saigon Tourist" written on the side. Fantastic I thought - guaranteed to speak English. Of course this was not the case...despite having the name and address of where we wished to go, he had no idea. We drove over much of the city itself, stopping every now and then to ask other taxi drivers, pedestrians, street vendors etc for directions. Although I don't speak Vietnamese, I could tell that their conversations went something like this, "Hey! I've got these 2 idiots in the back of my taxi. They keep gesticulating wildly and pointing to this piece of paper with random squiggles on it. I have no idea where they want to go, and quite frankly I don't care. I plan on driving them around for a while and then dropping them off in the middle of nowhere. Yell something back at me so they think I have actually tried to get directions". As luck would have it we randomly drove by the restaurant we were looking for and the only English our guy understood was STOP. As for the bill...still no concept of the currency exchange so our hour long taxi adventure was either $1.05 of $630.

But we made it to our destination...Pho Hoa. The best restaurant as recognized by locals for a delicious bowl of pho (according to my very Western book at least) was packed this Friday night. There was no hostess at the front door but I did see a guy point to the second floor. We wandered through the kitchen and up to another large room full of diners. I am sure that this book has brought some additional business to this restaurant in the form of tourists but that was not the case tonight. People stopped mid-slurp to stare at our pale, obviously out of place faces.
Seating etiquette for the restaurant was not covered in the guidebook. I went over to a table that appeared to be waiting to be cleared. Some guy on a cell phone started to yell, while standing right in my face, and pointing wildly in random directions. I responded by blinking. I then gave up and wandered to another table, something similar happened. Christopher was standing at the end of the room asking me what we should do. Hunger and heat were causing me to lose all my coping mechanisms. Mere seconds away from a complete breakdown, we were saved by a Vietnamese family that took pity on us.

Inviting us to join them at their table, we finally felt like we belonged. It was like a bit of Vietnamese street credit - this family had inadvertently vouched for us...we could now be served pho. Dinner was delicious; I went easy with the peppers this time...

I wonder how many peppers Imelda puts in her Pho...

An early start to the day again, more disheartening however was the thought of the long public bus ride ahead. Another front row seat guaranteed me maximum exposure to the horn noise. Given this is my 7th bus ride in about as many days, I am tired of my iPod & magazines - trying to pass the time of the bus has become painful - not even the scorned women music videos can capture my attention.

On this ride I developed a new pastime; watching the adventures of Imelda. Imelda (I gave her the name) was a 50 y.o.+ female, dressed in a beige leisure suit with an immaculate hairstyle. It is clear she comes from some sort of money (well more than the people I have seen recently). Imelda has an assigned seat at the back of the bus but for some reason refuses to sit there. She keeps coming forward and hijacking the front seat across from mine. The Cambodian crew have given up trying to get Imelda to sit in her own seat. Instead one crew member is sitting in her seat and one is sitting with her. Now Imelda believes that she should have her own seat - this is evident by the fact that she tries to stretch out in the seat, despite the crew member's presence. Because of the age of the young male crew member and social rules, he won't say anything to her...she just continues to recline with her feet in his face. Every now and then she barks orders at people or yells while pointing out the window, I of course have no actual idea what she is saying, but I narrated for her (in my head and sometimes to Christopher)...she is not kind women. It sounds silly but I was bizarrely entertained ...it was like a bad soap opera being performed just for me.

I became so preoccupied with the antics of Imelda that I forgot where I was going...Vietnam. Crossing into this new country I had feeling of déjà vu...China...very similar... I couldn't quite figure it out at first...then it hit me...communism. Subtle communisms, just a little splash of red here, a dash of military police there - a reminder that freedom can be revoked at any time.

Despite exhaustion and searing heat, Christopher and I braved the street to find another of the 1000 Places to See; the Ben Thanh Market. Finding the market was not difficult; working up the nerve to step into another chaotic harassing market place was however. Deciding that facing the crowds would be better after lunch we popped into a local establishment for the Vietnamese national dish of Pho.

Pho is a bowl of broth served over rice noodles with usually some sort of meat in it. You as the diner add in your own garnishes to season it. Here is a little tip for any future Pho diners - those little peppers go ALONG way. The longer they sit in there...the more the fester creating a dish so toasty that it may just combust. (On a separate note, the restaurant we happened to select was President Pho, apparently Bill Clinton had the same idea we did and dashed in for a bowl as well. Hopefully he used those pepper judiciously)

Heartburn brewing from the spicy Pho, we bucked up and tackled the market. This was the first market on the trip where the vendors were physically pushy, grabbing at you demanding that you purchase their wares. Whoever says shopping isn't mentally and physically exhausting is crazy. After fighting our way through many aisles we found the jewel we were looking for...the coffee section.

There is some sort of Vietnamese specialty where they roast the beans in butter - it became our mission to try and find this delectable treat for the coffee connoisseurs we know back in Seattle! Before I go on you must understand that this is my 5th currency to try and master in less than 3 weeks. This will help explain why we had no idea how much we were spending. Our first clue came when were ushered into the inner sanctuary of the shop out of the chaotic crowds, given seats and fresh cups of iced coffee. We were waited on hand and foot while we made selections. All the members of the family came to meet us and I think a first born was up for grabs as well. Then came the bill (and an apparent explanation as to why were being treated like kings)...2.2 million dong!

We had to suspend any further market shopping that day, vendors would take one look at the giant bags of coffee we were lugging around and laugh - there was certainly no bartering going on. That's why I had to pay full price for antacids - I am NOT kidding, those little peppers are a powerful thing...

(the photo at the top is one that I took on the Vietnam/Cambodia border. Electing not to snack on tarantulas or use the squat toilets, I decided to use this bus break as chance to try and take a few photos of some water buffalos that were grazing a few kilometers back. I hopped onto a guy’s moto and pointed in the direction that I wished to go...convincing him to stop in the middle of nowhere proved to be a little trickier. The buffalos seemed to be as interested in me as I was in them...so much so that my driver became very nervous and forced me back on to the moto and took off in a panic...)

Kam ung!