Vietnam is another world. A world of people earning a few dollars a day for a whole day’s labour. Our pictures will say it all.
This is a country of poverty – not as desperate as Saharan Africa, but still poverty, of idle men sitting in groups at the side of the road or in roadside shacks, of literally millions of scooters and motorbikes, of chaos on the often very wide but always poorly maintained roads. But, it is also a country of a lush and beautiful landscape. Vietnam has 86 million people living in a long slender land mass that is one half the size of Ontario (which has a population of 13 M). The rural habitation is like nothing you would see anywhere in Canada. When the US military left South Vietnam in 1975, the country was unified into a closed Communist state with a capital, Hanoi, in the north. About 20 years later, however, Vietnam realized the benefits of some capitalism, and began sharing its natural beauty with visitors from around the world. 
The Open Communism policy created opportunities for international investment and considerable very inexpensive tourism.
Nha Trang – which means White House - is an oceanside city of 1 million, with beaches and lush vegetation, but major squalor. Our friends, Stephanie and Peter, had pre-arranged a private driver and tour, so we boarded a surprisingly comfortable air-conditioned van to tour the region. As in other parts of the world, big and small tour operators are given money by factories and businesses to bring prospective clients for “rest stops”.
Ours included an embroidery factory where young women huddled over stretched frames using microscopic silk thread to stitch pictures painstakingly day after day. We succumbed and bought.The other “rest stop” was a traditional home (shack)-based business making the omnipresent reed coolie hats – where we again purchased, this time 2 hats for $1.50 each, which had taken 3 women all morning to weave!
Colleen continued her practice of handing out Princess chocolates to children, when possible. Amazingly, whenever she did this,
as much as the children were fascinated, they never asked for more even though they could see she had a bag full. Of course, back home, kids would always ask for more.Our excellent tour also included a mid-morning fruit break at a rural home, seeing rice paddies and water buffaloes, up close, lunch at a wonderfully scenic and rustic restaurant on a river, and doing the streets of Nha Trang by pedicab! Quite a day. and all for a reasonable price, in good company.
Sat, Oct 18 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Formerly called Saigon until the US military left in 1975, this madhouse city of 8 million had no redeeming features we could discern - other than our excellent lunch at the Inter-Continental Hotel.
After a scenic few hours cruising up the deep-water navigable part of the Saigon River to our docking berth at a place called Phu My, we once again bought a Princess-led tour bus and had a 2 hour drive north into the city.
During our 3 hours in the city, we saw the famous Rex Hotel, from which news correspondents reported the War; the Reunification Palace, where the Vietnam War ended with the fall of this building on April 30, 1975; and the US Embassy grounds from which the last helicopter departed.
(The embassy building itself, and its photo-memorable rooftop, were torn down and replaced).One particular highlight: we bought a beautiful picture of 4 Vietnamese women that we will display somewhere at home.
One particular lowlight: the large covered Binh Tay market that we visited for an hour.
The images of gaunt, hopeless, stall-keepers selling the same jeans, shirts, fish, kettles, posters, tinware as their neighbours, and toiling away their lives for a dollar or two a day in ghastly, cramped, fetid, stinking conditions, still haunts our minds. Not our favorite day, but a real day in the lives of many Vietnamese.
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