Yes, from the subject line you may have deduced that I was in Vietnam today. In country.
I was very excited to meet Rambo, Chuck Norris, Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan, Dana Delany and her crew from China Beach (which we were not far from), all those people we've watched in action in Vietnam over the years.
Today was a bit surreal. We ported in Chen May - middle of f'in nowhere, 45 min-1 hour from Da Nang or "Marble Mountain," our shuttle took us to... crap... Lang Co or something. A resort in the middle of this tiny impoverished hamlet. You ventured out of the resort (which of course I did) and you were immediately encountering beggars. Nothing out there close was interesting enough to see for me to deal with that, so I returned to my unit and after we all had lunch near the beach (Vietnamese White Coffee is perhaps my new favorite thing in the world... damn...*) we headed back to the LZ for extraction at 1430hrs.
All the way to and from the resort to the ship, it is absolutely the Vietnam you saw in war movies... the rice paddies, the mountains and jungles in the background... hamlets here and there, just incredible. It's maybe the only place I've ever been that was exactly as I've seen it portrayed, in part at least. Anyway, it was our only day in Vietnam and honestly is was a horrible place to port. We were going to do Saigon (as a "surprise") but were delayed two hours and it wouldn't work with the tides. To go to a beach resort, your typical beach resort, in Vietnam seems like a big giant waste of opportunity to me. I didn't see or do anything of real cultural import.
There are a lot of vendors set up outside the ship, and as this is one of the biggest marble producing areas in the world they were selling all kinds of marble-crafted items in addition to various knick-knacks... no magnets, though! I will not have a Vietnam magnet. Bah!
The vendors were good, though - they were asking all the crew where they were from and if they had any money from their home countries. Apparently, four or five of them collect currency from around the world (like me) and they were willing to give a lot in exchange for things they didn't have. I have a lot of extra coincs and stuff, so after I had my look-see and bought a gift or two for home, I went in and came back out to distribute whatever small denominations of currencies I needed to get rid of - bills that wouldn't be worth the commission to convert, coins, etc... it really seemed to make some of them very excited to get the 2 dollar coins from Hong Kong (about 25-30 cents I think) and though I got a couple of small jars of tiger balm from one of exchange for a few coins he didn't have, it was mostly nice just to hand them out to these vendors. Not because I'm some philanthropist, but because compared to every single market vendor we've dealt with lately, they were so much less pushy, so much more genuinely friendly, and ... more honest. You could tell some of the NEEDED this. Not like in some places where they put on a show of poverty or needing the money, but just... you could tell doing well today would make a difference to them. I do not need a Vietnam hat or T-Shirt, but when the lady selling them obviously needs the $3 she's asking for them, why not?
Random, blathering entry.
My next stop will make a hard man humble - not much between despair and ecstasy. My next stop will make the tough guys tumble, can't be too careful with your company. I can feel an angel sliding up to me...
*Vietnamese white coffee is a small drink made from slowly-made (not pressured) espresso strength coffee, condensed milk, and then poured over ice to drink. It's ph-friggin'nominal and is the best way to make coffee ever, bar none.
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