First of all, THANK YOU for all the comments yesterday! It was just the pick-me-up I needed to get started on this (long - sorry!) post. Back when I wrote Vietnam & Cambodia recap # 1, I had no idea it would take me so much time to finish up the story! I hope you've not gotten bored... I promise to wrap it up in one more post after this. It will be a nice round number of ten. Or "X" if you speak in Roman Numerals, that is.
Side story - In elementary school I took math with the principal because I was learning at a fifth grade level at the age of five or six. The only thing I remember from those sessions was her total and complete doubt that I could actually do the things my teacher insisted I could do (namely - trying to teach the other kids multiplication). "You're so smart, huh? Well then what's the roman numeral for FIFTY, huh?" "Oh, that's easy. It's "L" or I guess you could say XXXXX, but that wouldn't be totally correct." Take that evil-principal-woman! Oh... and lest you think I'm some kind of smug genius - I assure you my intelligence was compensated for by my extreme lack of social skills. I'm still working on that defecit...
Anyway - back to Vietnam. We had wrapped up our dinner at the Presidential Palace and there was just one more day of events before my clients' planes departed the next morning - an afternoon tour of the Mekong Delta and an evening farewell dinner at a remote restaurant. I can't remember the name of the dinner venue because, well, let's just say there are other details about that night that stick out in my memory more than the name... So, that morning I gathered everyone in the lobby of the hotel like the little adult-baby-ducklings they were and we set off on our first activity.
A little backgrount... the Mekong Delta, located in Southwestern Vietnam, is home to vast numbers of rice fields. Vietnam is the world's third largest rice exporter & the crop is vital to their economic survival.
Of course, I was just excited to wear the traditional hat...
Oh, and I didn't even have to row! Pretty cool. I just realized it looks like I have on goggles in that picture! Too funny. They're just plain old sunglasses, I swear. After our row-boat ride, we had a small sampling of exotic fruit and heard some local musicians playing traditional instruments.
I love that pineapple was billed as "exotic fruit." Ugh - it's like they were just begging me to get food poisoning. Oh - and I also got to hold a snake. I'm not really sure how that fits in to traditional Vietnamese culture, but there you go.
What was I thinking?! Ugh. Shudder. I must have been far braver back then, I guess. I think I'm done holding snakes or other creepy-crawlies for the rest of my life. Blech.
After that, we stopped for lunch. Is it just me, or does it bother you when your food stares at you while you rip it apart hungrily? Call me crazy, but I think it's creepy.
But, to be fair, also delicious. Just keepin' it real.
So, after our long adventurous day, we gave the clients a couple of options. They could go shop in the market, hang out in their hotel rooms and rest (it had been a looong day), or they could go on another boat tour. I chose to stay with the hotel group and sent my coworkers off with the rest of the group. Later that evening, I gathered up those who had stayed behind and we hopped on our tour bus en route to dinner. ("a three hour tour...")
And... that's when things got interesting. My guide - I'll call him Lee because I really have no recollection of his actual name - was king of a jerk. He was rude, short with me, and pretended to misunderstand me all the time (though his boss, an Australian, had assured me Lee spoke perfect English). He was just being a.. well, a donkey if you know what I mean. Anyway - we're driving through the streets of Saigon and it looks like there's been a flood. The streets are covered with rainwater (I'm guessing the infrastructure / drainage system isn't that great - not surprisingly). In some places the water is over a foot deep. It's dark - it's foreign - I'm tired and reaching the end of my culture-shock limits.
I see more people cooking dinner on the sidewalks. I see poverty. I just want to go home. (And though my clients were leaving the next day I still had three days before my flight was scheduled to depart). I had been with my clients for almost fourteen days - I was tired of being "on" all the time - of being the adult babysitter and tour guide.
Suddenly, outside the city, the bus stopped in the middle of a dark gravel road. No street lights - no people. Just an empty road.
Let me make it clear - in my job I was in charge of the safety of my clients. Me - a little old barely-out-of-college American woman / girl in the middle of Saigon. If someone gets sick - I get them medical care. If someone dies - I get the body home. If someone is robbed - I call the police. It comes with the job. And there we were - stopped in a dark alley. My guide informs me tersely that we are going to have to walk the rest of the way because the bus is too large to fit down the street. He's already off the bus as he's telling me this, and my clients are starting to follow him.
So, of course, I start to panic (though I was all cheer and schmooze for my clients) as we walked down the gravel road. The women were NOT pleased, as they were all wearing fairly formal clothing and nice shoes. A trip down a gravel road wasn't exactly what they had had in mind. Yet, we trudge on. What option do we have? Suddenly, the group comes to a stop and I realize there's water in the road - about 2 inches of disgustingly mucky rainwater accumulation.
I look to our guide for, well, guidance and realize he's gone. Lee has vanished into thin air. My clients tell me he went ahead through the water and we're expected to follow.
I'm in full blown panic mode now - one of the women in the group is over eighty years old and wearing brand new silk shoes. This is not good. This is so very not good. The boys debate carrying her over the puddle and some women slip their shoes off and walk barefoot in order to avoid ruining them (which is such a great idea on gravel pebbles that cut like glass, don't you think?) and we keep moving. In the pitch-dark-black-night. A local person shines a flashlight on us from the side of the alley and I start silently freaking out. I can see the headlines now - American Tourists mugged in Vietnamese alley. Becky (last name) to blame for loss of highest level executives from (famous company).
I am hosed, my friends. Hosed.
It takes us about 15 minutes to get 100 yards down the street (we still can't see the venue) when we hear the roar of a bus behind us. Salvation!! It's the group of my clients who had attended the second boat tour! They were on a small enough bus that they could drive down the street! We were rescued! After cramming on board with them, we made it to the venue safely - though it took me a full ten minutes to be able to discuss what had happened with Lee's boss. I've never been so furious in my life.
As you may imagine, I was ready, oh-so-achingly ready, to go home. And yet - my adventures were still not over...