On April 30th, I (Brandon) went on a school outing with ILA. The 1st of May was labour day, and so we had a two day holiday on which ILA would take us to a city called Tay Ninh. Of course, the night before this, a buddy from Saigon (Dave, who had to leave in November for hernia surgery and now works in Saigon) who also had two days off decided to come down for a party. I was seriously planning on taking it easy, but things like that just don’t happen. So after going numerous places to rekindle Dave’s love for this city, I wander home and make it to bed at just after 4 am. Which is kind of standard lately, but terrible considering the bus for Tay Ninh was leaving at 6 am.
I had set my alarm for 5:15, but for some reason it did not wake me up. Perhaps it wasn’t actually set, or perhaps I turned it off without remembering. Either way, I was woken by a phone call from my friend at school who simply said “Hurry up”. And that’s what I did, although hurrying up on a Honda Chaly can’t really be called hurrying up. The best part of my drive to school was the fact that the rainy season started the day before, and was making itself known. Seriously, it rained for maybe 4 days since October, and it was pouring down rain at 6 am when I had to drive to school. Thanks. I had a rain jacket, but nothing for my legs, and needless to say I was very very wet on my bottom half when I arrived. The brilliant thing about leaving so early, is that the building wasn’t even open. So despite my best efforts, I could not change out of my wet clothes.
The next few hours were interesting. I was teetering in and out of attention to my surroundings, which involved Vietnamese speaking, singing, and me being asked to sing a song. It wasn’t until I yelled NO at the top of my lungs that they understood that I wasn’t going to sing. As a topper to my sorry state, my cell phone that slipped out of my pocket onto the seat, which caused me to pick it up to check the time, decided it would be a good time to no longer work. Decent timing in the sense that I wanted to by a new phone, but kind of a thorn in my side at that moment in time.
The trip was relatively uneventful from then on until we arrived for lunch at about 12:30. It was a great lunch by my standards, but all of the Vietnamese workers complained about it for the rest of the trip. In fact they complained about all the food for most of the trip. We then had an hour of free time before we were heading to Nui Ba Den (Black Woman Mountain) and the Cao Dai temple. I had a dilemma. Did I stay awake and preserve my state of mind that was less than ideal, or attempt to nap for an hour and hope that it boosts my attention level with the chance that it could completely drain me and cause me to not do anything for the rest of the day. I chose option 1. It seemed to work well.
The Cao Dai Temple was first. It was a strange experience. I don’t know why I was disappointed, but I was. I think that after having been to Cambodia and seeing the old temples there, I was unprepared for what a modern Vietnamese temple might look like. The outside was just utterly ordinary. The inside was actually quite spectacular however. It was one large room, ‘divided’ into 3 sections, though not by walls. First of all, males and females had to enter through different doors on opposing sides of the building. I though that maybe we had to stay on our separate sides, but that was not the case. The room is divided as thus, there are pillars about 10 feet from the outer wall. This is where you can walk, in between the pillars (i.e. the middle) is only for prayer time and ‘holy’ people during non-prayer time. The pillars are ornately designed with dragons and such. The colours used in the temple are of an odd choice, as they are mostly pink, turquoise and white, though the combination does mix well. Then, at the far end of the room is a globe, and in the middle of the globe, facing you, is a big left eye. That’s right, a painted left eye. It is distinctly a left eye. This is pretty much where the religion and the temple lost me. The religion is like any other religion, in that there is worship time, things to do, and things not to do. It is accepting of many cultures and religions (though all of the 3 million followers are Vietnamese), and looks to create a positive atmosphere for people. The left eye thing is strange to me. The reason the left eye is so important (and it is very important) is because it’s the eye that is closest to the heart. So when god (I’m not quite sure the term the use) is looking at you, his left eye is closest to his heart, and therefore closest to what the pure essence of god is. I suppose it’s not that far out there, but having a large left eyeball painted onto a globe staring at you just runs strange thoughts through your head.
I suppose the best part of the Cao Dai temple was the fact that almost everyone in the group was wearing their OSC Tour hat, which was a blue hat given to us by the tour operator, and made us look like an obscene group of tourists. Which is what we were and made us look hilarious. We looked sexy.
Nui Ba Den is a weird phenomenon as far as I’m concerned, being that it is a 1000 m mountain in the middle of rice fields. There are very few hills around at all. Once I was up the mountain I could see more, but they were quite a ways away. The got to take a tram about half way up, but it isn’t what you think. It was this little two seater bucket hanging from a cable, that didn’t slow down to get on or off, you just had to jump into it quickly. Watching children get launched into the arms of their parents already in the bucket is quite entertaining. I bet people get injured. Anyway, the ride was nice, and it took us about 500m up. On the way up, I noticed this metal tube thing winding it’s way down the mountain, and little carts sliding down it, more on that later. The area on the mountain seems pretty important, as there were hundreds of people praying at the dozens of different alters that were there. There were paths leading everywhere, and incense sticks scattered and being burnt everywhere. It would have been nice to have more time, as there were many paths to walk, including one to a cave and one to the top which was quite a hike more, however, our guide only gave us 20 minutes. So we burned some incense, saw some monkeys, and went to the toboggan ride.
The toboggan ride. It was just a whole bunch of tin sheets formed into half a tube, winding down the mountain. And our transportation were little carts that looked about the size and shape of a bumper cart, and consisted of a seat with enough space for two people, a handle for the person in front, and a handle on either side which were attached under the cart as a brake system that activated by pulling back, which lifted the cart up, therefore not letting the wheels gain momentum, but let you lift yours and the carts weight until you slowed. Genius. In my cart I had a Vietnamese secretary named Mai, who weighs in at a solid 40 kg. In the cart behind me was Angela, a teacher from Australia, and her passenger Oanh, whom I have traveled with before, and whom weighs a hefty 39 Kg. These little girls were too scared to ride by themselves, though they should have been scared of us. We definitely took liberties on their fear, as we’d hold back from the carts in front of us so that we could plummet down the straight aways at stupid speeds, waiting till the last second to brake, which nearly backfired a couple times because those turns can be unfriendly. We made it down without incident, and made our way to the hotel where the night was quite tame. In fact I went to bed at 8:30, knowing that I had to wake up quite early the next day, and wanting to recover from my lack of sleep.
The next day was more of a disappointment than anything. It was supposed to be a splendid day of shopping at a duty free store with lots of goods. I was prepared because I wanted a few things. Well we went to the market in town first, which is like any other market in Vietnam. I was itching to buy something, so I bought a pair of pants, and got hassled on the bus for not waiting and paying to much etc etc. It was a smart choice, because it was also the only thing besides a few snacks that I would buy that day. We had to travel to Moc Bai to get to this duty free shop, which is where you would think it is, on the border. So I had returned to Moc Bai (which is the Cambodian border) but this time not to enter the splendid country, but to purchase goods on the land between Cambodia and Vietnam. When we finally caught our shuttle to the market, we whizzed the few hundred yards in anticipation. At first it looked okay. The first thing we saw were some cheap motorbikes, and several appliances supposedly at discount prices. But as the room unfolded further, we realized that there wasn’t much else to it. Just loads and loads of juice makers, rice cookers and toasters. There were about 5 stereos, a liquor store, some jewelry and chocolate, and then a massive grocery store. Apparently the 5% discount at this store was a big draw, because it was packed with people pushing carts full of food. As far as I’m concerned, it was pointless to waste your time getting to the market to buy the goods. Even if you live IN Moc Bai, it is not a deal. It was ridiculous. So I looked around and realized that I wasn’t going to buy anything, so I bought a snack to occupy my time while I waited for the others. Of course some of the others were a little late, like by an hour, which made the experience even more pleasant.
The rest was uneventful. A 3 hour drive home with a lunch break in Saigon at a buffet which was good, but not excellent. And then I was home.
