We departed after a breakfast of instant noodles in a regularly cooked soup, off to our first item of the day: Elephant riding. We had to wait a while, maybe a half-hour, the delay making our driver’s angry at the elephant trainers, us feeling sad for the animals. I felt worse when all three of us rode on top of one in addition to its driver.
Well this was unexpected.
A boy herds cattle down a road in central Vietnam.
Ducks by the lake that we unexpectedly rode into.
Children gathering wood next to the lake.
He took us at a slow pace back over the paved road we arrived on as a boy herding cows passed us by, crossing down to the lake and to our great surprise, into the lake. The elephant was tall enough, apparently, to get us through dry while I was incessantly hoping that it wouldn’t get tired and sit down. It did take some big bites of lake plants along the way, though. On the other side, we saw oxen with symbiotic birds eating the bugs off of their backs. There was a group of kids carrying wood, presumably for their respective homes’ fires.
We visited another minority village with a much different lifestyle than the others, judged by even the little we were able to understand. They had long, raised houses with two ladders on different sides, one for men and one for women. Each house had its own garden where they grow their own vegetables, several had satellite dishes. Loi told us that three generations live in one house with one room, and they have a lot of children, so it could be twenty people living in one house at time. We gave the kids candy and felt sad.
Long houses in one room sheltering 3 generations, sometimes 20 people.
Giving candy to the children in another village.
On the road for a while, we went through a more modern-style town and then back onto a dirt road, leading further still into what I’ll call lowlands, a very wide and long strip of rice fields with mountains in the distance. Our destination was a small brick factory, where some grinding machine led to bricks being fired in what one could describe as a giant kiln house.
Riding through the lowlands.
On the road again... rice fields leading to mountains.
Brick firing house.
We saw a skeleton of a church that had burned down across the way from a river where sediments were being harvested. The drivers told us that the sediments were used for building, but perhaps it was to keep the river from moving as well. As for religion in Vietnam, there appears to be a significant population of Christians as well as Buddhists. Colleen said she saw strange statues of figures like Mary mother of Jesus on some people’s houses.
Burnt church across the way. Vietnam is home to Xtianity, Buddhism, and more...
Sediment harvesting operation.
In a larger town we stopped at a concrete pot-making factory, and saw a sixteen year old boy making them. There were fully painted and finished ones in the front of the house, and next to it a small grove of orange trees.
16 year old boy making concrete plant pots.
Some painted and finished pots in the front.
Before long we reached what felt like a highway in comparison to the roads we had been traveling on, a well-paved and wide road with a median, even, leading into a small city. A little while past the war memorial in the centre, we stopped at a bakery that definitely reminded me of Japan’s, offering a tasty looking selection of meal and dessert breads. I picked a circular egg, bacon, and veggie bread and a chocolate custard dessert bread, and we took our respective mobile meals along for our walk through a waterfall park.
Largest city in the Central Highlands.
War memorial in the centre.
The hike around the waterfall park reminded me of of walking along the paths of River Road in Minneapolis. Past two of the main waterfalls, we stopped at a formation of small boulders and ate our lunch standing, the rocks wet from a previous rain. A group of Vietnamese not out for pleasure but dressed for work passed by us, while we later crossed paths with a man who looked to be just out for a walk.
We crossed two thin and treacherous-looking but sturdy walking bridges to the final destination, the largest waterfall, and met a Caucasian woman from some European country. Back on the other side and down by the river, a group of Vietnamese were fishing and apparently entertained by our presence. The river water was muddy with sediments, a brownish colour that up the river in a wider spot that we saw as we were coming to the park area made me think of the Amazon River.
The path in the waterfall park.
Waterfalls one and two, the second hidden.
Just tell me this doesn't look so Tomb Raider.
Obligatory bridge photo on the second one.
The largest of the waterfalls.
On the way back, with limited time before we were to catch the bus back to Ho Chi Minh City, we met a trendy-looking, young and cute Vietnamese guy, exchanging a few words and then e-mail addresses for no particular reason. His English was limited, and of course our Vietnamese was practically nonexistent, but we managed to compliment him on his outfit and he asked where we were from.
We were set to catch the bus from across a café back toward the city, but before going there we stopped along the way so the Easy Riders could show us a black pepper farm and tell us a little about it. Black pepper’s a very valuable commodity for the farmers, with a high setup cost. Each wooden pole needed to grow the pepper vines on costs USD$25, and the crops don’t yield until about five years after the investment, so it’s a make or break business.
Clearly the farm we visited was successful, for they had a large, modern house clearly showing the income disparity across the country. The coffee and black pepper kingpins have very nice houses, while everyone else in the countryside live on pretty much the same low level.
Black pepper plants close up.
Wealthy black pepper farmer's house.
Near the end, a group photo.
The bus picked us up and we were lucky to claim a row (two seats each side) to ourselves. Naturally, we started on a game of Phase 10, and otherwise killed the next eight hours sleeping, listening to our iPods, reading, or viewing the countryside. The bus stopped for dinner, as expected, at one of the big rest stops for tourists, where we had not pho exactly but a similar soup. Actually, I ordered the wonton soup but the lady issuing tickets didn’t understand and just gave me the same one Courtney ordered, a noodle soup.
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City hoping that our bus might drop us off in District 1 near our hotel, but such was not to be. We stopped at some main tourist bus terminal from which we took a taxi, finding the nicest of our hotels except for the resort on Koh Samet, without much trouble.
I definitely recommend the Nguyen Khang hotel to anyone visiting Ho Chi Minh City looking for an affordable but nice place. It was rather clean, and rather white I might say, in reference to the tiles and walls. The hotel had everyone remove their shoes before entering the stairwell up to our respective rooms, where it was expected we would continue not wearing shoes and thus helping to keep the place cleaner; sound Japanese style, and I liked that a lot. The bathroom was still in the same style, toilet right next to the shower, but we were used that by then. The one Internet terminal downstairs was free and much speedier than any we’d used in Vietnam previously, not only a relatively fast connection but also a fast computer; that’s what I was able to upload some photos with, finally. The receptionist also spoke a considerable amount of English, let us store our luggage after we checked out the next day, and helped us arrange a taxi to the airport for when we left later that day.
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