jungles of vietnam

Just got back from a long weekend in the middle of the jungle. The area has started to see a lot more tourists going to see the culture of vietnam's ethnic minorities, but we got to go so far in where they said tourists barely go because its so remote. Our guide didn't even know the way and had to hire some of the villagers to lead him. We walked almost 40 km to get there, and stayed in a stilt house that the mayor of the village ran. We asked where the money from our stay went, whether they spread it around to other families at all, seeing as its a communist country, but our guide kind of went around the question, but he did tell us that some of it goes under the table to the police in the area. They didn't have any electricity and got power from water turbines. They just built an elementary school in the area, but if they want to go to middle school they have to travel 2 hours and go to boarding school. Most live on subsistence farming and only go grocery shopping once a month.

Uncle Ho

Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh led the country to independence on september 2, 1945 and died on the same day 25 years later. Since then his body has been preserved in a glass case for people to visit. I had the luck to visit this museum before it closed for the winter months because of humidity. At the door they make you give up your cell phone and any cameras. Once we got inside the room my family excitedly pointed to his body saying "Like George Washington!" and encouraged me to pray to him. All I could think was, uhhh...not exactly. I don't really pray to the dead body of a former president.

pagoda

MM...FOOD

the first week

The past week has been great. After my stomach’s adjustment to chili sauce and noodles for breakfast, some kind of bean curd, and chicken foot soup among other things, Vietnamese food is not really gag-inducing most of the time. I definitely still have to get used to being served literally the entire chicken on a place; head, feet, liver and all. I’m craving cereal for breakfast. But I didn’t come here to eat fruity pebs every morning.
My family is super cool. The grandma lives with them and is constantly speaking full Vietnamese sentences to me, to which I just kind of shrug or smile. My brother’s 14 and the only one in the family who can speak English (thankfully there’s one person).
Today we went to the office of my mom where I was invited by the men to drink. After throwing down my first shot of whisky, they all gave me a thumbs-up and offered me more. Only the men at the table got to drink; women aren’t really expected to drink and in the cafes and bars you typically only see a table of men drinking. My friend Julia ordered a drink at a café once and they only served it to the other guy at the table and started angrily speaking in Vietnamese when she took the drink. There was a big dinner at my house when everyone at the table was drinking wine, though, so it depends.
The office was a company that makes prosthetic limbs and I learned that one of the men was a soldier in the “American” war and had lost a leg. My brother translated that he was happy that an American was coming to Vietnam, something that’s demonstrated by most of the people. They don’t seem to hold any grudges over the war, which is really impressive seeing as we killed around 2-3 million of them.