Two Tours in Vietnam

On the morning of Oct 14 we were in Da Nang. I had successfully applied to be a tour escort for this day, so at 8:15 AM I was standing out on the dock in front of tour bus #8, with a big metal flag with a big red number 8 on it.

36 guests got on the bus, and it was a 45 minute ride from Da Nang to a little town out in the rice paddies called Hoi An. Along the way we saw the huge distinction between the Haves and Have-nots, as a series of squalid hovels would suddenly give way to some fenced-off resort hotel along the beach.

But I’ll remember this day for the angst and difficulty with trying to be a Tour Escort for Holland America. This group of guests was full of spaced-out, inconsiderate persons who didn’t care if they got lost in this crappy little town out in the middle of nowhere, didn’t care if they fell behind the group. If they missed the bus, it would be a huge problem getting transportation back.

But my job was to keep this group together, not allow people to straggle behind and wander, also not allow the Vietnamese tour guide from moving too fast.

You have to picture this. A narrow road in a congested, little village in the boonies of Vietnam, all the little skinny residents dirt poor. Some Vietnamese kid (25 years old) is the tour guide, with poor English skills, leading the way, and these 36 old Americans are walking almost single file. The distance between the first and the last is constantly increasing, as the weakest old people slow down, and as others get distracted, stopping to take pictures, talk to peddlers, look at postcards and other crap, buy bottles of water……

…..oh yeah, the weather suddenly got brutal at about 9:41 AM. It suddenly dawned on all of us, This is a goddam steambath. Really nasty tropical humidity.

Everybody really wanted to go their own way, instead of following this incompetent Vietnamese tour guide, who made laughable efforts to gather us up and tell us about some “point of interest” in the town. His voice had no projection, no expression, and barely recognizable English words.

All this chaos was reported on a form I was given to fill out. I trashed the tour guide especially. I faulted many guests for constantly falling behind the group, with Yours Truly doing his best to nudge them along diplomatically. Nonetheless, one of them told me I was rude, something like “I paid for this tour and I don’t like being pushed”.


Two days later, On Oct 16, the ship arrived at Phu My, further down the coastline from Da Nang. 40 miles inland from Phu My is Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon.

Once again I got to be a tour escort, this time it was called “A taste of Vietnamese Cuisine” -- where guests are taken to the Saigon Culinary Arts Center and cooked things under the direction of a Vietnamese Executive Chef.

My idea of cooking is throwing a can of Hormel chili in a pot and heating it up. Throwing in a can of corn with it would be getting fancy.

So this Vietnamese Cuisine thing was of zero interest to me, but I went along as Tour Escort so I could see Ho Chi Minh City. It would have been dicey and difficult to do it without the auspices of a tour, especially here.

The boulevard running from Phu My to Ho Chi Minh City is about 40 miles long. Guests looking out the windows were aghast at how bad this country looked, for the entire length of the ride. Arriving at Ho Chi Minh City you get a slight hint of wealth and style in the city center, but it’s gone in an instant.

Part of the tour agenda was a walk through a Vietnamese marketplace to look at the raw materials that everybody would cook with. Like with the previous tour two days prior, the market visit was a chaotic struggle to negotiate narrow aisles and walls of people, trying to keep the guests in view. I could just see the headline “80-year old American tourist kidnapped in Vietnamese market.”

About a hour later the tour bus arrived at the "main course" of the excursion. We all got off the bus and were led down a back alley. After walking about 150 feet we entered the "Saigon Culinary Arts Center", which had as much professional ambiance as the mens room at Grand Central Station. Just one big un-airconditioned lousy ground floor, with a bunch of tables with little one-burner stoves on them, in a semi-circle around the executive chef's little dais where he delivered instructions.

I hadn't intended to participate in the cooking anyway, but now it appeared there was no comfortable place to even hang out inconspicuously, no lobby, no waiting room, no back room, etc. The tour bus was gone. It was lunchtime, so I got bold and I went strolling in this surreal city on the other side of the planet, looking for a some kind of cafe. I passed by quite a few places that could have been named Steve's Last Meal on Earth, finally settled on one pretty passable place.

The stroll was weird, perhaps a little dicey, a middle-aged overfed American wandering by himself in the Viet Ghetto land of coolie hats, toothless smiles, and especially funky old motor scooters. Much more motor scooters than China. The Vietnamese flag should simply have the image of a motor scooter.

I found a café, ordered a grilled frog. With coke and fries of course. No attempt on their part to conceal the look of the original animal. There was ol’ Flip the Frog himself, decapitated and spreadeagled on the plate. I got the feeling he was captured in the backyard a few minutes after I ordered. Tasted like chicken.

Paying the bill was a big problem, due to total language barrier and the ridiculous rate of inflation in Vietnam. I was amused to find out that the unit of currency in Vietnam is the Dong. No joke. And it deserves to have a funny name because the exchange rate for it is pretty funny. One dollar equals 16,500 Dong.

Knowing absolutely nothing of each other’s language, we got out pens and paper, looked at the bill together, he did his calculations and kept circling the number 84 at the end. As if the frog, fries and coke was $84. I don’t know how willing I was to part with $84 just to avoid trouble. I was quite outnumbered in my surroundings.

Finally a breakthrough, I realized that “84” was his shorthand for 84,000 Dong. A little over $5. I tipped them, all smiles, have a good day.

Meanwhile back at the Cooking school, the 30 guests were receiving their “diplomas” -- silly rolled-up papers tied in ribbon, certifying their participation in this seminar.

As the bus threaded its way through town we passed the city center again, past a statue of Ho Chi Minh, the George Washington of this stupid country. Nobody wanted to stop the bus for a closer look. In my wallet were a few denominations of Dong -- 2000, 10000, and 20000, with Ho Chi Minh’s ugly face, stupid long goatee and all, on each bill -- a fine fate, your face etched on every bill of a currency that’s almost worthless.

The ride back, and other discussions on the ship later on, focused on America’s military involvement here 40 years ago. Tempers can still flare on this subject after all this time. But the debates subsided, and people settled back into their airconditioned cabins that evening as the ship pulled out of Vietnam and headed for far more pleasant places.