50 year Bachpacker – Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, a guide for independent travellers in their 40s, 50s & beyond – Vietnam War era memorials, great food, Vipassana meditation (in Australia), Eurovision in Vienna, and getting across the street (in Vietnam) Pt 38
My 50 year travel blog has taken a few years to write so far. I don’t seem to be in any hurry to finish it in homage to one of my favourite travel writers, Patrick Leigh Fermor, especially his trilogy recounting his walking trip across Europe in the 1930s.
I still haven’t gotten out of Asia yet in terms of blog posts. I’ve already travelled back to Mexico since that 50 year trip and next month, and will be travelling there again. This time visiting Oaxaca for the first time! Hoping that next year we can travel over to Europe to watch Eurovision and visit some little villages and towns along the way. I’ve got so excited I’ve already booked some accommodation in Wien (Vienna).
Probably should save more money towards a house being aged in my 50s. But, Eurovision, in Wien. Gonna be awesome. Better investment than a house for sure.
Since my last post I, and after around 24 years, I went back and took another 10-day Vipassana meditation course, as taught by the now dead Vipassana teacher Goenkaji. Just to clarify my last sentence, I hadn’t done a Vipassana course for around 24 years, my last post was sometime earlier this year. We’ll get there, I think I can knock off Vietnam today and then head off to Cambodia for the final leg of my wife and my 50 year backpacker trip
First the Vipassana meditation. I’ve written about this meditation before, especially in the Adventures of Kosio and Juanito (and Corinne). It was set in the 1990s, and the only character from the title I’m still in contact with is Juanito. That’s me.
At the meditation course, which I did up in Pomona in Queensland, I learnt a lot about myself. Vipassana meditation is called insight meditation, so if you do it right you should learn more about yourself. You get 10 days, mostly in silence, not talking to fellow meditators,meditating on your breath, or sati patna meditation, (for around 3 days) and your bodily sensations, or vipassana meditation (for around 7 days). No visualisations. No new age music. Just your breath and bodily sensations. It’s not that fun. But it is definitely insightful.
It’s a long time to do ‘nothing’. Not nothing. Observing. Equanimously. In the process, I learnt I’m an anxious man, a nervous man, a reactive person, sometimes angry, sometimes lustful, sometimes difficult to describe. I’m hooked on playing games on my computer. I like thinking about sex. I love food. I adore travelling and Eurovision.
I’m impermanent. Changing every moment. My mug I bought from Harry Potter world at Universal Studios that says ‘free the house elves’ on it and has a picture of Dobby with a sock is also impermanent. I was clutching it this morning thinking I never want to part with it. Maybe it will break one day. It will. Even if that day is not for a millennia, like the terracotta warriors of Xian, China.
What may not last so long is me. This ‘me’ I’m so attached to. This Juanito character developed over the last half a century or so who likes food, travelling, Eurovision and sex. Plus Danish crime dramas and Danish/ Scandinavian dramas in general. And games like Civilization VI on the laptop. I hate Civilization VII. Hate it. I love stuff and I hate stuff. I’m indifferent to a great deal. I like bacon and egg rolls with runny yolks on white sesame bread rolls from Coles or Woolies and barbecue and tomato sauce on top.
That’s Vipassana. You observe your attachments. You observe the impermanence. You wish the ten days would go faster, especially around days 6,7 and 8. They often feel like an eternity after meditating from 4/4.3am to 9/9.30pm. And on those days the meditations after lunch and before the evening sessions are the worst, sitting from around 1pm to 4pm in a few different sessions.
I’m in no hurry to go back. I have been meditating each morning. Almost every morning. It helps. It helps a lot. That’s why I did it. Even though it’s super boring at times and I’m not in a hurry to go back. Perhaps in another 25 years, let’s see.
The desire to go back to meditating, which I used to do more of before my kids, now in their 20s, came along. Good dad I am insinuating that my children were to blame for me stopping mediation. Where it was me of course. I just stopped.
I love my kids. But not as much as I love myself. That’s just an insight from meditation.
I don’t love anyone as much as myself. I think we’re all like that. Even if we’re trying not to be like that.
I’m improving though. I do metta, or loving-kindness, meditation at the end of my sati patna meditation/ vipassana meditation. It’s where I send good thoughts to all the people of the world in a hope of promoting peace and happiness. Even that woman who was bullying me at work last year, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Plus many more people I’m much more fond of than those people.
And that is my little segue to Vietnam. I’d go back there. It’s much more fun than meditating. But having gone back to meditation I would certainly enjoy it more there. Being less attached to things really does help with my anxieties, my anger, my cravings. It helps me to enjoy life more. Until I die. I’m not so worried about that. Death is just a phase of life.
Ho Chi Minh!
Well. Ho Chi Minh city is a modern bustling metropolis on the Mekong River which we’d last seen in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, a week earlier. That is we saw the Mekong River in Vientiane as opposed to the city of Ho Chi Minh, or Ho Chi Minh’s (the man) ghost in Vientiane.
In our few days in Ho Chi Minh we visited some Vietnam (AKA American) War memorials. My wife and I met up with Fyyaz in Ho Chi Minh as well.
He’s a friend of mine from my days as a public servant graduate in Canberra, which goes back a few decades now – coming up to 20 years actually. In a bit. At the start of the year after next to be precise.
Fyyaz was accompanying us for a few days on the 50 Year Backpacker journey – together but separate I had stipulated when he invited himself along for the trip.
He was staying at some dodgy part of Ho Chi Minh I think, near some brothels. Or was that when he was in Phom Pehn in Cambodia. I can’t remember.
My wife and I weren’t staying anywhere particularly fancy. It was down a little alleyway tucked in behind some buildings on a main road across from a shopping centre (mall) which had a Uniqlo.
As we’d been in South-East Asia around 32 days by that stage – according to my Google Sheets itinerary which comes in handy when I’m renewing my security clearance for work as I need to always update the security people on all the places we’ve visited since I last did a security check, this 50-year trip accounted for many entries towards that – we were pretty acclimatised to the heat and humidity of Vietnam, which was nowhere near as intense as Thailand and Laos had been.
I’m meant to mention blogs and things for that security check as well. Not sure I mentioned this one. But I don’t think anyone reads it so it hardly counts.
Fyyaz was certainly not acclimatised to the South-East Asian heat. He could barely step out of his hotel to be accosted by sex workers before wanting to retreat again – without a sex worker I must stress if his wife is ever reading this – to his airconditioned room. He was constantly wanting to eat at the mall food courts just so he didn’t have to be outside too much, while Jan and I were always on the look out for local street foods, which were mostly to be found on the street, out in the open.
We did get Fyyaz out a few times though, firstly to a market style eatery not far from our hotel which wasn’t super cheap as it seemed more targeted at tourists but it was delicious and had some music. The days were hot, and the mornings and evenings were warm.
It was nice to sit outside when the sun wasn’t around that much early in the day and in the evening, having a coffee and breakfast or beer, soft drinks and delightful Vietnamese noodles and the like.
We only had one full day in Ho Chi Minh so we limited our sightseeing to just two places. The War Remnants Museum, which mainly showed the human impact of decades of war with the French, Americans, Australians and the various factions of the opposing Vietnamese forces. They also had some of the machinery of war displayed out front and a I think a prison, or replica of a prison outside which some bats were having a rest in. The prison included a ‘tiger cage’ which was one of the more horrendous tortures that I think the French invented which was a cage made of barbed wire where prisoners, barely clothed, or perhaps naked, were put in. Which were placed in the scorching sun and which had no room to lie down or stand up in. How sad.
The War Remnants Museum has a few floors of images and artifacts from the conflicts that took place in the country from the days of French colonialism to days when the USA and allies, including Australia, committed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to try and keep Vietnam separated between the communist north and the anti-communist south.
It’s quite the museum to get through and has a great deal of graphic detail that shows the devastation that war brings to a country. Something that is missing in my home country’s war memorial in Canberra Australia which has a sanitised slightly divorced from reality depiction of conflicts that skips most of the heartache that war causes, except for the many names of fallen soldiers that line the sacred flame near the tomb of the unknown soldier.
At one stage my wife and I decided to split up and explore separate sides of one floor of the museum. When we met up again outside we’d both had enough of the museum and we headed to the gift shop to get some souvenirs.
I bought a mug that said ‘War Remnants Museum’ which is one of my favourite mugs along with my Dobby ‘free the house elves’ mug from Universal studios.
It’s another one of my attachments that I have to stuff that is impermanent. I’m sure I thought about that trip and those mugs during my Vipassana meditation course. I think at least in part I was inspired to go back to meditating because of that trip to Ho Chi Minh.
Outside our hotel there was a little cafe with little chairs that had delicious coffee. The barista there was reading a book by Thich Nhat Han called No Death, No Fear. Thich Nhat Han was a Buddhist and peace activist. The guy looked chilled so I thought the book would be good and I ordered it once I’d finally made my way around the world and back to Australia. It took a bit longer to actually sign up to do another course, but that was something of a precursor event which led me along the path to the noble truth again. That and having done a lot of meditation in my 20s, especially in the 1990s.
Speaking of Buddhists, while in Ho Chi Minh I was inspired to visit a memorial to Thich Quảng Đức, a buddhist monk who burnt himself alive on a then Saigon busy intersection. The internet helped guide me and after the War Remnants Museum, where we lost Fyyaz who was now back at his hotel enjoying the air conditioning, Jan and I got a Grab over to the Thich Quảng Đức memorial.
The image of Thich Quảng Đức was one iconic one of the Vietnam War era. He sat there meditating as he burnt himself alive in protest at the treatment that Buddhists were receiving from the South Vietnamese government. It’s a shocking site. A bit extreme. It was one of the mother of all protests and one of the most moving historical sites I have ever visited. After lighting some incense and exploring the memorial a little we headed back to our hotel.
I messaged Fyyaz and we organised to meet up to go to the mall and do some shopping at Uniqlo while Jan had a nap. A lot of clothes from Uniqlo are made in Vietnam so I felt I was shopping locally.
Fyyaz and I then headed for a nice cold beer, before messaging Jan to come and meet us for more beer. It must have been happy hour, which is not a Buddhist concept. Their idea of fun is to sit meditating without moving for an hour in what is known as Adhiṭṭhāna, or strong determination, which is another reason I didn’t enjoy some days of my Vippassan meditation as we had Adhiṭṭhāna session three times per day. It felt like tourture noting the real torture and sufferign described above is another level.
And the final thing – crossing the road!
There’s not much in the way of zebra crossings in Ho Chi Minh.Jan, Fyyaz and I got trapped for a while down a walkway by the Mekong River. With the river on one side and what looked like 20 lanes of traffic on the other side with no obvious way to get through that traffic, we enlisted the help of a local guy who was walking along with his partner.
The secret is to make eye contact and just nudge your way forward with obvious intent. Doing this allows one to gradually and progressively make your way through the sea of scooters and cars to the other side without having to walk 5 kilometres to the only designated street crossing.
It was pretty easy actually, you just have to suck it up and be confident in your movements with no sudden movements and anticipating the oncoming traffic as much as possible.
We made it and went for another cold beer and some more Vietnamese food I suspect.
The next day Jan and I got on a bus and headed to Cambodia, our last Asian country before heading to Europe.
Fyyaz, after ignoring the great street food on offer and instead going to the 7-11 to buy an ancient hot dog, had some tummy troubles and decided not to risk the long mini-bus trip and instead hopped on a place to meet us again in Phom Penn.
Which will be the next post.
Whenever that might be.
Probably before we head to Vienna for Eurovision.
I hope.
