adventures with my mom: Phu Quoc and Ho Chi Minh City chapter

Oh hey guys!

Jumping junipers, batman! I just realized that I didn’t update you on the final part of my Mẹ’s adventures in Vietnam. Goshdarn it.

So, jump back in your time machine and let’s go back to the weekend of November 3^rd and 4^th.

When last we left our heroes, a fantastic week in Ben Tre was winding down. Introductions, teaching, a presentation and Halloween celebrations all went down in just a few short days.

Oh, and my sink broke. Know what’s great about having your sink break at midnight, water spraying everywhere, then when someone finally turns the water off at 1:00 am someone else turns the water back on at 5 am?


Nothing.

Hmmm, this isn't where it's supposed to be...

But I digress. My sink was fixed within hours, and I even have new mosquito netting in my room. Hooray!

After such a hectic and fun-filled week in Bến Tre, we headed into Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday. Our plan was to relax for a day before heading to Phu Quoc, a beautiful island to the southwest of Vietnam. On Friday morning we got breakfast with Anna, a Fulbright ETA from Hue who was in Ho Chi Minh City for the weekend. 

Anna with me and Mẹ

Then we boarded the flight to Phu Quoc. Or at least we tried to.

It turns out our travel agent had screwed up and had just not booked our tickets. We waited around on standby, and at the last minute one ticket opened up. With no more seats left and no flights later in the day, my Mẹ pushed for me to go on the flight ahead to meet with Trevor and Stephen. She would catch the next flight to Phu Quoc the next morning.

So, sprinting through the gates and barely able to make it to the plane on time, I settled into the most stressful 45 minute flight I have ever been on.

Well, I reached Phu Quoc, hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi and reached our hotel quickly. The hotel we were staying at, La Veranda Resort, is gorgeous. 

Our room

Our bathroom

Walking from our room to the restaurant

View from the restaurant's balcony. 

The whole resort is built in the French colonial style, with brick pathways lined with palm trees running from the rooms to the spa, the restaurant and the beach. It was so amazing it was hard to even consider leaving the resort. Oh, and they served hamburgers. Good hamburgers.   

I normally never take pictures of food, but this one is an exception because it was in fact culinary nirvana. 

And of course, Trevor, Stephen and I are the only ones there because Mẹ missed her flight. So you know, just three 22 year old dudes hanging around a honeymoon resort. Totally natural. First up is the beautiful beach, white sand so soft that it felt like you were getting a foot massage.

The beach

After chilling on to the beach we head to the bar basically straight away and immediately become friends with Thao, the bartender. We spent a lot of time talking with the hotel staff, because no one else is our age. The rest of the night was spent in blissful devouring of delicious food and amazing drinks. Then we went home and watched Animal Planet until we passed out. Good night. 

Trevor and Stephen

Trevor reacts appropriately to seeing a hamburger

All three of us, just chilling at a resort. No big deal. 

The next morning we get breakfast, and then head straight for the pool. There we practiced laying out into the pool, because Trevor Stephen and I are all ultimate frisbee players. And we are all apparently five years old. After playing around in the pool for a while Mẹ shows up!

We all had lunch, and then we set off to explore Phu Quoc. First of all we got in a car and headed out to visit a pepper farm. As a history major/fan/nerd, I definitely got a bit of a nerd moment seeing actual pepper plants from Southeast Asia. Europeans sailed thousands of miles and destroyed or created entire new kingdoms just to get the spices that were sitting in my hand. 

The pepper plants

The whole pepper farm

A single green peppercorn 

With Me in the pepper plants

Next we headed off to see a nước mắm factory. Nước mắm is a fish sauce made by systematically layering anchovies, salt and water into giant barrels and fermenting the fish. The resulting sauce is intensely aromatic and is used as a flavoring in almost all Vietnamese food. The taste is salty and fishy, and it is often mixed with lime or chili peppers. Nước mắm Phu Quoc is renowned as being the best nước mắm in all of Vietnam. 

Nước mắm’s intense aroma does not always make it the biggest hit with foreigners, and being inside a nước mắm factory the smell is definitely intense. But for me, nước mắm has been such a common part of my childhood growing up (I never really used ketchup, and I viewed ketchup consumption with the same horror that my more normative friends viewed my use of a pungent fish sauce on basically everything) that the smell of nước mắm reminds me of Mẹ’s kitchen more than anything else. 

Each one of these barrels contains a huge amount of nước mắm

Inside the factory

Mẹ climbed to the top of the ladder to look into one of the barrels

The top layer of a nước mắm barrel

Three different tubes run out of every nước mắm barrel. The darker the fluid, the better the quality. The darkest tubes have the purest batch, made with only fish and salt. The lighter tubes come from later batches that more water added to the mixture.

Then we went to see a plantation where they made rượu sim, or myrtle wine. This rượu is a specialty of Phu Quoc, and the liquor is a dark purple color with a fairly pleasant taste. We saw the liquor and the flowers from which it is made. 

The various different bottles of rượu sim

One of the flowers rượu sim is made from 

Then we went to see some Phu Quoc dogs. The Phu Quoc ridgeback is a unique breed of dog bred only in Phu Quoc. These ridgebacks are fairly large for Vietnamese dogs, standing about knee height and weighing 20-25 kg. Phu Quoc ridgebacks can be identified by the distinctive whorls on their backs. These dogs are kept as guard dogs, hunting dogs and pets. In Vietnam, eating dogs is fairly common, but no one ever eats Phu Quoc dogs. The dogs are sold in Phu Quoc for about $100 and in Ho Chi Minh City for $200-$300. They are known for their loyalty, intelligence, friendliness and fearlessness.  Furthermore, they…

OH MY GOD PUPPIES!!!!

PUPPY

PUPPIES

PUPPIES!

PUPPIEEESSSS!!!!

aaDVEWbavcavkj!#$!$!e

*dies*

*Ahem*. Sorry about that. Here are more pictures with some pretty sweet dogs

As you can see, the whorls on the back of the dogs are very distinctive

A whole bunch of the adult Phu Quoc dogs.

Not pictured: not all the dogs are friendly. There were about fifteen dogs, and I'd say about half of them were not happy to see me. There were a bunch of dogs just offscreen barking at me and generally behaving threatening. I was there for about five minutes, so in that time some of them warmed up to me more. But still, not all these dogs were super happy to see me. 

Mẹ got to play with some puppies as well. She switched to her kindergarten voice when she was talking to them, it was super funny

Playing with more puppies

So somehow Mẹ, Trevor and Stephen were able to drag me away from the dogs. I didn't want to leave, true story. We went a little further south and explored another really pretty beach (but the one at our resort was better). 

The beach

Chilling on the beach

Anyways, we had to leave Phu Quoc early on Sunday, so unfortunately we only had one full day in Phu Quoc. We spent the evening on the beach, then Trevor and Stephen and I headed to the bar. There was also a late night viewing of Sherlock Holmes 2 which was met very positively by all viewers. Except for Stephen, who fell asleep halfway through. He says that he stayed up but he’s lying. 

Thao made us a drink that he set on fire. It was pretty awesome

On the beach in the evening

La Veranda Resort at night

The next morning I walked to the beach early in the morning to take some photographs. We had a delicious breakfast at the hotel, then it was time to had back to Ho Chi Minh City. Our Phu Quoc trip was very short but very fun! Can’t wait to go back there soon!

At breakfast

We got back to Ho Chi Minh City and I went to meet one of Mẹ s friends from way back when my dad went to MIT. Tien was very nice, he is a teacher at RMIT who has spent a long time working on various companies in Vietnam. 

With Tien at a nearby cafe.

After that I went to the RMIT fields to play ultimate frisbee. Mẹ hung around to take pictures, which was awesome.

I spent Sunday evening hanging out with Adrian and Benny, two Fulbright alumni, Anna and two of Anna’s friends named Tin and Jackie. It was a really fun evening; it turns out people in Ho Chi Minh City party pretty late on Sunday night!

On Monday we spent some time wandering around Ho Chi Minh City before I had to take a taxi back to Bến Tre. We went to the Notre Dame Cathedral, and I went shopping in Ben Thanh market.

Then it was time for me to get in a taxi back to Bến Tre. I was definitely pretty sad when Mẹ left. I had gotten so used to traveling around with her. Its a bit jarring when the vacation comes to an end, and then the person you are traveling with goes back home, but you end up staying. It's a strange feeling, because this wasn't like a normal family vacation. This was a vacation for her, but I live here now. 

Still, I had a fantastic time on my Mẹ’s visit. It was really wonderful traveling with her, and I can’t wait for my family to come visit me again!

A copy of a similar photo we took ten years ago. I was much smaller then.

Peace,

jeffers