Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, words to live by. It’s a goofy name for a very weird film I watched on the long flight from DC (IAD) to Bangkok (via Taipei), and also a solid strategy for our extended summer family vacation to Thailand and Vietnam. While I won’t recommend the film for most people because it was just too odd (if you like Donnie Darko, this might be up your alley), I do endorse the two countries we toured.
We generally had decent luck, lots of fun, and no one died from our group despite a few hairy moments. To wit:
- On our second day in Bangkok, I took Teddy and Catherine for a walk to 7-11. Ordinarily you can get there in 100m or less from most places, but I turned right when I should have turned left and missed the closest option. We walked over a kilometer (I’m trying to measure like a local, not an American). We walked there on one side of the busy Bangkok road (all their roads are busy). On the return trip on the opposite side, I inhaled something caustic and immediately started coughing. Before I could figure out what it was or where it was coming from, the kids started coughing too. I heard people nearby similarly struggling to breathe as I tried to figure out if we were being pepper sprayed or something (though it did not burn our eyes, just our throats and lungs). Then I saw a guy in a storefront aiming an industrial-sized flex duct out towards the street, where we and everyone else happened to be. We survived his noxious attack, though I was still feeling throat irritation a day later (the kids recovered much more quickly). We played a game of counting 7-11s every time we drove anywhere in Thailand, easily surpassing two dozen stores on every drive of twenty minutes or more. Each time it was a reminder that I walked my kids an extra-long way past a pulmonic attack just to confirm that they don’t sell Slurpees in Thai 7-11s.
- In our third hotel, we were happy to have been given a room with air conditioning (not always an option at that particular resort). However, the recently cleaned room reeked of astringent cleaning agents that we had to air out, even if it meant inviting in the mosquitoes that we otherwise thought we could avoid with the AC room (the other rooms featured mosquito nets over the beds). Sai reminded me of the relatively recent reports of tourists in Thailand dying as a result of exposure to lethal doses of housekeeping products. This is why I refuse to inject myself with bleach. Fortunately, our lungs were strengthened by the industrial chemicals sprayed on me and the kids walking the streets of Bangkok a few days prior. Neither the cleaning products nor the malaria finished us off.
- Guidebooks tell you how to navigate traffic in Vietnam – walking steadily and predictably across the road, trusting the endless stream of scooters to weave around you (nobody stops). I was fairly confident that I would have survived a collision, but I held my breath for both kids every time we left the hotel. When we walked to most places, I’d have the children flanking me, one in each hand. This way they were perfect buffers / bumpers against oncoming traffic. Sai made a comment to our last driver on the way to the airport to leave Vietnam about how she was surprised not to have seen any accidents. Moments later we saw a couple scooters scattered on the road beside a bus, with emergency responders on the scene. She’s a witch, I tell you.
- We were all vaccinated against typhoid fever, in accordance with older CDC recommendations (I wouldn’t ask RFK Jr. for current guidance because I don’t trust him or his brain worms). We stuck to bottled water. Tried to avoid the ice. Regardless, every one of us had our days of diarrhea, and both kids battled flu-like symptoms including lots of vomiting during the trip. It wasn’t all fun times. To be fair, Catherine enjoyed her day in hospital. She didn’t particularly like receiving an IV, but once she figured out that she could lay in bed and watch YouTube videos for hours on end, she stopped complaining.
- The first time I went to Thailand with Sai, many years ago, I nearly drowned in the Gulf of Thailand. She still gives me a hard time about it; she has never gotten over the disappointment of the Aussie who saved me. This time around, in a swimming hole in Khao Sok National Park, I pleaded with her to help, as I struggled to stay above water while trying to keep our kids out of the currents. I watched her watch me while I couldn’t find a grip on the slippery rocks, wondering why she was so unconcerned when I thought I would die, when finally a Frenchman this time swam to my rescue and his kids pulled mine up and out of the area. Like Blanche Dubois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers, since my wife did not feel inclined to come to my aid.
- On the same day of my near drowning, we were walking back to our hotel after lunch, when a shopkeeper yelled at us to stand back. He was using a long stick to guide a snake across the road right in front of us (if he hadn’t yelled, we might have trampled the poor little cobra).
Outside of these few minor reminders of mortality, our trip was perfectly safe. My father’s Vietnam travels in the late 1960s were much scarier.
Highlights of the trip, broken down by location:
Pattaya:
After arriving in Bangkok, we headed to Pattaya for a few days of fun. This is a beachside town a couple of hours from the capital.
For our first full day in Pattaya, we started out at Nong Nooch, a touristy garden where Catherine rode an elephant and was later picked up by another pair of elephants (Teddy was too scared for either interaction).
The elephant driver made me buy a cheap ring for Catherine, made from elephant hair. He also tried to hawk some ivory trinkets but I declined (isn’t the ivory trade illegal?).
Nong Nooch has massive gardens and giant sculptures of full-scale dinosaurs, larger than life-size Buddhas, and other mythic creatures like Godzilla fighting King Kong. It was a motley menagerie. It’s an impressive campus, but the theme of what they were trying to present was lost on me.
They had a cultural show of dancers wearing traditional Thai dress and banging drums and glitchy sidebar screens in a low rent auditorium, followed by elephant shows in a lower rent bleachered arena. Walking across the infield, touts recruit people to pose with the elephants for pictures for a few dollars (100 or 200 baht – $3 – $6, roughly). As noted above, Catherine was game for this activity, as she’s never shy around a camera.
The elephant show then included having the animals throw lawn darts at balloons (not very successfully),painting pictures, playing soccer, walking over volunteers from the crowd, tossing basketballs, and running around in formations. The beasts were well trained for this circus. [Later in the trip I had proposed visiting an elephant sanctuary, where they proudly promoted not exploiting the animals, but Sai did not see the harm in the spectacle at Nong Nooch; slightly different wavelengths – you know what they say – Men are from Mars, Women are from Thailand.]
Then we went to Ramayana, a large water park where Catherine rode the big water slides (Teddy was too scared). Because Thailand is always hot and Ramayana is a little farther away from the main town of Pattaya (20 minute drive), and since this is the low season, it was not at all crowded on our Sunday in August. The downside of the smaller crowds was that there were no lines to contend with when Catherine kept demanding that we go back up all the stairs again to come back down the giant tube slides at the end of the day. It was a lot of stairs! Also, sharing the large tube, I was the anchor, dragging the tube down the twisty slide backwards. Catherine was my navigator, warning me of upcoming turns and drops that I could not anticipate.
Teddy did eventually try one of the smaller slides and agreed that it was not the death trap he feared it would be and that we would encounter in our other stops on the trip.
Ramayana boasts the longest lazy river in SE Asia. Much lazier than the Sok River we would brave a few days later. Wave pools, splash parks, and a foam pool party were other highlights.
Our hotel was near the Wong Amat Beach. The beach was unimpressive. The water was brown instead of the crystal clear blue I’ve grown accustomed to in Thailand. But there were a lot of cool shells that Catherine used to ornament her sandcastle (Teddy was too scared).
Pattaya has a reputation of being a giant red-light district. We were staying in the northern part of town (Naklua). The seedy nightlife is located further south. Regardless, it’s a fairly big city (close to half a million people, including tourists, depending on the season / day), so the actual red-light pockets are only a small fraction of the overall area, and are easily avoided. It’s like assuming that Amsterdam is overrun with drugs and prostitutes, when you actually have to seek them out, or so I’m told.
Before I besmirch Pattaya as too tame, know that even in Naklua, there are beer bars with lots of ladies yelling “Helloooo!” as you walk by because they know old guys can’t hear so well. And the late night massage offerings may not be purely therapeutic. I wanted my trip to have a happy ending, so I ignored the entreaties and skipped the massage. Sai only partook of the cheap massage rates in Thailand and Vietnam every other day. I’m pretty sure it was just an excuse to escape me and the kids.
Cheow Lan:
After driving from Pattaya back to Bangkok, we caught an early morning flight to Surat Thani in the south, where we were picked up by van and driven to the dock by the Rajjaprabha Dam, where we boarded a longboat that took us to our floating capsule resort on the Cheow Lan Lake. Here were the pretty turquoise waters that we did not have in Pattaya. It only took half a day of travel to reach.
It’s pretty cool being able to swim out your front door. But it’s pretty hot not having electricity in your room until after six p.m. And I prefer having a private bathroom. Walking back and forth to the communal bathroom and toilets in the middle of the night was not fun. Couldn’t they just drill a hole in the floor?
We went on an excursion via longboat to a hiking trail (approximately 1.5 km), where we spotted lots of wild elephant poop but no wild elephants, to a bamboo boat that took us to the coral caves, before backtracking the same route.
The Coral Caves themselves were dark and cavernous. Second best caves from our trip. The guide had a light bar in hand to lead the walk through the cave. No fixed lighting otherwise. If I hadn’t had a flashlight on my phone, straggling with the kids would have left us in the dark.
On the short longboat ride back to our lake pods our captain learned of an elephant sighting nearby and detoured us to an adjacent island, where we intruded upon the pachyderm’s bath. It was weird watching the elephant without seeing it surrounded by Thai people with sharp sticks yelling at the animal while asking us for money.
The next morning, we boarded another boat for a lake safari, with the captain cruising around and pointing out monkeys, eagles, and other distant animals that I could not make out. The only one that was easy to spot was the elephant, in roughly the same place as the day before, which makes me wonder if this was another trained animal, with handlers hiding below the surface of the water.
Khao Sok:
We left our lake hotel and rode to our riverside hotel, beside the Khao Sok National Forest. The location lived up to its rainforest reputation because this was the first day we experienced any appreciable precipitation. Our August trip was during the rainy season for Thailand and Vietnam, and the weather app on my phone showed showers every day. We only saw a couple of short downpours on a few days and were usually dripping wet from sweat instead. Southeast Asia is hot, damn hot, real hot. Art’s Riverside Lodge has rooms on pedestals surrounded by trees so the monkeys can easily jump to your porch to search for food. They didn’t try to enter our unit though because they preferred to avoid the toxic cleaning chemicals.
Through the resort we booked a tubing excursion. They picked us up and drove us ten minutes away where we jumped onto some really basic looking innertubes with a float-along guide to keep us on track, paddling with his sandal. There were pretty limestone cliffs lining the river’s path. The water moved rapidly with the rains as we floated right past our lodge and down to the pickup point, where we boarded our ride back. I’d complain that it was only an hour of tubing, except that it was a little chilly in the rain. If it were drier, I’d complain that it was too long in the sun.
We enjoyed local dishes at Art’s for dinner, before walking back along the dark path to our treehouse room. When I pulled my phone for light, I spotted a large, spotted snake in the middle of the path, moments before one or more of our four would have stepped on or tripped over the two-meter serpent.
Through the hotel we arranged a guided hike the next day. The rainy season was limited to just the one day before but there was still plenty of mud on the nature trail. Our local guide took us on the main path through the Khao Sok National Forest. It was impossible to get lost on the straight shot, but the guide’s value was in how she spotted wildlife that we would have missed on our own. Monkeys, lizards, insects, spiders (including a couple of tarantulas). She even led us to a swimming hole where I thought my story was going to end.
I’m not a strong swimmer. I was good for walking with the kids through the shallows, but when the ground dropped off and Teddy held onto my back, I went under. I pushed him toward the rocks to climb out, but the round, wet boulders offered no good grip for either of us. And Catherine tried to follow Teddy into the area. Pushing farther out, away from the slippery rocks, the current would carry the kids downstream and I was not sure of my ability to keep up or catch them. So there I was, trying to tread lightly until they were safely on dry land. I asked people around us to help pull the kids up, but no one seemed to be paying attention (including Sai, who took pictures of us instead). After multiple pleas for help (quietly solicited, as I did not have the energy to yell), someone recognized that I was struggling, and swam to my assistance, helping me to a shallower point to climb up, while his kids and one of the guides finally pulled my kids up onto the rocks.
The return hike was less eventful, and we stopped in the bustling downtown for some lunch. By bustling, I mean that there are a half dozen small bars / restaurants and massage shops, some laundry services, and a couple of tourism centers. The excitement of the town was the cobra crossing the street, and the group of monkeys we watched fighting each other on the overhead power lines.
Because I was not traumatized enough by the near drowning in the morning, Sai insisted we take the kids swimming in the swiftly moving river beside the hotel (the same one we floated down the day before). It was not a wide river crossing, but once you moved more than a few meters from the edge, the deeper water would quickly pull you downstream. If I knew better, I’d think Sai was trying to kill me.
Our other fun game was counting snails around the resort. The escargots were as abundant as 7-11s in Bangkok and Pattaya; the kids were up to 80 by the time we were packed up and ready to leave.
Before returning to the airport, we stopped in Surat Thani for seafood. Sai alone ate a horseshoe crab. Eating neither horse nor shoe seemed appealing to the rest of us. Catherine loved the normal crabs, eating more than her fair share. Which was fine until we were waiting at our gate for our flight and she proceeded to throw up all over me.
For those keeping track, I was chemically attacked twice, nearly drowned, close to stepping on two scary snakes, and upchucked upon, all within the first week of the trip. By this point, I was ready to go home.
Instead, we headed back to Bangkok before leaving for the Vietnam leg of our vacation. We met some of Sai’s old friends for lunch. One of the friends had a daughter around the same age as Catherine (6), who had an adorable English accent picked up from her international school. My daughter decided to emulate the lingo and sounded like a Mary Poppins reject the rest of the trip. Her friend’s kid’s international scholarship seemed impressive compared to the limited public schooling Catherine’s had so far (multiple languages, better reading abilities, more international knowledge), but at least my kids don’t normally talk like wankers.
Da Nang (Vietnam):
We flew into Da Nang with Sai’s mother (Yai = grandma) and brother (Uncle Id) and checked into our hotel a couple blocks from Da Nang Beach. We were about a kilometer from the Dragon Bridge, around which we had carefully choreographed our itinerary, because it only puts on a weekend show. Our Friday night arrival gave us enough time to get to the bridge ahead of its 9:00 p.m. action. We got there too early and spent half an hour sweating with the gathering masses before the bridge dragon started spewing fireballs into the night sky. The fire did not help with the oppressive heat. After four rounds of fire, the dragon shoots geysers of water even farther out, which then rains down upon the crowds below, finally offering some saturating relief. It’s a cool bridge and a neat experience but we did not feel the need to witness the Saturday or Sunday shows.
The Marble Mountains were a short drive south of our hotel. Packed with people and timed poorly with the heat, we trekked across the top of the mountain to explore the Buddhist temples inside the caves. Even with taking the glass elevator up, it was rough climbing the other stairs to the different viewing platforms.
At the base of the mountain is a large cave where they showcase a vision of hell, with demon sculptures and torture scenes. I explained to the kids that this is what awaits children who do not listen to their parents. The lower depths of hell were much cooler than the hot climb up the stairways to heaven, so given the choice, metaphorically or metaphysically, I might be down with the devils (including my two).
Later, the demons and I went to Da Nang Beach, where the sand was much smoother and softer than in Pattaya (few shells to be found), and the area for swimming was packed with people, even late in the day. Sai was busy testing Vietnamese massage. Her verdict – not as good as Thai (not surprising based on her bias). Da Nang Beach is just north of the famous My Khe Beach, but it’s the same sand and water and same crowds from what I could see. I was waiting for Robert Duvall to fly in to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries but we missed him by a few months.
Sun World at Ba Na Hills was a highlight destination in our planning for Da Nang. It is kind of cheesy but still worth the hype. It’s a thirty-minute drive that should take half that time, except the traffic getting out of the city was brutal. Vietnam does not like traffic lights, preferring to let everyone have a free for all at every intersection. Once you get outside of the urban madness, you enter beautiful countryside. Starting at the base of Ba Na Hills you board a lengthy cable car, up and over the mountains, for kilometers. The panoramic view stretches past the city to the sea behind, while you search for the top of the line in front, only for the car to cross a peak and stretch to the next hilltop, until you finally reach the massive Sun World development. This complex, which is still expanding, has multiple castles and villages, a huge hotel, gardens, and fountains across its sprawling resort.
They have theatres with 4D movies (i.e. fake rollercoasters); indoor and outdoor rides for kids of all ages; tracks for an alpine slide (i.e. fake rollercoaster); carnival games, food stalls, play areas; and the famous golden (hand) bridge.
Catherine was particularly excited about the alpine slide. Teddy thought it sounded too scary. By the time we trekked through most of the other attractions, we had convinced Teddy to give it a try. The slide tix were extra, on top of the general admission, and I wasn’t sure if the kids would enjoy the ride, so I told Sai just to get a single ride (one kid and adult per car). I thought I was being frugal, but when I reran the math later, I realized that the tickets were something like $2 apiece. We should have done more! Both kids loved the experience. Teddy rode with Sai, whose arms were not long enough to hold the brakes fully open to maximize speed. I ran full tilt the whole way and Catherine still complained that it was not fast enough.
The Golden Bridge is an iconic image in central Vietnam. It’s cool looking on guidebook covers and from a distance. In person, it was too crowded to enjoy, at least for me. There are these massive concrete hands that appear to be holding up the curved, golden bridge, as if Buddha is lifting you into the sky. It’s a magical experience, until you’re elbowed out of the way by someone trying to take a selfie. I also expect my Vietnam bridges to shoot fire for my attention, not just a hand job.
By itself, I would pass on the Golden Bridge. But in conjunction with all the other entertainment, Ba Na Hills was a worthwhile daytrip for our group. Especially since we were handed free beer coupons at the bottom (before the first cable car line); these came in handy when we reached the beer garden at the top. Ba Na has their own onsite brewery! They also have a winery, but it seemed to have been undergoing renovations during our visit. I sacrificed a few coupons for free French fries for the kids, but we all came away happy.
Continuing my trend of bad decisions, we disregarded some inconvenient barricades preventing us from walking back the way we came to reach a nearby cable car to take us back to the bottom of the hills. Why would they close off this garden area? We got to the other side to be greeted with workers in hazmat suits spraying pesticides all over. Kudos to Vietnam for at least trying to keep us safe. And whatever they were spraying was a lot less caustic than the crap without warning in Bangkok.
In Da Nang, we could look across the South China Sea and see a large Buddha-like statue, but with boobs. On the Son Tra Peninsula, nicknamed Lady Buddha, Quan Am is the Buddhist goddess of compassion. She stands some 30 stories tall and presides over monkey mountain, where the macaques divebomb the trash cans and steal food from tourists. If you discount Liberty Island’s giant pedestal and stick to just the statue, Lady Liberty would be shorter than Lady Buddha, even with raised hand and torch. This means Melania’s statue (funded by Bezos) will have to go even bigger, with a big boost from her heels. The goddess of compassion cannot hold a torch to the goddess of “I really don’t care.”
Hoi An:
For a change of pace from the bustling big city of Da Nang, Hoi An is a short 30 minutes south. There are streets packed with locals and tourists in the historic town where you don’t have to worry about getting run over by vehicles. But to get there you have to first navigate the outlying streets where there are the constant streams of scooters and cars that traumatized me in Da Nang. So, more of the same in terms of traffic for the most part. Just no high-rise buildings. Hoi An was a trade hub for Chinese and Japanese merchants and shows influences from the different cultures in its historic buildings.
The Hoai River runs adjacent to the historic old town, with colorful boats afloat for evening tours where tourists unleash paper lanterns on the water. The way it works is you walk through the historic streets, looking like a tourist. A local spots your family and starts pestering you to go on a cheap boat ride. You give in because you are a tourist, and this is a touristy thing to do. On the water, they stop the boat and hand you little paper lanterns with lit candles inside. You make a wish and drop it onto the water. You take lots of pictures but most of them don’t come out very good because the flash on your iPhone sucks. Or maybe that’s just me.
Hoi An is also known for its inexpensive custom tailors. Teddy and I were fitted for custom Hawaiian style Vietnamese shirts. Sai then tried to upgrade my wardrobe with a linen shirt and three pairs of pants for work. Plus a skirt for Sai. In the end, we spent a lot of money at this inexpensive place. Nonetheless, I recommend the Ba-Ri Cloth Shop. Their service was awesome, especially Mrs. Hoa, who handled all of Sai’s requests and nitpicks with comical grace and patience. When Sai told her that the pants had to accommodate my fat ass, Mrs. Hoa said it was a “sexy butt”, so she earned my endorsement forever.
She refused to make a dress for Catherine, much to my daughter’s dismay, but Mrs. Hoa insisted that it would be a waste of money since she’ll likely outgrow it in no time at all, assuming my little shrimp does not stay a little shrimp forever. Catherine found a souvenir shop selling Vietnamese style dresses and was happy with that. It lasted approximately one hour before she spilled food on it.
Another popular tourist trap in Hoi An is the opportunity to spin around in coconut boats. Most of Vietnam (for the portions we visited, at least) was very clean and well-maintained. Nowhere did I feel unsafe or somewhere sketchy… except for the Cam Thanh area with the coconut boat tours. This shambolic village was full of touts and scammers. The boat tour prices were negotiable, meaning they quoted some inflated rate and you scoffed, until they knocked half off to get to something more reasonable. Capitalism in action!
On the water were hundreds of round half-shell boats, touring the ugly section of the Thu Bon River delta. Each standard boat had one oarsman and up to three passengers. There were special, striped boats that had steeper sides and a single paddler, who waited for paying passengers to come aboard for a spin. You climb into his vessel and he starts wheeling and dealing with how much extra for this service. For Catherine, Teddy and I it was an extra 400,000 VND, which seemed like a ripoff to me, until I figured out that it was only around $16. For the next few minutes, he spun us right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby, right round, round, round. Surprisingly, no one threw up. That would come soon enough. There are floating DJ stands blasting music, but I didn’t hear any Dead Or Alive which would have been appropriate for my quoted song. Ratt’s Round and Round could have worked too.
After switching back to our original boats, our captain held us hostage beside the dock until we tipped him for his service. Again, it was small dollars (in ridiculously large denominations of Dongs), but it would have felt so much less sketchy if they just charged more and included everything rather than playing games. When I travel to Asia, I have rules about who I like to tip.
Yai and Id headed to the airport while we visited Mrs. Hoa for fittings and adjustments of our custom clothing, which we’d pick up the next day. We then wandered down to the riverside where we found a small shop where the kids could make their own lanterns, like the ones found ornamenting everywhere in Hoi An. There are places where you build the entire assembly, frame and cladding, but it takes hours and attention to detail that my kids lack. We opted for the simpler gluing of patterned paper on the outside of a pre-made frame. These are take-home souvenirs, and not the craft paper lanterns set loose on the river at night.
For our last full day in Hoi An, we booked passage on the group speed boat trip to Cham Island. From there we were taken to a place to snorkel before returning for lunch and leisurely time at the beautiful, tropical beach. I had a camera in a waterproof case that Catherine used to take a bunch of worthless pictures of the sky instead of the colorful fish in the sea. Teddy woke up feeling horrible but hung on for the excursion, and his highlight was the chance to rest in a hammock.
Hue:
We took a scenic train ride north from Da Nang to Hue, hugging the coast for three hours. The fancy “soft seats” were nothing special, with Catherine keeping me busy playing cards while Teddy slept the whole way. When I booked passage through the user-unfriendly Vexere website, I reserved an entire row for our foursome. Seats 61 & 62 on the right side of the train, and 63 & 64 on the left. Once we settled in and stowed our luggage, a train employee told us that half our party needed to move to the opposite end of the train. It appeared that someone had swapped seat tags 1 & 2 with 61 & 62, because the numbering was out of sequence for these four specific seats. Regardless, the seat tags governed in the eyes of the employee, so we had to split up.
There’s a fancier train that stops for ten minutes at a scenic station, but it only runs twice a day at less convenient times. The windows of the train were pretty dirty, so half my pictures looked like the ones from My Cousin Vinny. The other half had large power lines impairing the view. The drive we took back was nice enough too, so I don’t think it makes a big difference how you get to Hue.
Hue was the imperial capital, home to the Nguyen emperors from 1802 through 1947, when the last emperor surrendered his rule to let the commies take over, and the capital later moved back to Hanoi (where it had been for eight centuries before 1802). Today there are tours through the grounds of the former palace, though some portions have not yet been fully restored since destruction during some misguided 20th century wars.
The palace grounds are immense, albeit dwarfed by Trump’s ballroom. The outer walls are imposing. Inside are more gates, pagodas, moats and gardens. There is the outer Citadel, first line of defense; Imperial City where official business was conducted; and the innermost Forbidden City, which I guess we’re not supposed to talk about. Our guide explained where the emperor used to sleep, where he ruled from his throne, where he kept the queen and his harems, and other fun facts that I quickly forgot. They also have a VR headset tour that flies you through the palace grounds. Afterwards, Sai and I felt nearly as nauseous as Teddy.
Minh Mang was emperor from 1820 to 1841. His tomb at Mount Cam Ke was as impressive as the palace grounds, more so because it was all for a dead guy and had far fewer people filling it up. There are dozens of buildings amidst the Trung Minh Lake compound, ultimately leading to a closed off door behind which MM was actually interred. What a tease! We traveled all these kilometers, passed through a bunch of outbuildings, just to find out that the tomb itself was off limits.
We also saw the tomb of Khai Dinh, but his digs were less impressive, even if more open to visitors. By the time we toured Khai’s tomb, both kids were done walking and hearing about history.
Hue itself was a much larger city than I was anticipating. I thought the ancient capital would be much smaller than Da Nang, but it was similarly urban. Yet another place where I held my breath every time I stepped off the sidewalk to cross their hectic traffic.
There are several bridges crossing the Perfume River, though none with any fire-breathing, water-spraying dragons that we could see. We trekked across one of the bridges to explore a local night market, which proved way too local for our tastes. We crossed back and found a fake 7-11 for some safer snacks.
Bangkok:
We came limping back to Bangkok after our whirlwind tour of central Vietnam. On our last full day in Hoi An, Teddy felt under the weather, but he still managed to rally for the snorkeling. Throughout Hue, he was exhausted, often opting to sit and rest rather than explore the different sites. We encouraged Catherine to keep her distance as we suspected that her brother had caught something, but sharing small hotel rooms made this untenable. We flew back to Bangkok on Monday. The kids both wanted nothing more than to sleep through dinner and the night. This was not necessarily a sign of sickness though, because probably half our meals on the whole trip had one child or the other falling asleep at the table. Every transit had someone passed out. This was a long trip.
On Tuesday, Sai had planned some medical tourism, which was aptly timed. Catherine woke up and started throwing up like a child possessed by Surat Thani crabs. She threw up inside the house, then outside waiting for our cab. Then into a bag Sai held for her while in the cab. Then in the check-in area of the hospital. Then twice more, the last time when the physician was preparing to discharge her (with a prescription and fluid recommendations), at which point the doctor decided to get Catherine a bed for the afternoon. She had tested positive for the flu.
By this time Teddy was mostly recovered (no more fever or vomiting), but he did sleep away the day in the hospital while Catherine watched hospital TV. Sai and I just had to distance ourselves as much as possible from the diseased vectors. My plan was to also try to drown the germs in cheap Thai beer.
Sai had a full physical in the hospital, with a deeper checkup than you can ever get in the US, for a fraction of the cost. I had a dermatological determination that I do not yet have skin cancer. The idea was to spend a few hours in the urban hospital, then check out a nearby mall for lunch before checking into our final hotel. Instead, we spent the better part of the day watching Catherine watching YouTube before we headed to our last hotel.
Shangri-La (Bangkok, not Hilton’s Utopia):
Sai booked us a couple of nights at a five-star luxury hotel in Bangkok. The Shangri-La is a gorgeous high rise right on the Chao Phraya River. In general, Thailand and Vietnam are very inexpensive. Shangri-La is… not. Most of our hotels (Pattaya, Khao Sok, Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue) were nice enough (though Cheow Lan with its mattresses on the floors, communal bathrooms, and power outages during the day would not warrant a return trip for me); Shangri-La is spectacular, as the name implies.
The average beer in Thailand was between 90 and 120 baht ($3-$4). In Vietnam, many of the restaurants were around 25,000 VND (~$1). At 7-11 in Thailand, a large bottle of water was maybe 40 baht ($1). But at a Shangri-La restaurant, water ran 200 baht and a bottle of Chang was double that! Sure, we saved at the other parts of the trip, but after being spoiled with the unusually low prices elsewhere, I was unable to adjust up to the ritzy Shangri-La Ti Da prices and couldn’t bring myself to drink more than a single beer at those rates.
Icon Siam is a megamall right across the river from Shangri-La. This shopping center is roughly the size of the Mall of America, with seven levels of shops, hundreds of food options, high end luxury brands, and its own Mega Harborland! While Icon Siam is the 12th largest mall in the world, it is only the third largest in the Bangkok area.
Harborland is a huge, indoor playground at most of the Thai malls (we’d seen the place in at least three other malls in our travels, which seem to often bring us to places for Sai to eat and shop). Each time we told the kids that they would get a chance to check it out at a later date. Our second to last day in Bangkok was that date.
Sai sold me on the plan when she explained that we could hire someone to watch the kids while we went elsewhere (Shopping? Massage? Nap?). After reviewing the venue menu, Sai figured out that two kids meant two sitters per the establishment’s regulations, which meant double the price. After the expense of Shangri-La, it was clear that she was not happy about the costs, so I volunteered to hang with our children while she was free to go play. Am I a hero? Yes, I am.
Sai bought me and the kids our special grippy socks for Harborland and dropped us faster than you can say “sawatdee krub”. Somehow, she bought Teddy only a single sock, expecting the boy to hop on one foot for the three-hour block of play. Hero dad bought him a second sock, with savings from the second beer I did not drink at the hotel.
The playground consisted of slides, obstacles, a zipline, climbing nets, sports areas and plenty of other stations to burn off excess energy. Catherine’s favorite was the kid hair and nail salon, where she and a couple of new friends got to work on a reluctant customer who would have rather been running around with Sai. Teddy loved the zipline. See, he’s not always a big chicken!
As a reward (payback) for babysitting the kids at Harborland while Sai did something else (shopping, massage, muay thai?), I took off after the kids fell asleep for an evening of barhopping in Bangkok. I boarded the skytrain to find a brewpub I’d found on my phone, but on the ground I opted for some divey corner bars instead, settling for the cheaper local beers (Leo was my go-to for the night). After a couple of stops with a couple of drinks at each, I was ready to call a cab and call it a night, except I had to pee, so I opted for one more place, an Irish pub of all things, practically empty, which meant no bathroom lines to worry about. Their Guinness was grossly overpriced relative to Leo, so I stayed with the local product.
The young bartendress asked where I was from. I admitted the ugly truth of my ugly Americanness; if only I could fake the English accent as well as Catherine. She told me she was Korean before confessing that she was actually an illegal immigrant from Myanmar (I suspected she wasn’t Irish). I promised not to report her and then she proceeded to tell me about how she fled Myanmar because the cluster bombs being dropped on her village were too much, and the school she used to teach at was in a bunker, and she was working the bar in Bangkok to send money back to her parents, and yada yada yada, I needed a drink.
Another server interrupted her sob story and started asking me what was wrong with America, why would we elect the crazy guy twice… Can you imagine, a spoiled rich populist businessman convincing a bunch of ignorant rural red hats that he has their interests at heart while he proceeds to sell out their country to line his own (and his family’s) pockets through incredibly crooked actions… (substitute red shirts for red hats and we’ve just described Thailand’s former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from power when the rest of the country stood up to his corruption. But Thaksin had better hair and wore less makeup).
I didn’t want to get into a deep political discussion because I was tired and how could I bemoan my embarrassing homeland against the visceral atrocities of the other girl’s experiences in Myanmar? Sure, Trump is a horrible human being and America elected him twice because we are really stupid and sexist, but at least we’re only bombing boats in the Caribbean and schools in Iran, instead of schools in our own country. We may be banning books about inconvenient truths and alternative lifestyles, but we’re still a safer haven for a girl to tend bar than Myanmar… so there’s that. And in America there is no lese majeste, Thailand’s law whereby people are imprisoned for saying mean things about their king, at least as of this writing, except for Comey and whoever else the corrupt AG can prosecute.
I overtipped due to my white guilt and called it a night. Is it wrong that I would be more generous to the homeless if they looked like cute Asian girls and served me alcohol? Yes, it is.
Relaying some details to Sai the next day, I wondered if she shared my temptation to adopt and rescue the young girl. Instead, she asked for the name of the bar so she could have her deported. But I’ll never tell!
We spent the morning of our last full day in Bangkok playing by the large pool at Shangri La. The kids also swam in the pools at Pattaya, Da Nang, Hoi An, but SL’s was by far the biggest and nicest. Sadly, whether it was the weather (a little cloudy and breezy) or fatigue (three weeks into the trip and after struggling through the flu), they lacked their usual energy and did not swim for long.
It was time to go home.
Final Thoughts:
The Vietnamese are really horny. In a short, thirty-minute ride across town, I heard my driver use his horn more frequently than I’ve honked in thirty plus years of driving. And it was every driver, at every intersection, or every time they passed a scooter or saw a scooter entering traffic, or approximately every other breath.
Vietnam was much cleaner and nicer than I was expecting. I’m accustomed to seeing poor areas of Thailand and thought that Vietnam would be worse. Instead, it was the opposite. Whether this is because Thailand is an older country and looks more lived in, or Vietnam was redeveloped more recently post-wars, or because the communist leaders do a better job of hiding the poverty, I cannot say. Except for Cam Thanh, which could use a little commie cleanup.
We only saw a snippet of Vietnam, confining our trip to the central area (based on timing). This means that there is more to explore if we ever come back (Hanoi – North, Ho Chi Minh – South, and their regions).
7-11 is everywhere in Bangkok and Pattaya (not so much in Khao Sok). 7-11 was nowhere to be found in Central Vietnam. We did see a couple of people wearing 7-11 shirts, but no stores in Da Nang, Hoi An or Hue. For the enterprising franchisee, get in there! And if you really want to make a killing, get a Slurpee machine.
Catherine was really rude to Yai. She had some serious attitude. I tried to make her apologize on multiple occasions. Yai seemed to take it in stride. I wonder if grandma had lived through similar bitchiness from her own daughter, years before? Perhaps the apple did not fall far from Sai’s tree? Despite her preteen problematic brattiness, Catherine was ridiculously popular everywhere we went. While the guides were grabbing her hand or servers smiling, Sai and I and Teddy tried to resist the temptation to throw her overboard or leave her behind.
Teddy was just happy to get some Thai Pokémon cards.
Whether we retire in Thailand or not, I’m pretty sure that I will die there, sooner or later, in some body of water. Sai will be nearby, recording my final moments if she’s not too busy checking Facebook. Until then, I’ll try to travel to places less lethal if possible.
Traipse Reports - Trips and Races 