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We had the morning ‘at leisure’ again since we were sailing to the next town. I was up for the sunrise, which is now my tradition, but it was nothing special. Nothing like the Cambodian ones. We were still docked at Chou Doc. Despite that, the Wi-Fi was still not working (as was often the case). So I went over to the dock and snarfed the Wi-Fi password from the nearby café. The door to the cafe was open but no one was there. So I went in and saw the sign on a post with the password but it was many numbers long. Doh! I’ll never be able to memorize this. But then realized I could take a photo of it, which I did without anyone noticing and made my escape. So I was able to post some pictures before we got underway (and I was the only one, hah!).
We motored down river for a while. In the meantime, we got a kitchen tour. It’s very small and very hot. Not for the faint of heart. The poor chefs are in there 3 times a day. Yikes. Then an hour long discussion with the guide on Vietnamese pronunciation. There are 6 tones that give the same vowel letter a different sound and hence the words different meanings. They are: no change, go up, go down, up and down and a few others. A number of them sounded the same to me so it takes a good ear I guess. We discovered later, from another guide, that there are also multiple vowel pronunciations. So for the letter a, there might be three sounds, times the 6 tones. It gets complicated. But as the later guide pointed out, you can learn exactly how to pronounce all the Vietnamese words very easily, well before you know what any of them mean. Versus English where even us native speakers have to look at the context in a sentence to know how to pronounce something (e.g. Read this vs I read a book)
We also learned about the money. There are about 23k dong to the dollar so you can be a Vietnamese millionaire with fifty bucks. (And as we liked to say, that’s a lot of dongs.). The wind was strong up on the sun deck which made it hard to hear and it got annoying after a while. I learned that originally, Vietnam was the northern part of the current country. The southern part was part of the Khmer empire. The northern part was part of China but Viets were a separate sub group. Nam means south. So Vietnam means they were the Viets from the south of China. Somehow (not clear how), they made their way down the coast and got the rest of it. Well, I suppose the last time was at the end of the Vietnam War but they had it before then before it was split.
It seems like it’s about the length of the US pacific coast but doesn’t go as far inland. About 100 million people (vs 15-16 million in Cambodia) live there. There’s a big difference between the north and south. The north is more conservative. They dress more formally and speak more formally (like the BBC announcers accent vs say Yorkshire in the UK). The south is more laid back. More entrepreneurial. The guide also told us that the accents are very different. To the point that southerners have a hard time understanding northerners and vice versa.
During lunch an alarm went off. It turned out the chef was frying peanuts and the smoke set off the smoke detector. We knew it wasn’t a problem because all the staff were smiling and looking embarrassed vs abandoning ship.
The afternoon excursion was into Sa Dec to see a nursery. The town is known for them, it’s the primary source of revenue. Villages/towns seem to do one primary thing – a la the clay pot village in Cambodia. I guess that makes sense. We’ll also see a temple (yay another temple) and the market.
The nursery was big. They grew orchids and lots of other stuff and export around the world. We got walked over to where the orchids were growing but there weren’t any blooms to see (not the right time of year) and got walked right back.
We learned some things about Vietnamese culture, at least as practiced in that area. The eldest son stays in the village and keeps and maintains the ancestor’s ashes (ancestor worship). He passes these on to his eldest, etc. If there’s no eldest son (or no children I guess), then that’s that. People generally stay in the same village and only leave if something bad happens and they want to get away (or can’t make a living or something). The youngest son inherits the business, which is interesting. So the oldest has a responsibility but no financial stream. The nursery we went to was named ‘Last To’ (i.e. the youngest son of the To’s). The one next door was Seventh Son, so he was not the youngest.
Apparently everyone is nicknamed by their birth order. But no one is ‘first’. I can’t remember why. Something to do with bad luck I think. So it starts with the second. And no one is named for an ancestor. That’s considered poor form and only happens if the family doesn’t like the person and wants to forget them (i.e. replace them with this new person). But it’s problematic. Our guide is named Doung which turns out to be his uncle’s name. But the family forgot because everyone called him 2nd son or whatever. Oops. At least that’s the story. Maybe they didn’t like the uncle so much but were afraid to tell him to his face.
The temple was some religion made up by a Vietnamese man not all that long ago, trying to find peace among all the religions (or at least the ones he knew or cared about). Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Islam and something (not Judaism). The “can’t we all just get along” religion. The temple was pretty good sized and very colorful but seemed like a child’s crayon version of a temple.
While we were standing outside hearing about it, Marion was sketching as she often does (drawing one of the dragons on the post). These three little kids (a very young boy, a maybe 7 or 8-year-old girl and maybe a 12-13 year old girl) came around a corner and said hi. The 12-year-old noticed Marion and came over to look at what she was doing. She got a big smile on her face and excitedly went and got the others to look too. The little boy was too small to see, so the older one hoisted him up. They were so cute. As we were leaving I suggested Marion give the drawing to the girl, which she did, and the girl was so happy. The kids walked away together, with the two others on either side as the girl showed off her prize.
We motored down river a bit to walk through the market. What a zoo! A really nice market as these things go. One of the nicest we’ve seen for sure. Packed to the gills. Motor bikes going back and forth, people walking (like us). Mayhem. Some amazing stuff. Big frogs, smaller skinned (and still alive) frogs. Live fish. Live ducklings and chicks, meat, fruit, rice, etc. etc. It all looked really good. It was hard to get a decent picture of it. Too much was happening. And the Vietnamese don’t like their pictures taken unlike Cambodians. Probably because they are worried about the government or maybe just more private. But it’s hard to take pictures in the market without getting someone in the frame.
We headed back to the boat for dinner. There’s a storm on the horizon and we could see big bolts of lightning coming down but no thunder (or couldn’t hear it over the boat engine). We got back before the rain started but after about an hour it came down big time.
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