5 July 2011….When you have family scattered across three continents sometimes it’s a bit hard to stay in touch, or even harder to see each other.  But when you’re blessed to have a niece born in Vietnam and her family is coming back to Vietnam for a special visit then you have all the perfect ingredients – family reunion, weekend excursion, unique destination.  In other words, bulls eye.

Ho Chi Minh, still referred to by its original name of Saigon by its residents, is the capital of Vietnam straddling the Saigon River.  It is the home to almost nine million industrious people who are riding the wave of economic growth in a communist country that follows the dictum of ‘open economy, closed politics’.  By the skyline scattered with building cranes and the pace of life on the footpaths and shops of the city you can sense that this is a place that is booming.  And if you believe the Voice of the Party newspaper from last week Ho Chi Minh will grow at the rate of 12% this year.

My brother Ken, his wife Anne, and three-fifths of their basketball team, Christin, Bradley and Chloe were enjoying a unique family reunion of their own as they toured the country of Chloe’s birth for the first time since they adopted her as an infant 11 years ago.  We caught them on the last couple of days of the trip for a weekend in Ho Chi Minh at the same time the people of Thailand were voting out their appointed government and overwhelmingly electing the controversial ‘red shirts’ party.

To be honest, Ho Chi Minh doesn’t have too much to offer tourists unless you want to do extended tours of the Reunification Palace, The Revolutionary Museum or the forebodingly named War Remnants Museum.  Pass.

We joined the gang on a day trip down to the Mekong Delta.  The Mekong River is the world’s tenth longest at almost 5,000 kms and flows through or along the border of five countries.  Julie and I had visited the Mekong a month ago much further upstream where it formed the northern border between Thailand and Laos.  The Mekong seems to touch almost all parts of South East Asia as a key part of the region’s economy, transport system, water source, food source and commerce.  The Delta area itself is almost as big as Tasmania and supports about 17 million people.  It’s big.

The drive down to the Delta was mainly on new divided highways through endless green fields of healthy rice sprinkled with graves and shrines to long lost family members buried out in the middle of the family fields.  Vietnam is the second largest exporter of rice in the world after Thailand and you can see where they get it.

From one of the main river channels we jumped on our own private boat (of course!) with driver and guide for an extended tour of the area.  Life on the river was at full swing and it was fascinating to see so many activities taking place all around us.  Huge barges were being tugged up and down the main channels and numerous cranes were dredging sand from the bottom to help support the building boom in the capital.  Boats of all sizes and shapes were plying up and down the river carrying anything from mud to coconuts to rice to industry equipment to building material to just about anything you could think of.  There were people fishing as you would expect but also many fish farms along the banks and even some thriving duck farms.  It was full on stuff.

We followed one of the smaller side channels as it weaved through a busy little town, witnessing the life of commerce at closer range.  Here the medium sized boats were piled with produce, including bananas, rambutans, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, melons, pineapples, cassava, some stuff we didn’t recognise.  Families lived off the back of these boats, there were the ubiquitous clothes hanging out to dry, kids playing under the shading tarp, mothers squatting down washing pots and pans in the muddy river.  The houses lining the channel may have been fairly basic but most had monster high antennas so they could catch all the Vietnamese television channels.

We stopped a couple of times on the journey, once to see an old French colonial home, another time to see all the different ways they used rice.  They showed us how they made puffed rice, rice paper, distilled rice whiskey and coconut caramel mixed with the rice.  And we were also told the rice husks are burned for cooking.  Yes, there was a theme there.

Lunch was in a beautiful old colonial home hidden in the jungle serving delicious Vietnamese food and cold beer.  The picturesque home and the five star meal were a bit out of place in the bustling Mekong Delta but we enjoyed its pleasures nevertheless. 

Despite the fascinating distractions all around us the main activity was to catch up on all the news between our extended families and amongst our separate lives.  It was good fun to share updates between all of us and it struck me hard that too much time had passed between rounds.   All thanks to Chloe for giving us the excuse.

Sunday morning saw sad farewells as the Californians had to start their long journey home while Julie and I had most of the day free before flying back to Bangkok.  Based on a tip from a friend of Julie’s, and with nothing more than a one liner in an email, we walked down to the jetty and caught the hydrofoil to Vung Tao where we were planning to “walk up the hill” and eat lunch at a specific restaurant.  Perhaps we should have been suspicious when we learned the hydrofoil was an hour and a quarter long (they travel fast) but we blindly jumped aboard and took off to a place we’d never heard of and had no idea where it was.

Note to self, do a little more homework next time, especially when you have to catch a flight that night.

After racing downstream to the mouth of the river and the South China Sea we arrived at the huge beach side resort city of Vung Tao, obviously the cool place for upwardly mobile Vietnamese to spend the weekend and a world away from what we blindly assumed.  A bit taken aback, we decided first to buy a return ticket before lunch.  Sorry, we were repeatedly told, all sold out, come back tomorrow morning. 

It wasn’t exactly panic but we did have to concentrate our minds and eventually buy scalped hydrofoil tickets at almost double the price from a very capitalist-minded Vietnamese dude.  With tickets in hand we hired a taxi to give us a tour of the island.  The beaches weren’t quite up to Thai standards but they had the requisite endless rows of lounge chairs under umbrellas and the hordes of frolicking locals.  From the drive up to the top of the local mountain and subsequent enquiries we found out we weren’t on an island at all, just a peninsula jutting out into the sea.  Sheesh!

We made it home with no problems and with a good laugh to boot.  What we learned is that Vietnam is a fascinating country full of contrasts, rich in history, stacked with promise.  Ho Chi Minh is its thriving epicenter with its zillion speeding motorbikes, age old markets and five star hotels.  But the highlight of the weekend without question was the family reunion, reconnecting, catching up on all the news.  Bangkok seems very sedate in comparison.