Final day in Saigon & Indochina

Our itinerary left us with a free day on our last day of our holiday. So what to do. Don’t need any more souvenirs, shopping is not relaxing as sales assistants follow you around the shop, standing within a ½ metre distance from you. We’ve seen the museums, cathedral, post office and the pagodas. Ah, how about another cooking class – this time Vietnamese food (last class was in Laos, and we enjoyed it immensely).

Our cooking class began with the tour of the local markets and explanations of the various fruits and vegetables on display such as dragon fruit, and of course the walk through the meat section, which included on display, skinned frogs and a man de-shelling live crabs.

Next stop was the cooking school located above a restaurant. We were told there would be a mini test at the end and a pass was required to receive a certificate. All very serious. There was only 3 of us in the group. We were accompanied by an interesting ‘ocker’ Australian by the name of Paul (no not Paul Hogan) who had brought his disabled son to Vietnam for dental surgery (much cheaper than in Australia). We cooked Vietnamese version of tomato soup (very different to Campbell’s), crispy fish spring rolls with dipping sauce, clay pot pork and steamed rice. It was a lot of food to eat at 11 in the morning. It was finished off with bananas in coconut milk and sesame seed – a favourite Vietnamese dessert. We passed our mini test (just), were awarded a certificate and given a pair of chopsticks as a gift and were asked to recommend the cooking class to our family and friends.

The rest of the day was really about filling in time (walking, shopping, swimming, blogging) before our evening flight back to Sydney.

Our journey has come to an end but it is a journey that perhaps raises more questions than answers. The experiences have been great, the people have been wonderful, the Thai belly has been minimal, no signs of malaria sickness (not yet anyway).

However, these are countries that have had a turbulent history and many people remain poor with limited or no access to medical services. Development is happening but who benefits the most? – big business – the executives and government officials while the worker gets paid abysmal wages. Is corporation the new colonisation? And the people just get on with trying to make ends meet and keeping their family together and remaining locked into superstitions and cultural norms that seem incomprehensible to us in the western world. Furthermore, what global warming might do to these struggling simple villagers is frightening.

Our time here has been short but it has given us some wonderful experiences and a small window into the lives and culture of the Indochina people. Not matter what life throws at them they carry on, free of grudges and resentment, to do the best for their family and their country. This is what binds them together.

Our favourite place – Luang Prabang in Laos – beautiful setting, quaint, not touristy, just an authentic subsistence village life.

Our best experience – probably the challenging day of being thrown into the countryside of Cambodia on various modes of transport – ox-cart, canoe and narrow motorboat, not forgetting the canoe trip through the swamp.

We will need to return to our photos again and again to remind us of all that we have done in the space of 2 short weeks.

Thank you for following us on this trip through the blog.

We hope you enjoyed our daily diary and photos.