Charlie and I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel a great deal over the past 4 years, and we’ve been equally blessed to have made many new friends along the way. This past week in Vietnam, we met a very special lady, Mai, who made our journey from Da Nang to Saigon an experience beyond anything we expected. We’ve met some fabulous tour guides, but we just felt a very special connection with Mai. She is a native of the Mekong Delta and became a refugee from the war following the fall of Saigon in the ’70s. After 12 years suffering the cold Canadian winters, she has returned to Saigon where she works as a guide. She has the heart of an angel and the spine of a tiger. Standing about 5 feet, she is a force to be reckoned with, but she will make sure that your Vietnam experience is everything you wanted….and more. It didn’t take 10 minutes for her to realize that Charlie and I are game for just about anything, so our itinerary quickly ramped up from a leisurely pace to a an action-packed 6 days from Da Nang to Saigon. After a tearful goodbye yesterday, I realized that Mai has raised the bar for tour guides everywhere. Here now, are our new criteria for the ultimate tour guide:
The Ultimate Tour Guide will …….
Get you there…..and if the taxi services are closed for a holiday, she’ll find you a spare bicycle.
Mai leads us on a bike ride to the vegetable gardens outside Hoi An.
Educate you
Explaining the tunnel complex at Cu Chi.
Make sure you sample the local cuisines….here Salted Egg, quail eggs, and Bitter Melon. She got Charlie to taste all three!
Salted egg (see photo below–the black one), quail egg, and a bowl of Bitter Melon
Salted duck eggs (black) are rolled in ashes and left for a month…then boiled.
Get you out of the city and into the country where they grow the fruits and veggies
Mai introduced us to a Vietnamese farmer and his wife outside Hoi An.
Negotiate the price for a bunch of chrysanthemum greens for tomorrow’s lunch……
Bargaining for chrysanthemum greens.
Rejoice in the discovery of ripe Vietnamese zucchini…..again for our New Year’s lunch.
Yeah!!! Vietnamese zucchini for the New Year!
Help you find temporary employment….I got fired pretty quickly.
Watering the garden is not for sissies. The cans and water weigh about 80 pounds when full. Note the size of the lady who “hired” me!
Cook lunch for you when the restaurant is still closed for New Years. The restaurant owner allowed Mai to “borrow” her kitchen! Note the chrysanthemum greens from our New Year’s Eve visit to the garden! Not all that different from turnip greens.
Chrysanthemum greens fresh from the gardens outside Hoi An. Yum!
Talk your spouse into joining you for a Vietnamese cooking class.
Nope….not nearly as happy as he looks……..
Explain the rules for Vietnamese BINGO—there are 99 numbers!
BINGO!!! Gambling is only allowed for 3 days during the Tet festival.
Crawl into a tunnel at Cu Chi
Mai crawls into a hidden entrance to the Cu Chi Tunnels.
……knowing full well she can’t get out without assistance.
One of the military guides at Cu Chi lifts Mai from one of the hidden entrances to the tunnels.
Then talks you into doing the same crazy thing.
Charlie actually crawled into one of the hidden entrances to Cu Chi….I was afraid we’d have to send home for WD-40 to get him out!
Hot, damp, and spiders! I’d have made a lousy “tunnel rat.”
Pose for photo ops
Five foot two….six foot three, and it would still be a contest!!!
Do anything to help you get that perfect shot
Determination! I blurred two of these shots because I was laughing so hard.
Drive half-way across Vietnam so you can get a closeup of a water buffalo……seriously.
At long last…..a close up of a water buffalo!
Introduce you to exotic new beverages…..here white basil & ginger tea.
White basil and ginger tea. Cool, refreshing, and it settles a yucky tummy, too!
Discourage your spouse from exploring the wrong exotic beverages….in this case, “Mekong Whiskey” …… a Vietnamese rice wine bottled along with a cobra and a scorpion. It is rumored to have …..uh…..Viagra-like qualities.
Mekong Whiskey……Not likely to make it past US Customs, so Charlie left without it!
Show up the morning you leave with a bag of your favorite fruits fresh from the market.
Clock-wise from the top: Local bananas, milk fruit, and sabodilla.
We miss you, Mai, but we’re coming back!