Phu Quoc

After spending two nights in HCMC we caught a plane to Phu aQuoc, an island of about 80,000 inhabitants and an unique breed of indigenous dogs, south of the Mekong Delta . Interestingly we learned at the war museum in HCMC that Phu Quoc was once home to a prison, first run by the french and then the Americans and the South Vietnamese. during the Vietnam war the prison held 40,000 Vietnamese and again as we learned at the museum most of these prisoners were tortured in unthinkable ways. without going into details, the museum of war remants in HCMC made me think about the impossibility of comprehending the multiple histories of war. where there is war there is torture, undoubtedly. it's a tough thing to stare at in a museum when it's in the form of a photograph blown up to poster size or recreated or as in the case of a device called the 'tiger cage' actually salvaged post-war. as a historian of the era and the region it's not suprisingly, but nonetheless it's as unsettling, infuriating, nasueating, and honestly, confusing (how does someone do this? who does this? etc.) as ever.
anyway, before I degress into a manifesto on the past and present brutalities of the french and american empire...i'll just finish by saying that it's a snippet of island's past...
So onto the travelling bit....We're staying at an "eco-resort" called Mango Bay. It's an interesting place with several seperate bunglalows all a stones throw from the beach. The six of us--me, Kiara, Orlena, Andrea (Orlena's sister), Melvin (Andrea's boyfriend), and Jean (Andrea and Melvin's friend from Taiwan) are renting a spacious two bedroom house on the edge of the property.
Finally....Vietnam is quickly becoming my favorite place--a spot which I thought Italy would never surrender. I know I know---I love red wine. Loooove red wine. and the wine here more vinegar than anything else---well perhaps that's not entirely fair, we did buy the cheapest bottle of dalat white wine--but I can't say I'm lining up to try another variety. but nothing pleases me more than a spicy meal and a cold beer and there's nothing easier to find here than a 50 cent Saigon beer and plate of firey food. even small red chilies come floating in the ubiquitous bowl of soy sauce that appears at every meal. and maybe it's because i spent the majority of summers of my youth un-airconditioned gyms...but the heat doesn't bother me and actually it's not even as humid as I thought it would be. but it is january and the alternative is another cold, grey michigan winter....so maybe i'm still just drunk on the idea of skipping winter.
I'm sitting at the Phu Quoc airport so it's back to traffic of HCMC now.....
I'm not editing these posts at all so please forgive typos or nonsensical sentences...OH and we're gonna set up a link to picasa to post some albumns from our travels.