Advertisement
Published: November 26th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Reunification Palace
Dan poses at the gate where North Vietnam tanks crashed through to the palace in 1975. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh (aka HCMC, aka Saigon) City in the early evening. Culture shock again! The drivers here are crazier here than any other place we’ve been. They honk their horns furiously at all times for no apparent reason with some having had their horns enhanced for even an even LOUDER affect. The din is maddening, causing one to just tune out the honking, thus rendering it ineffective. The traffic here is nuts! You have no hope of dashing across a city street because the traffic is so dense. Early on, we learned to cross very slowly so that the drivers could see us and traffic would flow around us like water around a river rock. There are only a couple of traffic signal lights in all of HCMC; people just rely on their judgement and their horn!
We stayed in a tall, narrow guesthouse, they build UP instead of OUT in Vietnam; ours was not even close to being the narrowest; the narrowest building we saw was only as wide as a king-sized bed, but over 6 stories tall!
We had a fun turn around the city in a couple of cyclos - pedicabs that
Ordinary Traffic
Driving in HCMC takes nerves of steel. Possessing a death wish doesn't hurt either. only hold one person at a time; the driver is pedaling from behind you and you’re just up high and forward in the often overwhelming traffic. The drivers are mostly “re-educated” former white- collar types who supported the politics of South Vietnam during the war, and now have been denied their certifications and chosen careers, left only with pushing people around the city on their cyclos. Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh City in particular, has some wonderful parks, including sculpture parks, with immense modern sculptures throughout. In the evening the city parks are packed with hundreds of young couples cuddled, kissing and canoodling on their motorbikes, looking for privacy that apparently isn’t available elsewhere.
We toured the Reunification Palace, which fell when the North Vietnamese seized the city of Saigon in 1975. The palace is spookily unchanged from the day the tanks crashed through the main gates. Very ornate and impressive large rooms and all of the bomb-shelter, communications-room stuff available to traipse through. We also took in the Vietnam War Remnants Museum, an important, if difficult and painful, reminder of the terrible cost of war and the desolation and pain left in its wake.
The child vendors
That will be 16,000 Dong please
Mandy gives Griff a spin around a downtown HCMC park in a borrowed cyclo. of HCMC are some of the saddest, meanest, most desperate and persistent we have seen yet. There was some humor to be found in their honesty - “If you buy from me, I will leave you alone”. They offer to sell you things you never thought a strolling salesman would offer you…like your weight… using a scale which they roll down the street with them. When a child comes at you carrying an impossibly tall, teetering pile of books, if you refuse to buy one, they quickly flash you the marijuana stashed in their palm.
After one day in Ho Chi Minh City we hooked up with Mandy and Griff, who had just bussed in from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. These intrepid and knowledgeable travelers were a great help in this very foreign city. Griff is a thorough researcher and Mandy a crack negotiator. They effortlessly closed the best deal on the next leg of our adventure… a four day tour of the Mekong delta.
Our delta tour was truly enlightening. We motored and boated all over this huge, flat delta learning about the culture of Vietnam with our guide “Bin”. We toured many smaller canals, meeting several families,
Skinny Guesthouse
Bizarre land ownership rules make for some very thin buildings in HCMC. We saw some five story buildings that were less than 9' wide. and the toughest of us (all but Dan) sampled one of our hosts’ local pride, Snake Wine. Nothing like what you will find at St. Michelle. Snake wine is aged in a big jar with spices and, yes, numerous snake corpses floating about in it. It tasted fine, like wine with cinnamon in it, but it was the thought of what we were tasting that made it somewhat unpalatable. Our first night was spent in a riverside hotel in the town of Khach San, where we added frogs to the list of new things eaten (not very meaty - taste like chicken and mud). Our next night we spent in a “homestay” bungalow which was really just a teeny thatch hut directly above the Mekong River. Mosquito nets, no bathroom, the whole nine yards. Plenty of creepy crawlies to intercept our middle of the night trips (the girls - guys are lucky) to the outside toilet.
While on our home stay we took a hike along the Mekong through a “town”. A downpour interrupted our hike and we were invited to take shelter in the home of an older couple whose home fronted the river. Our guide Bin happily
Weight Vendor
Griff purchases his weight and height from a strolling Saigon street vendor. interpreted the couple’s stories of their family and photos, which were so proudly displayed under the table glass. They were quite gracious and offered us bottles of water…well, recycled bottles with what looked like Mekong river water… We politely declined. After the short squall we hiked along until we were invited into the home of a mat-making family who offered us tea and of course sleeping mats. We were humbled to realize that these sunny, friendly people in many cases put in 12-hour days of backbreaking work, with no days off for months, and in return receive so very much less than you or I would expect. No medical, no paid vacation, not even very much money (around 80.00 a month)…what are we bitchin’ about?
Our homestay family invited us to a private party where we added snails to the above-mentioned list of foods never-before-eaten… Not bad at all. Ours were cooked in coconut milk, which was OK, but I really yenned for some butter and garlic. We also sampled, at our host’s insistence, the local rice rum. We each had several shots of this home brew which could only be drank after a hearty cheer of “YO!”
Street Massage
Rebecca relaxes at a sidewalk cafe under the hands of a mobile masseur. Waking up in our Mekong river bungalow was precipitated by a noisy array of vendors calling, dogs barking and boats buzzing. Our hosts brought us thick, black, gooey coffee and baguettes with homemade jam, typical for a Vietnamese breakfast. One of the best things about morning in Vietnam is the fabulous Vietnamese coffee. Thailand could take some serious coffee lessons from their eastern neighbors.
Speaking of coffee. Vietnam is the first country we have visited where there is no Starbucks. Although capitalism is in evidence everywhere, there is also no Burger King, McDonalds or Hooters. Interestingly, we didn’t miss any of them.
We went to a (real, not tourist) floating market, where each boat advertises its wares by hanging the items to be sold from their mast. Everyone is so friendly; our arms grew weary from returning all the cheerful mad waving and "Hello!s". Kids here, for some reason, when they see a white stranger, greet us with wild abandon and then either put on great displays of strength (i.e. beat up your brother in public) or dance crazily before leaping, diving or doing flips into the river. We got some awesome photos and a million laughs!
Rice Workers
At the end of a long, backbreaking day these women file out of the ricefields near the Mekong delta. Off to Cambodia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.048s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0268s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb