Ho Chi Minh City - Day 3

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We were due to be picked up at 7.00am for our big day trip today. I set an alarm for 5.15am so that we could be in the dining room at 6.00am when it opened for breakfast. As is always the case when one has an early alarm set, I was awake at 4.45am! After laying in bed for a few minutes debating with myself the pros and cons of trying to get another half an hour of sleep I decided to bite the bullet and head into the shower.

We were in and out of the dining room by 6.30am which left time for us to clean our teeth and be back downstairs to meet our tour guide for the day at 7.00am. Nam was already there when we arrived in the foyer and took us out the front where we boarded our mini-bus and met our driver for the day. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch our driver’s name, but it sounded a bit like ‘Wen’.

Thank goodness we were heading out of the city because the inbound traffic was incredibly heavy with all the workers coming into town for their working day. It took us nearly an hour to reach the outskirts of the city and enter the provinces. Even then it was hard to tell we were in the country as Route 22, the main route between Ho Chi Minh City and Cambodia, is lined with homes and businesses. All of the buildings are concentrated on the main road with the land away from the thoroughfare used for agriculture. As the buildings became a bit more low-rise we started to see fields of rice and lotus ponds interspersed with clumps of rubber trees.

Much of Route 22 has a solid median strip in the centre to try to stop vehicles travelling on the wrong side of the road … and it mostly works! In the city the median strips were planted with bougainvillea. The gardeners were busily trimming the bougainvillea which Nam said is necessary because it is thorny and a bit of a hazard for motorbike riders! The gardeners ride their motorbike to the section of the section of median strips they are working on and just park their bike beside the barrier before climbing into the garden and doing their weeding and pruning. No cones or safety barriers in sight! As we drove further out of town the planted median strips were replaced with bare concrete barriers. These don’t have to be weeded or pruned, but they still have to be installed and maintained. The workers out in the provinces also work on the median strip in the center of the road without any safety equipment.

Another quirky thing that we saw were all of the hammock cafes. Because Route 22 is the main route between Vietnam and Cambodia it has a lot of people who are travelling long distances between to the two countries. They can stop at a hammock café, buy a cup of coffee and take a nap in a hammock for as long as they want to.

About two hours into our journey we stopped for a comfort break in Trang Bang. This village formed the backdrop to Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph titled ‘The Terror of War’. The photo features a nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing from a napalm bomb and it is a well known and emotive image of the Vietnam War. Our first comfort stop wasn’t too confronting. There was no toilet seat, but at least we had a western-style toilet to sit on. No paper either, but I was prepared with a wad of toilet paper from the hotel in my pocket.

Finally, after three hours on the road, we arrived at Núi Bà Den Tây Ninh which translates to Black Lady or Black Virgin Mountain. Volcanic in origin (but now extinct), the mountain is an almost perfect cinder cone that rises to 996 metres above the flat Mekong Delta jungle. The mountain is honeycombed with caves where the Viet Cong hid during the war. It is also close to the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail just a few kilometres west across the Cambodian border. This meant that it was heavily bombed during the war and its sides are covered in granite boulders that were created, not by natural erosion, but by the wartime bombings.

Since the war the mountain has been redeveloped with cable car rides and temples. The older cable car runs part way up the mountain and a second, newer, cable car goes all the way to the top of the mountain where several gigantic statues of Buddha take pride of place. The development is ongoing with a monumental fountain yet to be completed and it looks like an extension to the cable car that currently terminates part way up the mountain. Nam said we were very lucky with the weather. Although it was a bit hazy we could actually see across the river into Cambodia and the huge reservoir below the mountain. Nam said the last time he was at the mountain the weather was so bad you couldn’t even see the highest Buddha statue from the terrace below!

Our next stop was at the Cao Dai Temple complex just a few minutes drive from the mountain. The Cao Dai religion was founded in the 1920s and is described as a ‘cocktail religion’. It’s founder took tenets from many religions in an attempt to create a religion that everyone could embrace. He believed that religion is responsible for so much conflict that if he could create one that appealed to everyone perhaps it could lead to a more peaceful world. Heady ambitions indeed.

We arrived just as their noon worship was commencing. We watched the service for a few minutes from a side gallery before Nam took us outside to point out some of the external features of the temple. Nam then hurried us away for some lunch saying that we would return after 1.00pm when we would be able to enter the temple to take photos.

In a small restaurant on the outskirts of the town we had steaming hot bowls of Pho Ba (beef noodle soup). Two sauces were offered as condiments, a red one which was chili and a brown one that was lost in translation, but possibly Hoisin? There were also sliced green chilies together with plates of basil and mint. I put only the tiniest bit of chili sauce in my bowl and avoided the green chilis altogether. Bernie was not as restrained and nearly expired from the hotness!

When we returned to the temple the service was concluding. We waited for the nuns and monks to leave and then Nam was able to show us around the interior of the temple. One of the distinctive features of Cao Dai is the colour. All of the temple adornments are extremely exuberant and very colourful. Another quirky fact about the religion, it has three saints and one of them is Victor Hugo. Yes, the French author.

All too soon it was time to commence the three hour journey back to the city. We stopped in Cu Chi Province for a comfort stop. Steve bought a coffee, Bernie and Cathy opted for Coke Zero and, with some misgivings, I decided on water. There were two brands in the fridge. The bottles on the right looked dirty and very much like they could have been refilled so I bought one of the bottles on the left which at least looked clean??! I wish I could remember if the seal ‘cracked’ when I opened it???

Back at the hotel we decided to put our feet up for half and hour or so before venturing out to the Saigon Sky Deck on the 49^th floor of the Bitexco Financial Tower. During this short break my stomach started to feel a bit squeamish and I probably should have elected to stay at the hotel??! But FOMO had me deciding to soldier on.

Hmmn, I really could have stayed back at the hotel because the sky deck was … underwhelming. With the lights on inside, including colourful LED strip lights in the floor, it was quite difficult to see the view because of all the light reflecting on the windows and pretty well impossible to photograph! By the time we were done at the sky deck I knew there was no way I was going to attempt dinner and I told Bernie I would take a taxi back to the hotel. He’s such a sweetheart though that he wouldn’t let me attempt a taxi on my own and insisted on walking me ‘home’ while Cathy and Steve stayed behind to try a Japanese restaurant not far from the Bitexco Tower.



Steps for the day: 12,696 (8.28km)

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