July 23: Shopping in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)

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When one needs to travel a great distance, one hires a driver. Now, the trip between Om Ngaoi and Ba Noi is about three hours. When one hires a driver, the price is the price, whether for three hours or for the whole day. For that reason, it was decided that Thu’s grandfather and his wife would some with us in the morning and we would all go on a shopping excursion to Saigon before we had to make the long trip to Ba Noi’s in the evening.
Our first stop upon reaching Saigon was for breakfast: pho. Yum! Then we drove around the city for a while – Saigon is massive, sprawling – and made it to An Dong, a very large shopping pavilion. It is similar in some regard to a flea market with vendors and people (usually) willing to make a bargain. We know that prices for Westerners are usually higher any way, and so we bargain and so our best and have to be willing to walk away if we don’t get the price that we want. Usually we reach a compromise. We were able to do plenty of shopping (Micah and Matthew were patient as ever) and then we returned to the driver and the taxi.
The driver took us to see the new, expanding part of Saigon. It was mind-boggling. It looked like any other new, modern city: skyscrapers, malls, large homes that cost millions of (US) dollars, coffee shops with English names. It is hard to believe that such a city exists and shares a name with the other part that we have become used to. Again, this will be interesting to watch Saigon grow and develop. They are putting in a subway system, building overpasses, changing the layout and landmarks to make everything seem more efficient, more modern. But the soul of the country remains unchanged.
Before heading back to grandpa’s house, we stopped for a late lunch at a place the driver recommended. It was a soup place that served a Northern Vietnamese soup, something Thu said she had never had before. The nice thing about hiring a driver here is that he, too, gets to eat whenever we eat. Part of the agreement in hiring someone is that you will feed him. The soup was very good, which was lucky for the driver because Thu’s grandfather can be particular with his food: he says that he’s getting older, so he wants to make sure that his last years are filled with good food.
We returned to grandpa’s house to shower, pack our bags, and eat a snack before the long drive back. Like I said, everyone keeps feeding us.

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