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Published: February 15th 2007
Noodle Soup for Breakfast
15,000 dong ($1US)for the soup that wakes up Vietnam. Soya Sauce, and often various other sauces, in old pop bottles to add to taste. Our trip from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was fairly uneventful at best. We loaded on to a bus to the boarder and only got scammed out of 4000 dong ($0.25) for unnecessary Health Certificates, which we doubted their legitimacy as we passed over the money. Once in Vietnam we were welcomed onto a new bus with a friendly Vietnamese girl as our tour guide who gave us a few tips on the real prices of every day things: bottled water, noodle soup, budget accommodation and internet.
HCMC is quite a pretty city with some tree lined streets and a unique Asian feel. The roads are filled primarily with scooters, but also cars, mini busses, cyclos, uniformed school kids on bicycles and the odd vender wearing a triangular straw hat pushing their trolley of fresh fruit.
We spent the first day meandering around and found a hole in the wall fruit shake vender. With strawberry and mango shakes in hand we chilled out on the side of the road sitting on kid sized plastic stools as HCM city life passed by before us.
The following day we booked a city tour with the Happy
Tours company and visited the main sites: War Crimes Museum, Independence Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Central Post Office, Chinatown Market, and an interesting pagoda.
The War Crimes Museum was well worth the visit. At home we get so much pro-American information it was good to get a different perspective on events. The museum was filled with photos of injured civilians from chemical herbicides, bombings and scenes of torture. Included was jars with deformed human fetuses from agent orange. There was a guillotine used up until the late 70s brought over from the French. In less than two weeks we have visited the S-21 museum in Cambodia and now this and the thing I can’t get over is how war can bring out the evil in people causing them to inflict such inhumane suffering and pain to another person. We should remember the 70s mantra of peace and love dude!
Independence Palace was much different than I expected. After being bombed in 1962 it was rebuilt in 1966 and now reminds me of an old school conference hall/hotel. The basement became a bomb shelter in case of emergency and was outfitted with numerous Indochina maps and rotary dial
Notre Dame Cathedral
Bride and Groom taking pics outside... so elegant until the groom leaned over and hocked a loogie a foot away from the bride. Keepin classy for the big day! phones with direct links to Washington.
The market was like many others we’ve seen, but on a wholesale scale. It was like the Costco of markets with more knock-off designer bags, flip flops, swaths of fabric, hats and sweets than you could ever need.
The pagoda we visited had a Chinese feel with not Buddha but an old Asian man with a long beard being at the centre of the shrine. Incense sticks were burned on a much bigger scale, some closer to the thickness of bamboo poles, and created a smelly blue haze to walk through. Adding to the smoke were twisty sandalwood incense, shaped like a cone, hung from the roof in memory of ancestors.
All in all it was an enjoyable day of being shuttled from one place to the next!
We spent the following day relaxing, recuperating, and planning our route of things to see and do. In the evening we were cooling down with another fruit shake when a beggar girl about seven years old came by. She joined us for a strawberry shake and couldn’t stop smiling at us as she gulped it down.
Next Stop: Mekong Delta!
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