Saigon - The City That Has It All

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Before I launch into Saigon, I want to update everyone on our itinerary, as we just booked the rest of our flights last night, since we are (sadly) nearing the end of our Asian campaign. On Sunday we will be catching a bus over the border of Cambodia and going directly to Siem Reap, the town bordering the famous Angkor Wat temples. We will spend almost a week there touring the temples before catching a flight down to Singapore for two nights. After that we're hopping a flight to Sydney, Australia, for 3 days, before our final flight to Auckland, New Zealand, on Saturday December 5th. We would love to see more of Australia, but right now our dollar to theirs is extremely weak, and it's an expensive country to begin with, so we're hoping that at some point during our year in NZ we'll be able to take a couple weeks and fly back over to explore some of "Oz."

On that note, too, to our friends and family who are planning a visit to us in NZ next year, you now have a deadline - as do we. Our visas are good for exactly one year, which means that as of December 4th, 2010 (at the very latest), we will need to leave NZ and begin making our trek home - with a few stops along the way, of course. So keep that in mind if you are planning a visit! When I searched earlier (www.kayak.com is a goodie), the best fares from the states to NZ seemed to be in the May-June range, which is our late fall-early winter season. Our rough itinerary for our trek home is something like northeastern Oz-Bali-Malaysia-Thailand, so if you were planning a visit over the holiday season in 2010, we'll most likely be somewhere in those areas, and we can coordinate something! At any rate, we have a whole year in NZ to get through, but I know quite a few of you were serious about visiting, so I wanted to give you our plans as soon as possible so you can begin making your own!
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So!! With that said, back to the present. Yesterday we had one of the craziest drivers yet take us to Hue airport first thing in the morning - he mostly drove on the wrong side of the road and would veer over only at the very last second to avoid oncoming traffic - all at about 70 miles per hour. We had to pay a little extra to check our new duffel bag full of Hoi An clothes, but over the next few weeks' worth of flights, it will still be less expensive than mailing them would've been. Another quick, easy flight down to Ho Chi Minh City (synonymous with Saigon)...that almost ended in disaster. We deplaned and got on the bus to take us to the terminal (no boarding gates here; buses take you directly across the tarmac to the airplanes, where you climb a short portable staircase into the plane). Right as the bus started to pull away, one of the flight attendants raced down the stairs and pounded on the side of the bus for him to stop, Then she jumped on, looked around in a daze, and rushed over to Jeremy. "Is this yours?" she asked, holding up his WALLET! We thanked her profusely and nearly fainted at how horrible it would've been to lose his wallet (we'd bought drinks on-board and apparently his wallet slipped out of his pocket as he was putting it away). What made it even worse was that, by sheer coincidence, BOTH of our debit cards happened to be in his wallet - that morning (at 6am) I'd checked out of the hotel and headed for the taxi, while Jeremy signed the receipt and gathered MY debit card and put it in HIS wallet. We have a separate stash of credit cards for just such an emergency, of course, but still...that would've put a serious damper in our trip (Western Union, anyone?).

So we hailed a taxi and made our way into big, noisy, bustling Saigon - and loved it immediately. It's by far the largest city we've been in since Beijing - streets clogged with traffic, soaring buildings, 5-star hotels, activity everywhere - someone at the airport jokingly called it "The City That Never Sleeps," and in a strange way, it actually does remind me a lot of New York. It has the same kind of atmosphere and buzz in the air - with a Vietnamese twist, of course. Just on the taxi ride in, we passed several pagodas, a Hindu temple, a Muslim mosque, and a French-Catholic cathedral (Notre Dame is here as well)! And we thought the power lines in Hanoi were bad - you ain't seen nothin' yet! We were laughing out loud at the mass of wires running above our heads that nearly block out the sky, they're so thick and tangled and knotted - our taxi driver sent worried glances back our way and wondered what could possibly be so funny. If only he knew...

We arrived at our hotel, thankfully tucked back off the main street in a maze of little alleyways (much quieter that way!), and checked into what is by far the nicest room we've had on the entire trip (except maybe for the hotel in Nanning, but we were too tired and ill to even care). We got a map and recommendations from the front desk (the hotels in this country have the best and most knowledgeable staff I've ever seen), and set off for a walking tour of the city. First we stopped for a quick bite, where our waiter asked where we were from and somehow knew the capital of Florida ("Tallahassee!"). We got a good laugh out of that, as most Vietnamese don't even know where Florida is - it's all we can do to communicate "America" to them, let alone states or cities. During lunch we listened to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" (from Titanic, remember?)...we hear that song at least ten times a day in this country - it's everywhere, it seems, even an instrumental version played at the spa in Hue! Too funny.

Anyway, Saigon. It has all the charm and appeal of the smaller Vietnamese cities we've been to, but with all the modern amenities and western feel of a big city - the best of both worlds! We strolled through a city park, a bustling marketplace (finally ran out of toothpaste and needed to stock up!), then the financial district with its Opera House and illustrious 5-star hotels. Headed back for Notre Dame, a Gothic-style cathedral made with bright red bricks! Stumbled into a beautiful old post office (ha!) before arriving at Reunification Palace, the seat of power for the south during the War and the place where the war officially ended in the spring of 1975. On display are the tanks and a fighter jet used when the north broke through at last and forced the surrender. The palace itself is small and mostly full of large meeting rooms. In the basement there is a small museum with some pretty gory photographs of torture victims, masses of bodies, and even a monk burning himself in protest (I felt physically sick when I saw it). There is another museum in the city, "War Remnants," which houses even grittier displays, the descriptions of which I won't repeat from our guidebooks. Needless to say, we'll be bypassing that one - while I love history and am not one to turn a blind eye to things that happened, I don't necessarily need to "see" the gorier bits either. Some things are perfectly acceptable to just read about!

A block from the palace we discovered this gorgeous outdoor restaurant that featured cook-it-yourself Vietnamese barbecue and wide array of interesting meats. We started with deep-fried spring rolls stuffed with crab meat (yum!) before going nuts and ordering half a dozen skewers of meat. The more "normal" ones included beef stuff with cheese, filet mignon, and salmon wrapped in bacon. Our daring skewers involved wild boar and rabbit. Amazingly, it was all REALLY good! The boar tastes like bacon, and the rabbit is super-tender - almost melts in your mouth. They serve different dipping sauces, too - chili and garlic, spicy peanut, and curry. Jeremy did an awesome job cooking everything on the little burner in the center of the table, while I (of course) took photos and video. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to have a substantial amount of meat for once (I've had enough rice and vegetables on this trip to last a lifetime)!

On a funny side note, we have a flat-screen TV in our room (traveling in style now ha!), and for the first time in 5 weeks we had an ENGLISH channel! All that was on was South African sports broadcasters and a cricket game (the weirdest game known to man - something akin to baseball but much stranger)...but we sat mesmerized for an hour watching cricket and listening to commentators we could actually understand!

Anyway. Today we slept in (after two mornings in a row getting up before 6), did some laundry, and headed out into the city once more. Caught a taxi to the northeastern side of town to visit the Jade Emperor Pagoda, a 100-year old blend of Buddhist and Taoist deities. Sweet-smelling incense fills the air (much of it as "coils" you'll see in the pictures), and ornate carvings, tiles, and statues fill the small rooms. Many devout worshipers were there, holding sticks of incense, bowing, and praying in front of the various images. In one upper room, you were required to take your shoes off before entering (a sign of respect I'm guessing). They even had a rare "turtle sanctuary," of all things. Very interesting place...

Lunch was at a beautiful little jazz-type bar appropriately called "Music, Coffee, and Friends." We didn't have any coffee or any friends, but we did listen to some fantastic jazz and relaxing music and chowed down on fried rice and Singapore noodles - and, oddly enough, water infused with lotus blossom - very strong flavor and unlike anything I've ever tasted. We couldn't decide if we liked it or not...

Starting the long walk back across the city, we made like preschoolers and hit the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens - which was actually very impressive! Beautiful setting, gorgeous trees, a bonsai garden, big lakes...and lots of great animals - zebras, giraffes, orangutans, hippos, tigers, and even elephants you could feed! For fifty cents, it was a great way to spend the afternoon! After the zoo we headed down along the river, past enormous ships (including one from Panama, of all places!), and into the ritzy financial and shopping district - 5-star hotels, Gucci, and Armani as far as the eye could see...unfortunately, our only purchases were a couple of $2 tank tops (for me), and some extra undies (for Jeremy), purchased at a road-side underwear stand. I'm not even kidding. Check out the last photo in this blog!

Our final stop this evening was something we'd read about months ago and were hoping to find in this city - and sure enough, it is right down the street from our hotel. It's an institute for blind people where they are taught the art of massage therapy, and for about $2.50, you can receive a professional one-hour massage from a blind therapist! It sounded too cool to pass up, so we headed inside and were segregated into large freezing hospital-like rooms, where we stripped down and hopped on the tables and actually got really nice, relaxing massages. The girls (and guys) are good - you would never in a million years be able to tell that they couldn't see. The massage was spot-on; my therapist never misplaced her oil bottle or accidentally poked me in the eye or anything out of the norm. It was a really neat experience, and nice to know that such a place exists where an otherwise "disabled" person can earn a decent living and support themselves. Very nifty idea!

Dinner tonight was at the near-by "Milwaukee Bar," (next to "Canada Hotel" - I have NO idea on that one!), where we delved into awesome potato skins and split their "Mexican nachos," which consisted of (I kid you not) Doritos topped with Hormel chili and a bit of melted cheese. It was hilarious and just the touch of "home" we needed - not that those are typically things we make our nachos with ha!! So tomorrow we are taking a day tour of the Mekong River Delta, about 50 miles south of here, which should hopefully be a nice relaxing day before our grueling 13-hour bus ride on Sunday! Catch you guys on Monday from Siem Reap, Cambodia...

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Comments

[p.morgan]

saigon
funny thing,the game of cricket is very popular in Jamaica.