Ho Chi Minh City

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Our Seder at the Chabad was lovely! It was in a hotel conf. room, not at the actual Chabad. I am really happy we went. The turnout was quite impressive; there was close to 80 people there, most of whom were other travelers. We met some really nice Israeli backpackers (Itamar, Naty, Avishai, Ziza and Yosi) who were all traveling for a few months- lucky them. It's fabulous that they all took the time off to do that. Americans are so far behind in terms of taking time off to travel and see the world. They just don't value it like the rest of the world does (so lame). We met a lot of other people from Europe, Austrailia and Israel, but hardly any other Americans. I think its so important to be able to discover the cultures of many other countries and hope to be able to take some more time off to travel more in the near future.

After our 8 course seder at the Chabad, Ziza, Yosi and Itamar came back to our hotel to hang out, play cards, a little taboo and enjoy the air conditioning. They tought us an Israeli card game called Yaniv. Because they are traveling for so long, they are on a tight budget and can only afford to stay at cheap hotels with no air conditioning. We, on the other hand, were very kindly put up at the Park Hyatt, so they enjoyed our room, AC, and view with us!

We got up relatively early the next day as it was our last day in Vietnam - our flight was at 11:30PM. We hadnt seen the city yet (Saigon is also commonly called Ho Chi Minh City - HCMC - but the locals much prefer Saigon). Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum followed by the Reunification Palace. The war museum was horrifying...you can not imagine the awful things we saw- now I know where they got the saying "cruel and unusual" punishment. I could never imagine living in Vietnam during that time...very frightening! The Reunification Palace was a gorgeous governmental building filled with colorful rooms and beautiful decor. It was swealtering hot in here which made it very difficult to concentrate, but we powered through the full hour tour.

Afterwards, we split up for an hour while I went to the Jade Emperor Pagoda which was a Chinese temple - the Chinese once inhabited Vietnam- and the History Museum- which had beautiful architecture as well as the zoo and botanical garden. During this time, Rach sat outside and enjoyed a hot Vietnamese coffee (although she really wanted iced coffee but was scared to drink the ice) and then cooled off and relaxed by the hotel pool.

We met up an hour later and shopped our hearts out. We literally shopped till we dropped and had to go catch our flight. We bought so much stuff, as everything was so cheap, but had to control ourselves as everything we bought, we knew we would have to carry on the plane. It was difficult not to go overboard and buy gifts for everyone we knew. It was fun trying to bargain, although some stores had "fixed prices" to rip you off. Many of the items we bought were made of egg shells/ the surface had an eggshell appearance. Rachael bought a lot of plates, bowls, etc. which you'll see in our pictures towards the end. Plates were about $3, and bowls about $7 on average- unbelievable. It was kind of funny later on in that, we were walking home and the sidewalk looked very reminiscent of some of the pieces we bought and we both wondered if it was made from eggshells... the reason i mention this is cuz about a million (or maybe at least 20) times have rachael and i been saying or thinking the same exact thing at the same exact time...it was kind of freaking us out - so BIZARRE...but as they say - great minds think alike! or "same same"

For dinner we met up with Itamar, Yosi and Ziza at Pho 2000. Pho is the name of the noodle soup they eat there. Bill Clinton has actually eaten at that restaurant, which is now that restaurants claim to fame. They had about 5 pictures up of Bill Clinton eating there up on the walls.

Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel for a final shower at the spa, since we had already checked out, and then off to the airport. How sad. The flights were easy and so far no jet lag. Rach and I each had our own 3-seater on the way back which made it very nice for lying down to sleep and giving us plenty of room to stretch out! We made the mistake of ordering a Kosher meal on the way home... and I only say mistake because it was Passover, which meant they couldn't serve us bread/pasta, etc. resulting in an all fruit meal. This was kinda devastating news to hear as we had just traveled 6 hours to Tokyo, had a 4 hour lay over in Tokyo, and then were about to embark on another 14 hour flight and hadn't eaten. Fruit was not going to work- we needed something more substantial- so they ended up giving us the regular meals- phew!


We saw two beautiful sunrises on our way home, both for the same day since we crossed the international date line...kind of cool to think about.

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