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Published: August 6th 2007
HCMC - Saigon
views around townHo Chi Minh City sure is a mouthful, luckily most of the locals still refer to it at as Saigon, which seems so much more practical. We arrived at the rail station at about 4am, there were people everywhere at this time of morning. Even though it is the main rail stop in Vietnam, our train still did not pull up at a platform as such, we had to lug our bags down the train stairs, then cross the tracks to get to the platform opposite our train. At 4am its loads of fun dragging your baggage across hoses that have been set up to pump out the trans toilets!
Outside the station we found out our mini bus to take us to the hotel had been involved in an accident - so we all had to squeeze into a number of different taxis, most of which were small Toyota’s and you were lucky to fit one bag in the boot, yet alone 3 passengers. Bugger - I am not a morning person - especially after a night on a Vietnamese train.
Things got even better when we got to the hotel, it was in darkness and all the
HCMC - Saigon
Post ofice by Eiffel staff were sleeping on the floor of the breakfast room. Once we woke one of them we found out that the hotel was over booked and we would have to all share two pokey rooms while they sorted out how to fit us all in.
So, we all did our best to freshen up and get some rest. Five sharing each bed is loads of fun after 10 hours of overnight train travel!
Later in the morning we all stood amazed listening to Ha slug it out with the hotel owner about the mess they had made of our bookings. There is no way I ever want to be on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from Ha! This was much better than watching the Thai kick boxing that was on the TV in the room I shared with the guys - this was a real no holds barred, anything goes, verbal class of the Titans - live and free in the hotel lobby. I was waiting to see some elbows, knees or head butts, but it got almost sorted out before they came to blows. I know who my money would have been riding on -
Chu Chi
this is how it's done Ha
"the Hammer from Hanoi"!
Cyclo tour of the sights
In Saigon we took a cyclo tour of the main sights, including the Post Office (designed by Eiffel), the Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, etc. There are plenty of French Colonial style buildings around and lots and lots of traffic (again 90%!m(MISSING)otorscooters). The Saigon River runs through the city, with a ferry linking some of the residential areas to the centre of town.
Same, same but different
For some stupid reason the words to Arlo Guthrie’s song “Alice’s Restaurant” popped into my head when we first visited the Ben Thanh Market, “you can get anything you want at ....”. You may be able to get anything you want but you can be guaranteed it may be slightly, not exactly, the same as you wanted - it was another half day full of bargaining, hearing the words “but Mister, same, same, but different”.
An example of this - Lorenza spotted some pale green silk bolts of material, she took a look and they had small flowers embroidered on them, she asked the stall holder if they had the same material
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this is how it's done 2 without the flowers. The stall holder ran off and returned with arms full of silk material, but no one of them was pale green. So, Lorenza said “no, none of this is pale green, do you have the same green without the flowers”, the response “but Madam, this is same same” as the stall holder pointed to some red material. Lorenza responds, “No, this is different, see it is red not green”. The stall holder then utters that classic, Vietnamese expression “But Madam, this material is same, same, but different, I give you special price”.
The range of goods and produce available at this market was astounding. The fresh produce, including seafood, meats and vegetables was worth checking out. There was a huge array of fruits that I have never seen or tasted before. Also, the small, outside restaurants attached to the markets were great value and the food quality was incredible. Plus, the service fast and efficient, westerners could learn a lot about fast, but nutritious food form these people. A good feed, including a beer or two was worth about 3 bucks - great value.
Like most of the markets in Vietnam, we enjoyed taking a
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our turn - Patrice walk around and having a look what was on offer. By and large the stall holders are friendly enough and don’t mind doing their best to answer a dumb Aussie bloke’s questions, like “what’s that fruit called?”, “how do you eat it? Do I have to peel it?”, mostly they had little idea what I was saying but hand signals and a few pantomimes generally get the info you require (plus a good laugh from the stall holder).
I can read again
Another bargain we found in Saigon was prescription reading glasses. I know most people do not travel to check out the fees charged by local Optometrists, but it has been a few years since I had a new set of reading glasses. I popped into a few eye doctors on the way back from the market and almost fell over when they quoted me such a low price for some new specs. At first I was a little worried about the language barrier and when the women in the shop ran me through the eye test I was hoping she realised I wanted reading glasses and not a full frontal lobotomy.
Again, hand signals, some
Chu Chi
our turn - Lorenza play acting and a lot of laughter resulted in me being able to read even the smallest print on the eye chart she showed me. Trying to find out if I could get anti-scratch and anti-glare lenses proved to be a bit of a challenge. She ending up enlisting the help of the women next door who ran a swimwear shop to try and work out what I was asking for. The swimwear lady’s English was a little better than the Optometrist’s. Now, I began to wonder if I was going to end up with new glasses in the shape of a bikini!
So, eye test done, designer frames selected, the details of the lenses hopefully sorted out, the Optometrist tells me my two sets of glasses will be back in one hour! How do they do it? One hour later, I have my two sets of new specs, lenses and frames exactly as I had asked for. I find I can read the small print on a chewing gum packet that was discarded on the footpath 500 metres away and it all cost me under $100 for the lot. Almost worth a yearly trip back just to get
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our turn - Rob some specs!
Chi Tunnels
We did a day trip to the Cu Chi area and the huge tunnel network built by guerillas fighting the French, these were later used again fighting the Americans. It is a great example of how ingenious these folks were, the tunnels cover an area of about 250 kilometres and include areas for weapons storage, treatment of the wounded, kitchens and sleeping quarters. They also had on display lots of booby traps that were set up to protect the tunnels and the area around them - not so pretty, but ingenious non the less.
For about $1 you could shoot off a few rounds with an AK47 rifle and get an idea of the noise that would have been encountered on the battle fields with hundreds of these being in action. I couldn’t believe the kickback this rifle had and my first shot went well over the target and the rifle butt almost took my shoulder off. Next round I braced myself a lot better and managed to actually hit the target (although, nowhere near where I thought I had been aiming at). After 10 shots I almost got a handle on what
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one of many entrances I was supposed to be doing, lucky no-one was shooting back at me!
The last supper
The official end of our Intrepid tour came around quickly. The fifteen days flew by. We shared a last meal together in Saigon and exchanged e-mail contacts and reminisced about the highlights and strange happenings on our trip. We found out that Tet, aside from having no trace of a Japanese accent, was also a very accomplished pianist. The restaurant had a baby grand and we asked the owner if Tet could replace the house pianist for a few tunes. He displayed his skills ranging from classical to boogie woogie music and got some Japanese tourists at another table humming along to some famous Japanese song.
After the restaurant most of us found our way to an Aussie bar for a few more drinks. We really wanted to try and find a karaoke bar, because we wanted Yuki to give us a show of her skills at what was the favourite pass time of her and her group of friends back in Osaka. Unfortunately, we could not locate one at that time, but we stumbled across this bar selling Victorian Bitter
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rolling trap and playing Aussie music like Midnight Oil and Cold Chisel. The VB was locally made and tasted much like the 1996 Bordeaux. So, we did our best singing along to some classic Oz rock material - the Karaoke will have to wait until we visit Osaka.
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