Ho's House - Ho Chi Minh City

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Day 21/22/23/24 - Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We pulled into Ho Chi Minh City around 7PM on Thursday, Jan.29th, thanking all heaven that we would never have to deal with Hanh Cafe and its Open Tour bus again. We found our hotel after a bit of searching since it was in an alley of the main street - Pham Ngu Lao (backpackers central). The hostel - My My Art House - was nice enough for $20 a night. There were hotels and guesthouses which we heard offered more for the buck, but the family that ran our hostel was so lovely we didn't move. Our first night we walked around a bit and got a quick cheap bit to eat. The restaurant offered a plate of "Pring Rolls" with either "vegetables" or "shrim" even though were wondering if they tasted anything like "spring rolls" and if "shrim" was a relative of the better know shrimp, we settled on $1.50 plates of noodles and veggies.

The next morning we hit the pavement of HCMC and to be honest we were a bit disappointed. The city is definitely more capitalist and wealthier then Hanoi, but it doesn't have the same grit and soul. The city is more of a hub of commerce and banking. There are loads of multi-story malls - which we ducked into from time to time to cool off from the scorching sun (hurray for A/C). The main streets were wide and tree lined - some streets reminded us of Paris. Since the streets were wider it didn't seem to have as much traffic as Hanoi even though it's much more populated. We first headed to the Ben Thanh Market, which basically sells the same crap - uh we mean stuff - as all the other markets in Vietnam. We just wandered through the winding stalls until the smell became too unbearable for Steph. After that we sat on a bench and rested in a park in front of the Reunification Hall since it was closed for lunch and watched the city go by. We walked to Lam Son Square where there is a beautiful Wedgewood blue Opera House with a handful of ritzy hotels. We even popped into a Marc Jacobs store and were surprised that we weren't shooed away immediately considering our appearance (an experience we had in the Fendi store in Venice). Deciding not to blow our whole savings on a pair of sunglasses we left and made a quick stop for a bit to eat. We settled for Ciao Cafe which ended up being a good choice, since we stuffed ourselves silly with onion rings, a club sandwich and bbq skewers all for a grand total of around $10.00.

Somehow, we must have rested too long because we soon found ourselves rushing across town to get to the War Remnants Museum before it closed for the day. The government should put quotation marks around the word museum as it was basically just a bunch of warehouse like buildings with pictures and captions on the wall. The photography was extremely graphic - showing the past and current effects of Napalm and Agent Orange. They had tons of guns, tanks and bombs used by the US army on display. Like the Hanoi Hilton, it was quite one sided - showing just the Vietnamese side of the war, but unlike the Hanoi Hilton, it didn't have a propaganda room solely dedicated to the humane treated of US soldiers.

We left the museum and walked through the park discussing the images we had just seen, however mid way thru the park, we found ourselves in the middle of a Vietnamese Tet New Year fair. We strolled over to a crowd to see what was going on. It turned out to be a game in which a person is put in a 45x10 feet fenced in rectangle, blindfolded and given 1 min to catch a goat - see photo. It was actually very entertaining and after a few attempts, a guy successfully cornered the goat and got hold of it and we cheered along with the crowd.

For dinner, we went with a bunch of people from our hostel to a nice cheap traditional Vietnamese restaurant. Like so many meals we've had before this, it was a whose who of the UN; Belgium, Sweden, Ireland, England, Canada - all being represented. We ended up ordering 6 dishes and just shared them all (we had ordered 8 dishes but the restaurant actually ran out of food - weird, huh?). After dinner we stopped by an outdoor street "cafe" for a beer, though not sure if cafe is right word since we just sat on miniature plastic stools on the sidewalk as flies ate us alive and lizards ran around under our feet. When you sit out in the open like this, you are subject to everyone coming up to you, selling everything from cigarettes to gum to dry squid. At around 11:45PM, this little girl came up to sell us gum. Our new friend Linda, who spoke Vietnamese, asked the girl why she wasn't in bed and where her mom was. After avoiding the questions, she ran into the street - without shoes - into oncoming traffic.

The next morning, we slept in and G had a long, interesting talk with the grandfather that lived in the hostel. He spoke about the war, learning french during the occupation, and even the most important recent events - The Australian Open! Eventually, we made our way to Cholon - which is the Chinatown area of HCM. It was hectic, dirty and quite rundown, however there were some nice temples and a market with hardly any tourist. After a few hours of sweltering in the sun, we hopped on motorbikes and headed back to Saigon (District 1) for lunch. Steph's book once again lead us to a closed down restaurant, so we walked around a bit until we found a nice cafe on the "Madison Ave" of HCM. The cafe was directly across from Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana, so we paid a little more then usual but the food was amazing and the cafe had A/C so we were happy to pay the $8.00 each. After lunch, we headed just outside Saigon to check out some more pagoda's and temples. However, temples are becoming new European cathedrals to us - once you've seen a few, you've seen them all. But it was a nice 2 hour motorbike ride from temple to temple. However, our drives wanted us to pay more when we got off the bikes even though we had agreed on 150,000 dong for the two of us. After a bit of arguing, we simply handed them the 150,000 dong and walked away.

For dinner, we met up with G's Aussie friend - Tim - that she and B met in Prague in 2004. Tim had been traveling thru Thailand and Laos and had a 24 hour layover in HCM. We had an awesome time over dinner and drinks hearing Tim's stories and sharing our own. We had booked a tour to the Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels that next day, so we reluctantly had to say to goodbye to Tim after just a few hours.

We had a nice sleep in again and didn't get out of bed until 9AM since our tour didn't leave until 10AM - or so G thought. We get to the tour desk and told them we were ready to go and they looked at us completely puzzled. Turns out the tour was at 8:10AM not 10AM. Before you say anything, this is not a result of our stupidity - the girl that booked us clearly said 10AM and G even repeated "10AM" and she nodded. We found out that 3 people yesterday did the same thing and showed up at 10AM instead of 8:10AM. Luckily, due to G's level-headedness she negotiated for the tour compnay to get us a taxui and apply our tour money towards it. G then recruited Tim and we found a 50 year old Italian guy to split a taxi with us to the Cu Chi tunnels (we wouldn't make it in time for the noon prayer at Cao Dai temple). It took about 2 hours to get to the tunnel area - most of the two hours were spent in HCM traffic.

The tunnels were quite interesting, they start off showing a video of how the guerrillas built and used the tunnels, then we walked around the grounds. The entrance holes (insert joke here) were extremely small (see photo) but they had widened one to allow tourist to experience them. The inside tunnels were widened to about twice the size, but even with the extra room, it was a really tight squeeze at about 2.5x1.5 feet. Inside it was extremely hot, disorientating and claustrophobic(flash back to G in Giza Pyramid with her mom). Our guide also showed us a handful of gruesome booby traps the guerrillas used during the war - consisting of bamboo stakes, hook-ended nails, and swinging castration contraptions. Next there was a shooting gallery where you can shoot AK47 and other really big guns that we don't remember the names of. None of us chose to do it - mostly because we didn't want to cough up the $14. But we watched a handful of others while feeling the vibrations in our chest each time a bullet was fired. We had to cover our ears since the blast was really loud and jolting (see photo - ha ha).

We said goodbye to our hilarious guide and headed back to Saigon. The four of us stopped by Green Leaf Cafe for lunch (Tim and S each finished off a plate of onion rings) and we heard all about Fabritzio's (Italian guy) travels through the middle east decades ago and his recent trip to Burma. Then once again, we had to say a goodbye to Tim since he had a plane to catch at 10PM. We kept it low key that night - stayed in a watched "American Gangster" on TV since we were moving on to Can Tho in the Mekong Delta the next morning.

Goodbye for now.

xxx
S & G

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Photos

Jade Pagoda
Oil based lamp. Worshipers would add more oil as a offering to the gods.

Tet Fair
Catch the goat, get a prize

Many Buddhas
Statues of the many faces of the Buddha.

Ben Thanh Market
Brightly colored candies in the Ben Thanh Market.The smell was a much needed relief from the stench of dried fish and moth balls.

Golden Buddha
Buddha at Xa Loi Pagoda. It is here several monks committed suicide by setting themselves alight in 1963.

Hip Hop Tim
Tim and the street kid that beat G in Paper/Rock/Scissors 3 times in a row!

Tour Guide
Our tour guide wearing authentic VC guerrilla uniform - even the car tire shoes.

VC Tunnel
Tunnel entrance - it's about 12 inches long and 6 inches wide.

Bullet Shells
Spent Bullet shells from the machine guns available for hire.

Steph's love of guns
Apparent in the photo.

Chu Chi Tunnels
G and S about to enter the Tunnel System. (photo taken by Tim)