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Published: January 17th 2011
Tuesday 1-4
We’re in Vietnam with Jane & Raelene! Saigon is a cool city! I’m so excited to be here with them! We get to stay with Jane’s dad, just outside the city. Our first night, he took us out for street-side pho – it was delicious! I’m so excited to eat the food here. We spent out first morning sorting out our travel plans at the travel agent office, but we were treated to Vietnamese breakfast sandwiches: basically yummy French bread with veggies and roasted pork. Mmmmm! Things are MUCH cheaper here than in our previous 3 countries (thank goodness!) – for 4 days/2 nights of tours and a border crossing, we’re paying about $80 per person – such a good deal!
My first impression of Saigon is that it’s a very Westernized city for a Communist country – but then again, it’s the first Communist country I’ve visited (outside of the former East Berlin), so who knows what I should expect. [Nick Note: There are still lots of reminders of the Communist regime, for example they blocked Facebook because they are having an “election” in a couple of months and they don’t want people to be able to
use it to organize in opposition. Also there was the sickle and hammer next to the Vietnam flag everywhere and there were many neo-communist style posters showing very happy workers in front of factories.] But it’s a great city – very busy, very vibrant, there are still quite a few old French colonial buildings juxtaposed to some beautiful and colorful pagodas. The city feels like a normally U.S. city but with a developing country/Vietnamese twist. “Saigon Telecom” system, for example, is quite interesting. Basically, their phone lines
are low hanging jumbles of wire that are tangled around telephone poles; some are bundled together, some are so low hanging they could almost hit Nick in the head. Rush hour traffic in Saigon is similar to that in L.A.: you want to get an early start because the streets are chocked with vehicles back to back and side to side. The main difference here is that the vehicles are motorbikes with a few bicycles and even few cars scattered in between. There are traffic lights (no stop signs) but no one pays attention to them. There’s no rhyme or reason to turning left or right; if you need to go against traffic to get where you need to go or cut people off, almost knocking them and you over, so be it. The scooter traffic here is crazy – it’s pretty fun to watch. Even crazier to try and walk across the street. You have to do it slowly so that the bikers have time to see you and try to maneuver around you – they won’t stop at all, but they swerve around you (as crazy as traffic is, fortunately, it doesn’t move very fast). But you have
to pay attention, as traffic is coming at you from all sides and the cars won’t stop for you at all.
The scooter scene has been great! There’s quite a lot to see. First, everyone is required by law to wear a helmet (unless you’re a child), so they’ve gotten pretty creative with helmet designs. Same with the face masks. The dust is pretty bad in Saigon (I got a sore throat and burning eyes just from riding in a cab with the windows down), so everyone rides with a face mask on. Think customized, embroidered, decorated surgical masks. And while there are quite a few safety standards and regulations
in the U.S., that all goes out the window in Vietnam. Scooters don’t just hold 1 or 3 people. In most cases, they hold 3 or 4. I even saw a family of 5 (two toddlers in front, the dad driving and an infant in mom’s arms in the back)! There are car seats for little kids – basically just a wicker high chair that sits on the foot rests in front of the driver. In the morning, many kids are hitching a ride to school on the scooters, so we see lots of kids asleep in front (there are custom pillows that fir around the handle bars) or in back of the driver. We’ve seen kids doing their hair, texting, reading the newspaper and even eating breakfast with chopsticks on the back of the bikes. Basically all the same things we do illegally in our cars.
Our favorite game in Vietnam has been to spot the scooter with the largest cargo load. Since scooters (and some bicycles) are the main form of transportation, folks here pile on the goods. We’ve seen bikes loaded in front, behind and on the side of the driver &/or passengers. Boxes of beer,
boxes of coke, entire doors, loads of plants, giant bags of rice, propane cans, huge stacks of baskets, …you name it, and it’s loaded onto a bike. The biggest load I think we saw was a guy carrying a fridge, holding on to the top with one hand and driving with the other. Awesome! It’s a fun game; you should totally play it when you come to Vietnam!
Our first day in Saigon wasn’t all scooter watching. Jane’s dad was nice enough to be our local tour guide. He took us to the Reunification Palace (former presidential residence before the Vietnam War); Notre Dame; the old French Post Office; the Hotel de Ville; Opera House; Jade Emperor Pagoda (where we almost suffocated from all the incense); we even went to check out what a local mall and grocery store were like. One of the coolest places was the central Ben Thanh Market. There were tons of colorful food stands
– all the crazy fruits and seafood that grows here. Nick was a hit – everyone kept staring at him – a White Giant of sorts among the short Vietnamese. Kids here are fascinated with him; they look him up and down wherever he goes.
We had lunch at a cool restaurant where they’ve basically hired a whole bunch of successful food vendors, each of whom are known for a local specialty, and put them under one roof. You walk around and watch them prepare their dishes, then point out to your waitress which ones you want. After a full day of walking around the city, we were treated to scooter rides around Jane’s dad’s neighborhood. We were the passengers of course, but it was still a lot of fun getting into that crazy traffic! I thought riding our Vespa around the South Bay was fun, but it’s nothing compared to the crazy zig zagging in and out that you do in Saigon! And of course, everyone got a laugh out of Nick. He was like one of the giant loads that
guys carry on their scooters – he was so much bigger than Jane’s dad who was driving him, they kept getting strange looks from people on the street as they passed by.
And the destination of our little scooter ride? To go get our hair did, of course! One of the treats you can get here is to have your hair professionally washed. It’s literally what it sounds like except in addition to just getting your hair washed at the beauty salon, you also get your head, face, neck, arms and shoulders massaged; they wash your face and they even clean your ears. It was quite the hour long experience and only $2! While we were there, a 3 year old girl joined us; apparently, she goes to the salon every 2 days to get her hair washed because she doesn’t like to get water in her ears from the shower at home.
At the end of our first full day, we were treated to an amazing home cooked meal by Jane’s dad’s girlfriend, Go Wa. She is a great cook! We got to eat delicious, fresh baked French bread with beef and vegetable stew, plus crispy noodles
with creamy vegetables. Oh my gosh, after all the cheap eats and microwavable food we had in New Zealand and Australia, eating fresh fruits and veggies is SUCH a wonderful treat! One of the great things about this trip to Vietnam is being able to stay with Jane’s dad and his family. Especially the twins Sing and Song who are frickin’ hysterical. They were really shy at first but they love Jane & Nick and even though we couldn’t speak the same language at all, they were chatting up a storm and wouldn’t let Nick go to bed. They loved playing with our camera and trying to teach Raelene the names of different bugs. It was great! Thanks to Jane’s dad, we’ve been able to stay at their place, try local foods with them, and have our own personal translators (thank goodness for Jane’s Vietnamese skills or we’d be lost!). We’ve been able to get a real local feel for things and get off the tourist trail to really experience some great parts of the city. My only regret is we only have 2 days here! I’d love to think we could come back here in the future, as there
is just SO MUCH to see and do and we have such a small window to experience a small sliver of it! If you haven’t been to Vietnam, GO! It’s truly an amazing place with a lot to offer.
[Nick Note: Unfortunately I was less impressed with Vietnam itself (well just Saigon and Mekong Delta). However, Jane’s Dad, Paul, made the experience amazing with his great hospitality and letting us inquire about his life in Vietnam before it opened up its market to the West back around 1991. We cannot possibly thank Jane and Paul enough. However if you don’t have a local guide there was little art & crafts available, traditional culture, and architecture left in the city, I guess because the Communists got rid of it and modern Vietnamese don’t see much value in it or are too poor to be able to concern themselves with those matters. Overall it is interesting to go if you have not seen a chaotic city before or you idea of travel is that you enjoy the challenge of going to a place that is hard to travel in, otherwise Saigon can be skipped. (Caveat we were there for 2 days
so it could easily be that we just missed the really nice things, but we did hit most of the top tourist attractions. Secondly I might think more of Saigon if I was a foodie, there are lots of dishes to try and the food I had was very good to excellent (for Go Wa’s food) but for me food is not a huge allure in travel.)
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Kathy and Tomas
non-member comment
looking at your photos
Tomas and I just looked at all your latest photos. I will read the blog posts later. We especially like the pictures of tall Nick in a land of short people. And we were interested in Cat and Nick in the tunnels. And we liked looking at all the motor scooters. Love to you guys! Have fun!