Ho Chi Minh City
Trip Start
Jun 19, 2008
1
12
26
Trip End
Ongoing
Ho Chi Minh,
Vietnam
Friday, August 22, 2008
The following day (August 14th) was spent on a bit of a walking tour around the city. We were very surprised at how nice the city is. We were expecting it to be more of a culture shock and dirty with beggars all over the place. This was not the case at all. There are lots of parks, trees, and greenery throughout and hardly any stray animals, unlike Thailand. People and children selling books, sunglasses, lighters, tissues, etc. are more of a nuisance in Viet Nam than in Thailand. They come up to your table in restaurants while you're eating and ask you to buy things
Us and Uncle Ho
. When you say no, they usually hang around for a few minutes as if you might change your mind. Once you get used to this and just ignore them, it's not a problem. The main issue we've had with Viet Nam so far is getting across the street. The traffic is absolutely mental! Loads of motorbikes weaving in and out everywhere among cars, taxis, and buses doing the same. There really don't seem to be any lanes or even a right side of the road to drive on for that matter (though technically they drive on the right) Traffic lights are a rariety and where they do exist, seem optional. This gives you a slightly easier time of getting across, but not by much. You just have to start inching your way out into the road, slowly and steadily making your way across. Essentially you have to pretend like you're on a leisurely walk even though it can be scary because if you run, the drivers don't know where you're going to be and can't avoid you. If your path is clear and slow, the motorbikes will zip around you though pedestrians seem to have to wait for cars to go by. The bigger the vehicle, the more right of way they have. We have found oursevles stuck in the middle of the road, motorbikes peeling to the sides at the last minute and way to close to our toes for comfort, waiting to move forward on many occassions. Sometimes it really seems as if you're not going to make it.
The big market in the city seemed to have a bit more variety than in Thailand. The merchants are also more pushy here
Us and Uncle Ho
. They will grab your arm as you go by trying to get you to stop and look at something. Mary Jo also told us that one time she called to Jim in the market and when everyone heard his name they started saying, "Jim! Jim! You want shirt Jim, etc." In the food section of the market Phuong got a durian (sp?) shake for us to try. This fruit is sometimes called bitter melon in English. It has a pungent odor, smells like gasoline. Apparently the compound found in durian is the same one used to give an odor to natural gas so that you can tell when there is a leak. It smells just like this. The taste is even worse. It's like a combination of burnt popcorn, rubbing alcohol, gasoline, and pretty much anything else disgusting that you can think of. I had one sip and that was enough for a lifetime. I really think I might have thrown up if I had another taste. And this was in a shake as well. The actual fruit has an even stronger flavor and is yellowish with the consistency of custard. Gross! This started a game of what would you rather eat than durian?We went to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum and the History Museum. There was a really cool mummy in the history museum that was found in the early 1990s when they were trying to dig for an apartment block. Makes me want to put Egypt on the list for the next travel spot! We tried sugar cane juice from a street stall. This was a much better experience than durian! They press the sugar cane right there and mix it with ice, water, and a hint of lemon
Water Puppetry
. It was good and very sweet. At lunch Phuong also got salty plum juice that we all tried. It had a different sort of flavor, rather salty and not very good. Better than durian (but what isn't) but not something I would ever get again. I can see why people would like it though if they had grown up with the taste.That night the three of us, Andy and Phuong, and Jim and Mary Jo went to a water puppetry show. This was quite entertaining. People on either side of the set played traditional music that went with the puppets. There were also some speaking parts, but of course we couldn't understand the Vietnamese. The show basically consisted of short little themes like "boat race" and "catching fish."
The next day we went on a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels which played an important role in the Viet Nam War not too far outside the city. We had a great tourguide on the bus who gave us some insights into Vietnamese culture and the war. He said that women still don't have a lot of power here and are used to being treated poorly. His girlfriend still doesn't understand how to deal with choice and when he asks her where she wants to go out or what she wants to do for an evening, she simply says whatever you want. When we arrived at the tunnels, we watched a very one-sided propaganda video about the war. Then we saw some of the bunkers and entrances into the tunnels. They showed us a little spiderhole that the Viet Cong used to wait in until their enemies came
Puppets
. It looked so tiny, just a little square cut into the tunnel with a lid to hide the opening. A guide went into the hole to demonstrate that people can indeed fit their whole bodies inside and after he went in, others in our group tried to go into the hole as well. Some people succeeded, some did not because of height or weight. We did not attempt. I can't imagine waiting in there for a long period of time. We were shown some of the traps they used to injure soldiers and their German Shepard dogs. It looked painful. This was something we didn't really need to see. There was also a shooting range there where you can pick a gun off the "menu" to shoot if you want. Joe shot an AK47. Angie and I pretended to shoot. The sounds were deafening. Then we got to go through a section of the tunnels ourselves. The tunnels were neither wide nor tall. It wasn't too hard for me and Angie to get through. I could manage most of the time by bending down very low, but the taller and bigger you are, the harder. The tunnels also got smaller and smaller as you went along so it became more difficult. It was also pitch-black and we had to feel our way through. There are exits along the whole way so you can get out whenever you feel you need to. We got out one exit before the end, not bad. I just can't understand how the Cu Chi people lived down there for years and years. Seems impossible, but I guess impossible things become possible during war. Then we got to taste some yucca (sp?) plant that they would eat
More puppets
. It tasted kind of like potatoes. It was a very interesting tour. The tunnels had so many levels and different traps along the way. They even had a kitchen down there and managed to send the smoke out to the open air a few meters away from the actual kitchen so that if the soldiers saw it, they wouldn't bomb the kitchen. They created fake sink holes that looked like tunnel openings, but had land mines on them instead. When soldiers tried to shoot down the opening, they would shoot the mine instead. There was also a bomb crater nearby made by a B52. It was huge. I never expected something like that to look so big. Our bus ride back to Ho Chi Minh took longer than expected because a few people from our group had opted to take a boat ride back to the city, but their boat broke down so we had to turn around and pick them up.We returned to HCMC after Mui Ne for a couple more days. We had a great night out with Andy in which we drank Eden Bar out of Ba Ba Ba (the best beer we found in Viet Nam) and chatted with some English people and a guy from Singapore. We went to Independence Palace where we got to see the famous tanks that broke down the palace gates. The palace itself was pretty much like any other tour of that sort, lots of rooms that you weren't allowed into with big, ornate furniture. The basement of the palace was the best part where we got to see a lot of war rooms and secret passages. We also went to the War Remnants Museum. The museum was very interesting and displayed a lot of powerful images from the Viet Nam war
And more
. We tried moon cake, which is a special dessert they make for the mid-autumn festival devoted to children. The children go around collecting moon cakes, kind of like Halloween. The one we tried was pretty good and grew on me the more I ate it. The outside was made of dough that tasted similar to a doughnut and the filling was sweetened beans. I liked it, but it was rich and I wouldn't be able to eat a whole one on my own.
Another thing we found interesting about Vietnam is that, unlike Thailand, the only fast food restaurant chains are KFC and Pizza Hut. They don't even have McDonalds! Our theory on why these are the only fast foods is that Colonel Sanders looks a lot like Uncle Ho (as in Ho Chi Minh) so this is obviously why KFC appeals in Vietnam.
Angie flew home on the 23rd and Joe and I flew to Hue. We were sad to see Angie go and were glad she was able to make it over for a few weeks!
Comments
heeey!
Love your updates, as always :) Glad you're enjoying yourselves- the wedding sounds like great fun!
So, I was reading the blog of someone who adopted a baby girl from russia (don't ask... i'm hormonal), and i was looking at some pictures. Turns out they moved from the US to Thailand last year... and they have pictures from the same elephant place you guys visited! I was like... HEY! I've see that before!!
...just thought i'd share :)