Impulsive shopping in Saigon
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2008
1
8
40
Trip End
Aug 27, 2008
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Monday, June 16, 2008
So this is a few days back but the internet wasn't working at our hotel so here it is.
So for our third day in Saigon(also Called Ho Chi Minh), we decided to sleep in a little and relax a bit. So we woke up at around 9 am and went to grad our traditional vietnamese sub for 50 cents each. Then we started walking in town to go see the different sites only to realized that we didn't plan right at all because everything closes between 11 and 1:30, for lunch I presume, and so we got there at aroudn taht time. So we just kept walking around the city to look at Notre-Dame Cathedral and the post office. We then continued in another district of town that is definately more rich than the one we were staying in. There was Louis Vutton and Lacoste boutiques and all those fancy brands. We then ended up in a market where they sold the lacquer plates that we had seen the day before but for much cheaper. We bargained some prices and got some new plates for our new place. For those of you who didn't know, we got in rez at Kingston so we have an apartment for September...Hurray! After the purchases, we started heading back towards the sites that were closed for lunch. The reunification building was closed, but we couldnt understand what the guard was trying to tell us so we just left. We then went to the War Museum. It was quite intense. They had tons of pictures of war photographers to see the action shots of the war. Very graphic and some pictures were so brutal. There was also a movie about Agent Orange and its consequences on Vietnameses people. Agent Orange was a chemical that the Americans spreaded all over Vietnam to destroy the forests and contaminate the water, so the Viets would die more easily. But what they didn't plan was that it would have an effect on the whole next generations because all the soldiers exposed to that chemical gave birth to deformed children that most of the time could not live. It was sad to see and Sean and I wondered how the Vietnameses can still tolerate the Americans!
Then, we experienced the rainy season in Vietnam. As we were getting out of the museum, it started POURING. We waited about 20 minutes for it to calm down, but it never did. So we decided to go for it and just get wet to walk home. Turned out to be not too bad but we were still pretty wet. Here, the viets wear punchos over them, expecially when they ride their motorbikes to get protected from the rain. Then we got to the hotel, and met up wiht Andra and Stefan that had just arrived in Saigon from Cambodia. Had dinner with them.
Erica
