Here comes the Sun!
Trip Start
Dec 20, 2008
1
7
16
Trip End
Jan 20, 2009
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Thursday, January 1, 2009
This morning we have been, as Jeannie says, reunited with our shadows! We had an early flight to Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City but the locals still call it Saigon). And we flew from the rain to the sun and the heat. It's a bit hazy but who cares? The long term weather forecast shows this unseasonable miserable weather heading out into the South China Sea and the dry season can start at last. Flight was painless, very busy traffic coming into town. It's a bit more organised here traffic-wise - in theory the bikes drive on the right and the cars on the left side of each side of the carriageway. And they have traffic lights that people stop at! Quick lunch before the city tour - we found a French bakery round the corner and had a sort of Croque Monsieur and a sort of strawberry brioche. And a very good coffee - the first so far.
At the War Remnants Museum
The War Remnants museum here is very moving. As well as assorted hardware left by the US in the war (tanks, planes etc) it has several rooms of photographs taken by both sides and independent photographers during the war. Some of the photographers were killed in action and the photos shown are the last rolls of film. From both sides this was clearly a harrowing war. When you see the conditions the US soldiers were fighting under you really wonder why the US did not pull out earlier. It was equally awful for the Vietnamese - worse in many cases because it involved so many civilians - but at least it was their cause. One reason for there being so many modern villages also now becomes apparent - the US torched about 80% of the villages (which had straw roofs). It is difficult to describe these photos in words, you need to see for yourself. All Americans who voted for George Bush should be made to come and see this museum. Our lovely sun then gave way to a thunder storm and we had to send our guide out for plastic ponchos (as we had all rather optimistically left ours at the hotel). This bought us time for the rain to stop!
The Presidential Palace is a rather uninspiring 1960s building but much of it has been kept as a museum and you can see where the then President (working with the US) had his offices and bunker and escape route
Saigon Post office
. Apparently the Vietcong dropped a bomb on the staircase twice. We also passed by the Post Office built by the French, a magnificent building which looks more like a railway station, and Notre Dame which was built in brick by Eiffel. Saigon though very busy feels less frenetic than Hanoi I think because the streets are mostly French style boulevards and therefore very wide and airy - but the devil to cross!We dined in Lemon Grass which I found out later is one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in Saigon. However it was not as expensive as Mango in Hoi An and Chris and I chose what we voted the best dish so far - Seafood baked in Clay Pot and we also had coconut rice served in a coconut which may not sound special but was perfect. It was dry enough to walk home photographing the wedding cake city hall and the amazing Christmas lights. There are some rather good looking seafood restaurants by the market which we might try on Friday. They like a party the Vietnamese. There is some open air show going on just up from our hotel and there were lights and laser beams and music and hundreds of mopeds drawn up as if to an open air theatre.
New Year's Eve morning dawned sunny again and we set off South down Highway One for the Mekong Delta. This is quite a long drive and on a rather uncomfortable bus I ended up with a headache but that's pretty good going for a trip like this
Homestay
. We were somewhat concerned that there were dozens of buses on the same road stuffed with Western Tourists but once we got on the boat they seemed to melt away, there is a lot of water here. And presumably some of them only have a day trip, not everyone goes for the Homestay. Where we started off on the boat was a floating market where they practice barter. The boat has one product and ties it to the mast so that people can see what they have for sale. Today we saw Taro, Sweet Potato and Water Melon. Some of the group had packaged grocery goods which they bartered for 5 Kg of Sweet Potatoes. (what good are these to us I wonder?)Later we visited a variety of village cottage industries - the best one being a sweet making factory where they turn out Coconut caramels (yummy), peanut brittle, dried banana and tamarind, dried ginger and sweet puffed rice cakes. A significant amount of shopping was done after the tasting session. Later at a Bonsai garden we were shown a variety of more unusual fruits and were offered longans, rambutans, pomelo as well as the more usual pineapple and water melon. I must have eaten nearly a kilo of fruit today!
The Homestay itself was a series of huts on stilts by the riverside. We were made very welcome and inspected our rooms - eight to a room with camp beds and mosquito nets - didn't look too promising at first - but it turns out that a mosquito net gives you quite a lot of privacy
Mosquito Nets
! In fact I slept quite well - but that was after dinner (which strangely turned out to be a duplicate of lunch - elephant's ear fish in roll your own spring rolls, prawns, vegetable soup and stewed pork with rice, and lots of fruit). We also had some local musicians to give us a small concert before dinner - similar music and instruments to the Royal one in Hue but with songs telling stories of rural life.It was a long time to wait for midnight and a range of strategies were devised for passing the time. Drinking (most people), drinking rice wine (everyone except me and Debbie - good strategy as it turned out), singing Beatle songs (Glenn), crashing out at 10pm (Karen), dancing (Emma and Diem) - I played the concertina a bit to provide some background music, watching the tide flow in and then flow out again (Vicky, Carl and Angela) and in the end when we were flagging I sang a few songs and suddenly it was midnight, Auld Lang Syne, Freedom Peacefully and hugs all round. Amazingly most of us slept pretty well but there was quite a dawn chorus and a cockerel who kept crowing all night so we enjoyed an early good breakfast in the sunshine. This included yesterday's sweet potatoes which, boiled, taste a bit like roast chestnuts.There were a few sore heads from the rice wine....
We made several stops on the way back to visit local village crafts - one was an interesting nursery garden where we saw baby fruit trees and the different way they grow them. We were able to sample jackfruit and pomelo as well as the usual bananas, pineapple, longans. The host also came round with rice brandy which was actually quite nice but not at 9.00 in the morning. Later we saw a blacksmith family - such hard work - and a small workishop making coloured cement floor tiles using an 80 year old French machine and process. The tiles are very reminiscent of the tiles you see in older French buildings but today there is more money and a preference for ceramic or marble so there is less demand. The lady making coconut palm roofing is mostly working for the tourist trade now.
