Saigon
Trip Start
Jul 05, 2008
1
23
30
Trip End
Aug 30, 2008
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Monday, August 11, 2008
We stayed at a comical little hotel down an alley off of Pham Ngu Lao, which is basically the headquarters of hectic-backpacker-land. Seriously, all night long that street is a thumpin' strip of sin. It's fun to catch a table by the sidewalk and watch the parade of depravity traipse by. I wonder what happened to that crazy Brit; I wonder what opium den full of hookers claimed his unannointed soul.
Day one and we saw all the hard hitters that Saigon has to offer. The hotel, which had delicious blissful heavenly airconditioning (not enough superlatives can communicate my joy), had breakfast included, your typical indochine-colonial fare: rocket-fuel coffee served with condensed milk, french baguette and jam. I love Vietnamese coffee more than I love you, it really is that good (SEP: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74165821@N00/333679503/) . Anyhow we walked to the War Remnants Museum, escaping death every time we crossed the streets. The museum is pretty cool. It started out fairly rhetoric-free, but by the end of it descended into communist propoganda where all the Vietnamese were "patriot heroes" and the Americans "evil invaders". Fair enough, it is their country. Many horrific pictures of Agent Orange and napalm victims later, A-bomb and I were back walking the beat and heading to... I think we went to the Reunification Palace next.
The Reunification Palace is very ghetto fabulous. It's like your aunt's badly furnished house from the sixties has been preserved in perfect form... with the addition of a helicopter on the roof. This place was bombed to kingdom come during the fall of Saigon, and has been re-built with lovely pea-green shag carpeting. The basement was the best part; it's basically a bomb-shelter and war strategy room where everyone would go to hide when all hell was raining down.
I think next we walked around the park a bit, which is very beautiful with towering trees and people just hanging out. All around downtown Saigon you see colonial architecture, which was once sugary but now kind of scummy. I love love LOVE it. At this point we realized that it was nearing dinner time and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We went from one restaurant to another trying to find at least one vegetarian option on the menu. I was pretty sure that Aaron would disown me; or push me infront of a bus; but he was an excellent sport and soon we were settled at Pho 2000, which is near the market. I ate here last time and was again very pleased with the pho, which is one of my top 5 favorite foods. It was also amusing to listen in on the other tourists around us... I can't help it, I'm not used to hearing English, and when I do I can't help but listen in! Anyhow beside us was an amusing group of newbie English teachers, one of whom ate her entire meal with her chopsticks upside down. More newbies were sitting behind us, with a guide. One of them was hilariously shocked by everything put infront of him... "I put the peppers inside the soup?? Which one?? Any of them?!?!".
We went to Ben Than market, and it was exactly as maddening as I remembered it to be. It's a huge covered space with row upon row of stalls selling everything under the sun. It's so tightly packed that there's almost no place to walk. People are constantly grabbing at you and asking you to buy their stuff. My favorite line is "Miss! What are you looking for?". I'm pretty sure that if I asked for a pony wearing knit booties someone would run off and find me one.
What on earth did we do on Day 2? Silly sleeping Aaron, he'd know the answer. I know at some point we definitely walked around Dhong Khoi, which is the rich spoiled cousin to Pham Ngu Lao's dirty recklessness. We did score some cool swag down there though; including sweet communist propaganda posters. At night we had fancy-pants cocktails on the roof of the Rex Hotel, which used to be colonial-overlord central. They'd go up there and watch the little people scurry about down below.
Day 3... for the love... what did we do? Surely awesome things. We had to get alot done before our flight to Hanoi. We mailed home some things, bought some things, and chilled out walking around and enjoying the city. We had several cups of heavenly Vietnamese-style coffee, and more pho. While eating it started to pour buckets, and we were thourougly soaked by the time we got back to the hotel to collect our bags and leave for the airport. We opted for the flight because we were worried about having enough time to do stuff; as the train ride would have been 1 day and 2 nights. So we made a big pile out of our money, set it on fire, and opted to fly. The rain brought out the absolute worst in Saigon traffic as everyone jumped off their motorbikes and into cars. The roads were absolutely jammed, and a little western-style traffic management would have been much appreciated. There was one intersection where we were stuck for over half an hour, not moving at all. Cars and motorbikes and buses and horses and probably camels too were all trying to go any direction they felt like, at the same time, damn the consequences. What a mess.
Goodbye, Saigon. I hope I find myself in your frenetic grasp again, one day. I love your parks full of lovers, alleys full of pho, and days full of chaos. I am so grateful that you never killed me with any of your motorcycles or buses.
Cu Chi Tunnels:
We did this as a day trip from Saigon, but I don't remember which day, so I'm putting it here at the end. We got in a bus with 300 other tourists and went out. We did not want to be in such a big group, but what can you do? Of course the tour bus made its obligatory stop at some random factory in the middle of nowhere that produces cheap garbage for tourists. That was annoying. On to the tunnels.
Basically Cu Chi is a preseved network of tunnels used by the VietCong resistance during the war. These are itty-bitty tunnels, about 1m high and 60cm wide, where people lived and worked and used to kill Americans (SEP tp://www.flickr.com/photos/adlaw/153098950/). There was a hilariously overdone propoganda film, which referred to the Americans as "savage devils" and talked about a Vietnamese woman who won the "American Killing Award". There were lots of examples of the booby-traps which no doubt helped her achieve this prestigious award. There are left-over tanks and bomb craters to look at. You can scramble around in the tunnels, which is not a particularly fun experience, as they are tiny and hot. It's like a subterranean race because there are so many people behind you.
The kicker of the place comes at the end of the tour when you get to play with guns. The big, real kind. You can choose from a AK-47s, M60s machine guns, and other fun toys that I can't remember the name of. There is a desk where they sell you bullets. Then you go down to where the guns are. There are army people there who load the gun for you and put their hand against your shoulder so that it doesn't get blown off by the kickback of the gun. We fired the AK-47. It was very loud. It was very cool. Here is a picture of me and the death-machine: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=739054&l=bd394&id=512559754. Thank you South East Asia, for giving me opprotunities to shoot guns and take cocaine (long story involving Taiwanese dentists).
Whew! Long blog. There is a crying smelly baby in this internet cafe, so I think it's time to go.
Travel update: A big typhoon blew through southern China and northern Vietnam. It hit Vietnam the hardest in Sapa, which you may recall we axed from our itinerary due to time constraints. Good thing. A lot of people died there, and all transportation is cut. Tourists are hiring helicopters to get airlifted out of there, at a cost of $11,000 USD. We had planned on going overland from Vietnam to China by way of Sapa, and flying from the southern Chinese city of Kunming to Beijing. Now we will be flying from Hanoi to Kunming, staying there for one night, and then catching the original flight to Beijing. We are very lucky to have the tickets to Kunming, Aaron booked them as a fake flight to help secure his Chinese visa application. Now it turns out we'll actually be needing them. Just goes to show you that fate is a crazy secretive little monster, and everything always works out as it should in the end.
