After a (brutal) 30 hour trek, I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday morning, shortly after 2AM. I was lucky to sleep like a log on my plane from Philadelphia to San Francisco, but unfortunately, sat next to a woman and her cat (I'm very allergic to cats) from San Francisco to Seoul (a mere 13 hour flight). I asked the flight staff to move me or the cat, and they obliged... about halfway through the flight. I basically had to sneeze on the flight staff for them to get the idea that I wasn't just trying to cop an aisle seat (they ended up putting me in the middle seat of a 5 seat row, probably as punishment). When I arrived in Saigon at 2AM, it was a balmy 95ºF.
(Side note about the flight: from San Fran to Seoul, we flew over the Arctic Ocean, Aleutian Islands, and avoided the airspace near North Korea.)
I thought I was going to sleep for no less than 15 hours when I arrived at my hotel, but I ended up waking up at 6:30AM. I decided to get dressed and explore the city. Whereas the city had been dead the night before (the only living things I saw during the 25 minute ride were a pack of stray dogs and three homeless people sleeping in the street) it was more than lively at 6:30AM. There had to be millions of people riding around on mopeds, and I was happy to see all the different shops, restaurants and food stands that were open. It was immediately apparent that the city is quite different from any place in America.
Because I reek of Americanism, no fewer than four billion xe om (moped taxis) came up to me, asking if I needed a ride anywhere. They say really endearing things ("Hello, you - be my king today - ride my bike!") and it was impossible to ignore them at first. (I made the big mistake of talking back to one of them, and he proceeded to follow me for 45 minutes.) I was determined to learn the city by foot (which is no easy task), so I ignored the drivers.
I walked for a solid 8 hours on foot yesterday, going wherever I felt like going. I walked through markets where they had live octopi that they decapitated on the street, but my personal favorite were the pickled cobras that I found. I promised myself that I would have one before I left, but I'm just not brave enough to eat food that has been lying in the street just yet.
On Saturday, I took a tour of Saigon that was provided in my "Lonely Planet" travel book. I traversed the entire city, and it took me 11 hours on foot (it was a 10 mile walk, so I was pretty tired by the end of the day). I saw a lot of Palaces and government buildings, all of which were beautiful. My personal favorite was the "People's" Committee Building, which served as the French Capitol building when they were colonizing Vietnam. Naturally, citizens aren't allowed in the building (only Communist Party government members).
From there, I checked out the War Remnants Museum, perhaps Vietnam's most famous museum. it is basically propaganda central, with captions to pictures of American soldiers stating, "These American aggressors were soundly defeated in every battle on Vietnamese soil, because the Vietnamese people are the strongest in the world." (I'm not even joking, that was a real caption.) The War Remnants Museum also allows victims of Agent Orange and other toxic chemicals to sell souvenirs within the Museum. That was a real sad sight.
While in the War Remnants Museum, I experienced my first "rain." I put rain in quotation marks because it was probably the most intense storm I've ever been in. It rained a good 10 inches in 45 minutes and you had to wait a half hour before you could walk in the street without getting your ankles wet from the rain.
I then walked through Cong Vien Van Hoa Park, and the greenery was so intense it almost hurt your eyes. Posters of Ho Chi Minh and other propaganda abound throughout the park. From there, I journeyed to the end of the self-guided tour (the Thi Nghe Channel), a wholly unremarkable area, void of Westerners. After that, I negotiated a xe om ride home for $1 - the ride took 20 minutes, and we broke just about every traffic law imaginable.
...And that was my weekend. In the future, I plan on having the linked phrases send you to pictures of my own, but for now, my internet is far too slow to upload any photos I've taken. Also, I'll try to keep my posts pretty short - I'm a firm believer in brevity.
Until next time!
(The events in this blog post occurred the weekend of June 7th, but were unable to be published until a few weeks later due to government censorship.)
