Thanksgiving in Saigon

 

photo credits for above:  Antoinette Mullins

Ho Chi Minh City (Siagon)

Initially, I liked it.  It's bustling.  It's intense.  There's a nice cafe culture and French influence.  Cute shops.  Amazing coffee (very strong).  Good food.  But it's not the best place for an American,  (Understandably so) and it's a bit hard to handle--constantly being approached on the street by vendors, tuk tuk drivers, etc, and being followed down the street and taken advantage of and ripped off.  (It's actually more of what I expected Bangkok to be, but I found Bangkok easier to navigate.  In Bangkok, once we knew the tricks, we knew how not to get tricked or ripped off.)

Before traveling to the region, I read up on some of the history of Vietnam, and it amazed me how resilient of a country it is.  Their entire history is ravaged with wars, and they've overcome incredible odds over and over again.

Let me note, also, that the visa process for going to Vietnam is much more rigorous than some of the other countries in S.E. Asia.  You have to apply in advance and get approved and Americans have to pay a lot more than other nationalities.  I'd imagine the French have to pay a pretty price, too, but that's just a hunch.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about crossing the streets; it's near impossible.  It's like playing Russian roulette with your life.  Human Frogger:  Version X-TREME.  It's motorcycle madness here, and there are very few traffic lights.  You pretty much have to walk across the street at a steady pace, head-on into traffic, and trust, or hope, that nobody will hit you.  It's incredibly scary.  (And not like the exhilarating kind of scary, like being on the back of a moped.)

One thing I loved, though, are the women who ride mopeds, most of them ride in heels.  It's so bad-ass.   A woman on a moped wearing heels.  Lovve it!

I traveled with Antoinette, a fellow dramatic writing classmate and friend.  The first day, we got acquainted with our area.  HCMC is split into districts, and we stayed in District 1, which is basically the city-center.  We stayed at Tan Hai Long Hotel, a nice place down the street from the Ben Thanh Market.

Our first order of business was eating pho (a Vietnamese beef-noodle soup; I was first introduced to it in Cambodia last fall).  It's the staple meal of Vietnam.  That and rice.  But you know how I feel about rice.   We went next door to our hotel to a place called Pho2000 ("Pho for the President") which is famous because Bill Clinton ate there on a visit to Vietnam (you can see his photo hanging on the wall...reminded me of the Charcoal drive-in).  We then set off in search of the Reunification Palace, which, according to my Southeast Asia Insights Guide, is, "a building that symbolises, to the Communists, the decadence of the Saigon regime."  It's the former Presidential Palace of South Vietnam.  We kept getting lost on the way to the palace.  We got cheated by a guy selling coconuts, and heckled by some moto-drivers, but we eventually hired 2 to take us to some museums.  (In retrospect, we should've kept with these two for the rest of our stay, because they were the most honest/enjoyable that we encountered.)

The museums have sporadic hours, some of them are closed in the middle of the day (actually, when we were first told the palace was closed until 1pm or whenever, we thought it was a trick, because that's a scam tuk tuk drivers in Bangkok like to play, so they can take you to other places, but here they really are closed.)  So we went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum, which was the only one open at that time.  It was pretty lame, but had some propaganda stuff from the Vietnam War (or the American Resistance, as they call it there), which was neat to see, but to be honest, not having the proper Vietnam War History in school (all I remember from that part of my history education is watching "Born on the Fourth of July" in Mr. Hunsicker's 6th grade class on "Sixties day" (seriously, I didn't learn about the Vietnam War at all.  Not in High School.  Not even in college.  It's a shame.)  So the museum was a bit confusing for me, because not only is my history limited, but it's limited with an American bent, and the terminology is different.   (Obviously, in Vietnam, they don't call it the "Vietnam War,"  though maybe not so obvious, because these are things we never think about, are they?)

At the Reunification Palace, we saw about sixty variations of Diplomatic reception rooms.  (And then a couple of bunkers, which was cool.)  Afterwards we were very tired (I hadn't slept for about 36 hours, the story of my semester, but such is the price you pay for being an adventurer.)  So we went to a spa  the hotel recommended, Elysian Spa, which was very nice.

Now, seeing as it was Thanksgiving (yes, it is a bit odd that we chose to celebrate this very American holiday in Vietnam), we wanted to celebrate in style (though Thanksgiving is NOT the same without family or a proper Turkey dinner, neither of which I had this year).  We ate at a restaurant called The Temple Club.  We ordered a bottle of champagne (which was abut $10USD) and had pumpkin soup (which was sublime, to say the least!) and I had clams in a lemongrass sauce.  All very lovely.

Another exciting discovery was when we turned on the TV in the hotel, guess what was playing:  Alias! (Though, the Vietnamese was dubbed over the English, and you could still here the English sound, so it was very muffled.)  I decided that any country that shows Alias is alright with me!

The next day, we had our complimentary breakfast at the hotel, and then went off in search of a tailor.  Antoinette and I had wanted to get some dresses made for us while we were in Vietnam.  The first shop was clearly a rip off and was showing us photos of celebrities on red carpets from tabloids, and somehow we doubted that our dress would come out looking as stellar as the photos we saw, and for a price that we knew was too much.  We eventually found a tailor shop we liked, though, and let the fun begin!  We looked through photo books to pick out the styles we wanted, then picked out the materials and patterns we wanted.  They measured us and we came back the next night to try them on.

That afternoon we went to the War Remnants Museum; one of the reasons why I went to Ho Chi Minh as opposed to Hanoi was so that I could see Robert Capa's final photograph in the War Remnants museum here.  This was one intense museum.  Definitely NOT the text-book version of the Vietnam War, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a museum quite like this in the US.  The perimeter of the place is covered with U.S. Army tanks and bombs on display.  Also outside is a section about "Tiger Cages" which gives gory details of the torture practices used, and has VERY graphic photographs.  Anyone who argues that the US doesn't condone torture (or never did) should hop on a plane and take a look at these photos.

Inside the museum are some of the most gruesome photographs I've ever seen, depicting the effects of gases that were used on the Vietnamese and other stuff from the war(s).  It was very anti-American (the worst was seeing a copy of the Declaration next to these photos, highlighting the phrase, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equally."  Even the parts of the museum that weren't about the American conflict still found ways to point out how evil America is.  (Like, the French used tanks paid for by money from the Americans, or something like that).  Also, there were major sections of the museum that weren't translated into English, as the rest of the museum was, and clearly not meant for an English speaking audience.  But the museum was really eye-opening and made me realize how far removed I am from the true horrors of the world; how even on my worst days, I am a far cry from miserable, and I'm just really damn lucky at the cards I drew.  Almost to the point where I felt a bit guilty, and really sad for the realities of the world.  And then the museum closed before I got to see Robert Capa.  Antoinette showed me where it was and I looked at it briefly in the dark!

That night we went to a French Restaurant for dinner.  We decided to take advantage of having good, cheap meals at otherwise fancy places while we were in Vietnam.  But it was quite an excursion getting there.  Here's what happened:

We hired two moped drivers outside our hotel.  We agreed on a price and we each hopped on the back of one.  Halfway there (who knows if we were even going the right way...in fact, on the way back, we discovered the restaurant was right around the corner from our hotel) my guy stops in the middle of a very busy street, and starts calling out to the other guy, who was ahead.  I thought my driver ran out of gas.  But then they switched who was riding on the back of what moped.  (Antoinette and I were told to switch drivers, not sure why.)  So then I was on the presumably working moped.  But the other driver, (my former driver) was now hanging on to the moped I was on, while my guy drove us down this very busy street.  We were going way slower then the rate of traffic and it was really unsteady cause we're supporting another moped.  Scary as Hell.  Then they pull up to a gas station, but they don't get gas.  Antoinette and I insisted we get off.  And then there was a dispute about the agreed upon price.  Again.  (This happened so many times.)  We start walking towards what we hoped was the restaurant.  Next thing I know, I step in a GIANT pile of mud.  Stepped right in it.  My entire foot to  below my knee was covered in gooey mud.  Eww!  We go into a hotel to see if I could use a washroom.  The receptionist took one look at me and said, "get out of here!"  My muddy feet and I left, and a man took me to a hose in an alley behind the hotel, where I hosed-down my legs, shoes, etc.

The next day we were very insistent with two (new) moped drivers before hiring them.  We even wrote down the agreed upon price, and told them we wanted to go to a variety of places and we would hire them for the agreed upon price to take us to those places until 6pm.  They agreed.  First, Antoinette wanted to see the Saigon river.  It wasn't much of a river.  Then we went to Cholon, which is the Chinatown District.  We went to a giant market there, which seems to be where the locals shop.  We got drinks at a food stall where two men were playing checkers next to us.  We definitely stood out as Westerners.  Antoinette bought a helmet.  After Cholon, we went to a nice Vietnamese restaurant for lunch.  Afterwards, we got in an argument with our drivers who insisted on more money, so we paid them what was originally agreed upon (even though we had agreed upon 4 more hours) and went our merry way.  On foot.  We then made our way back to the War Remnants Museum so we could see what we missed the day before, and so I could see Capa.  I got to spend a good amount of time with him; they had photos from his last roll of film, and a photo of him, and an account of the last few hours of his life.  They had the last black and white photo he took (before stepping on the land mine...) and the last color photo he took and a couple more.  Afterwards, we headed to the Fine Arts Museum.  This was in a really old, dilapidated building, but the Vietnamese art inside was worth seeing.  After our fitting at the tailors and some shopping excursions (I got much of my Christmas shopping done on this trip!), we went to dinner at a hospitality training school for underprivileged youth.  We were the only guests and it was a fixed meal (I got the "Asian cuisine" while Antoinette got the "Western" meal.  The hospitality was good.  In fact, it was so good that I woke up at 6am vomiting from food poisoning.   It's too bad, I would have recommended the place.  Who knows what made me sick, all I know is, Antoinette didn't get sick.  After dinner, we went to a jazz club down the street from our hotel.  It was nice to see some live music.  Not the best performance, but it wasn't bad either.  The atmosphere was good.  Anywho, I'd tell you about my last day in HCMC, but honestly, I don't think you want to hear about it.  I will tell you, though, that Antoinette spent the day at the zoo, and was very disturbed by the quality and the treatment of the animals.

That was my Thanksgiving in Saigon.  Until next time...