October 28, 2011
Despite being untold hours behind with our sleep, we both arose at 0600. The faint sounds of scooter horns suggested we weren’t the first people in Ho Chi Minh City to be awake. Already they were five deep on our one lane street.
We had breakfast at a sports bar next to The Empress Hotel, a freebie with our room booking on Expedia (NZ$23 per night). I was hoping for some Pho – the traditional vietnamese noodle soup brekkie but the sight of scrambed eggs and bacon wasn’t at all unwelcome. Alongside was some fresh peach juice, watermelon and some lovely pork and prawn won-ton type things that took a hammering in the half hour we were there.
The plan for the day was to roughly follow the Lonely Planet walking tour of Ho Chi Minh City, taking detours as and when we felt something was worth further investigation. A local food market was the first detour before we’d even hit the start of the walking tour.
It began on Bùi Viện, an area that I suspected was the backpacking area of town due to the number of guest houses and cyclo drivers competing vigorously for our custom. No was enough for most of them but some were more persistent.
“You want tour?”
“No thankyou”
“Is cheap”
“No thankyou”
“Where you from”
“New Zealand”
“KeeeOra – You want tour”
“No thankyou”.
A few kilometres down the road we arrived back at Bến Thành Market again. This time around the inside portion was open but I was a little disappointed to find that, with few exceptions, the goods available were exactly the same as those available in most markets anywhere in the world. Snakes fermenting in rice wine and an endless supply of roasted coffee beans (along with endless hawkers that seemed to think we were probably travelling with our own espresso machine) were the standouts. Outside the market the crabs, cockles and fish for sale looked delicious – if not a little sunbaked.
I’m really not sure why we decided to follow the Lonely Planets suggestion to visit the Fine Art Museum, but at D20,000 (about $1.50) admission for both of us I guess we couldn’t say no. There was art – some of it may have been fine. Jo was particularly impressed with the fruit in bowl paintings. We feigned interest for all of a minute before powering through in very little time. The building itself was an old colonial French building in similar sort of condition as many of the larger museums in Cuba so there was at least a little rustic charm.
Having outpaced another four or five cyclo drivers outside a coffee shop we headed towards the Ho Chi Minh City Museum (admission D15,000 – NZ$1 each) the main attraction of which was a US Huey UH-1 helicopter and an F5E plane that once bombed the Presidential Palace. The majority of the displays inside were based around commerce and enterprise in the city – machinery, tools and the like but there were parts dedicated to the fight for independence. I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge on the history of Vietnam. When we visited Cuba a few years back I’d studied the Revolution for months preceding but I must admit to being a bit lost with Vietnamese history.
Lunch was at Cafe Da, not far from the Presidential Palace where Jo had seafood noodles and I had beef rice. We were already shocked to have to pay NZ$4 each for a main… it doesn’t take long to get used to living on the cheap.
In 1975 two Viet Cong tanks rolled through the gates of the Presidential Palace (now Reunification Palace) and seized power from General Minh – effectively ending the battle for power with a communist victory. Palace entry was D15,000 (NZ1) and a tour through the palace with an English speaking guide was included.
I was expecting a hard out political bent to the tour but the guides information was refreshingly unbiased, nothing like the Museum of the Revolution in Cuba when this right winger was nearly converted to communism by the propaganda being spouted out. Whilst the formal office and dining areas were spectacular in their own right, I enjoyed the basement area the most. It was the bunker area for the President and most of the situation rooms have been kept as they were found, complete with radio communications and all sorts of machinery – it looked straight out of a 70s James Bond movie.
We must have turned down 20 cyclo drivers and hawkers selling coconuts in the short walk to our next stop.
The most poignant visit of the day was to the War Remnants Museum (D15,000- NZ$1 each). The courtyard featured American military planes, helicopters and tanks but this was certainly no souvenir collection. The walls of the three story building are covered in photos of the war and it’s long term effects on the Vietnamese. Two of the galleries in particular were chilling. One outlined the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people and the other dealt with the long term effects of Agent Orange. I snapped a few photos of some of the lesser depressing shots for this blog but many were just too gruesome to post.
I had seen very recently some of the photos from the end of Gadaffi’s reign in Libya where the Americans have been helping the Revolutionists, similar photos came out of Hussein’s time in Iraq. The yanks would have been the first to help out in dealing with such atrocities – had they not been the perpetrator in this instance.
We caught a taxi back to the hotel, arriving around 1800. The driver turned the meter on but took us well out of the way before finally getting us there. The fare was still less than NZ$6.
We found dinner after a half hour walk through the backpackers area in a little alleyway eatery with tiny chairs and tables. Scooters shot by centimetres away and at one point it poured down – the staff raced out to cover us up with an awning with just seconds to spare. Jo had some spicy ribs and I ordered wild boar with some kind of unknown green vegetable. Both were pretty good but the highlight was some seafood spring rolls. Add a couple of beers, sprites and waters and the bill came to D208,000… around NZ$14.
We were back at the hotel asleep by 1930.
