In the matter of about one week, I heard about some folks going to Vietnam, booked plane tickets, applied for a Vietnamese visa, and flew to Ho Chi Minh City--formerly known as Saigon! This time, we really had the "globalization" group going on. Let me explain: my first traveling companion was Eleanor from Aberdeen, Scotland. Like me, she's only a 2nd year student but, unlike me, she's half-Filipino. My other traveling companion was Jennie, who lives in Sweden but goes to school in Glasgow, Scotland. Jennie's family is Chinese, although they speak Chuchow dialect instead of Mandarin as their main language. Also, they're what we call huaqiao in Chinese, meaning "overseas Han Chinese." In particular, they live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and were kind enough to let us stay at their home in Chinatown. Confused yet?
Well, not only was Jennie's family nice enough to let us sleep at their house, but her aunt really acted like a part-time tour guide for us. That's a big bonus in a country not well-known for the English-speaking abilities (or Mandarin-speaking abilities, for that matter) of its citizens. Once we flew into the airport, Jennie's aunt was right there waiting for us with a taxi. After about a 20 minute ride, we arrived in Cholon (Vietnamese for "Chinatown"), and settled in. All her family seemed happy to have us there, although I did feel a little bad since it wasn't my family and I felt like a bit of a mooch. None of them spoke English but, thankfully, many of them spoke Mandarin, so I was able to communicate just fine.
Vietnam may not be famous for its English, but one thing it is famous for is its early-risers. Even though we arrived at the house around 10:00pm, all was quiet and many people were already asleep. The stores were also almost all closed. So we also hit the sack fairly early and woke up the next morning to the sounds of motorcycles and crowing roosters just outside our window. After lathering on the sunscreen and the bug-spray, we met Jennie's aunt downstairs to go to breakfast. She took us down all kinds of back-streets until we came to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant selling bun bo hue--rice vermicelli with pickled carrots and cucumber, topped with seafood balls, something I'm about 80% sure was a chitlin, and lots of spices, such as thyme, basil, and mint. Apparently, you're supposed to pour fish sauce and red chili flakes all over it and mix it up, which we all did. Jennie and Eleanor approved, and so did I, although the water was a must after all the chili:
Next, Jennie's aunt took us to Binh Tay Market, also in Chinatown. As it turns out, it was one block away from their house. The bell tower makes it one of the most easily-identifiable landmarks in Ho Chi Minh City.
Inside, hawkers sold all kinds of goods, especially lots of candy:
The market was so huge that it even had a second floor on its already-sprawling premises. I snapped a few pictures from the staircase:
Somehow, in that gigantic labyrinth of crowded, overflowing stalls, Jennie's aunt found exactly the rice shop she wanted. Who knew there were so many kinds of rice? I highly recommend red rice for those who haven't yet partaken.
By the way, if you haven't noticed yet, Vietnamese doesn't use characters like many other Asian languages. Although the Vietnamese oral tradition goes back about 2000 years, it was, for all intents and purposes, a spoken language. When the French colonized Vietnam and renamed it "Indochina," they used the Western alphabet to approximate the sounds of the Vietnamese language. As literacy rates grew, native Vietnamese adopted this writing system as their own, and it survives to this day. Despite all the crazy-looking tones, this is a huge boon to tourists because we can at least approximate the names of the places.
Another thing about Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh City in general: motorcycles. Motorcycles everywhere. People literally walk in the middle of the street because there are too many motorcycles driving on the sidewalk. This is about the least number of motorcycles I saw in one place during the entirety of my trip.
Can you guess where this is? A parking garage perhaps? A motorcycle shop? Guess again.
It's a restaurant--a coffee shop to be precise. Vietnamese coffee is famous world-wide, even though it comes only four different ways: hot, hot with milk, cold, or cold with milk. I saw one place during my trip that offered a 5th variety: cold with a lot of milk. Still, I would never have pegged the place we went as a coffee shop just from looking at the entrance. Seriously, there were just motorcycles as far as the eye could see.
Of course, we silly foreigners originally thought this tea they gave us first was the coffee:
Jennie and me stopping for a caffeine break at 10:30am.
Finally, the real coffee arrived in this fancy apparatus. As you can probably guess, the coffee grounds are in the metal cup, dripping freshly-brewed coffee into the cup. At the bottom, you can see the milk, which is actually of the sweetened condensed variety. Now you know the secret of Vietnamese coffee. Mix 3 parts black coffee to 1 part sweetened condensed milk and pour over ice for the best cup of coffee you've ever had:
It sure made us three happy, at least:
It looks like a lot, but do not be deceived. Even as an American,. this is one of the few cases where I wish there was a lot less ice in my cup. I fear this may be a new addiction. Next time I'm in Shatin, I plan to see if Viet's Choice Restaurant has coffee on the menu.
More motorcycles, as seen from the Saigon City Bus #1. The bus stop was right across from Binh Tay Market, which made things very convenient. Bus #1 ran from Cholon to Ben Thanh in downtown, which fit our plans perfectly.
We caught sight of the Tran Nguyen Han statue, which is of an old emperor of Vietnam. You can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%AA_L%E1%BB%A3i.
Conveniently again, right across the street was the Ben Thanh Market which, truth be told, is really more of a tourist trap. However, it is considerably nicer and, well, more sanitary than most other ones. Meme would've been envious of the gorgeous selection of fabrics. Surprisingly, the prices weren't too high. Now, most Vietnamese could not afford to shop here on a regular basis (many of them live on about US$2 per day), but the price level was generally friendly towards the Western pocketbook.
That's the only reason this T-shirt went home with me. Jennie bought one too. Usually, I don't go for souvenirs because pictures are always the best ones. However, I felt compelled...and it is pretty funny.
More funny stuff: Maneki Neko (Japanese well-wishing cat) wearing pink sunglasses. No, I don't have a new pair of sunglasses, but it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the salesman.
I like the literal crossroads of east and west here. There's just something about Asia...
The statue of Ho Chi Minh in front of Saigon City Hall:
And, of course, City Hall sans Ho Chi Minh:
As I was taking a picture of El and Jennie,
a nice French man offered to take a picture of all three of us!
My French is really, really slipping. I understood him perfectly because, yes, he spoke to us in French, but I let out both an ngoi and a xiexie before stammering out merci beaucoup! I understand the Mandarin (xiexie) slipping in, but where'd the Cantonese (ngoi) come from? Fun fact: Vietnamese people (at least seem to) understand ngoi. The Vietnamese language sounds very similar to southern dialects of Chinese, including Cantonese and Chuchow. My pet theory is that ngoi probably has about the same meaning in both languages.
We did a lot of photo taking in the downtown area. You could literally walk almost everywhere, although the streets were really dirty. Walking around in shorts for several hours left all of us with black stuff spattered up to our knees, although a lot of it was from the motorcycles kicking up mud and dirt. Even so, we saw the swankier part of town, like the Saigon Opera House.
Ritzy hotels:
and fabulous colonial French architecture. In a lot of ways, Ho Chi Minh City reminded me of New Orleans. For one thing, the weather: hot, humid, lots of thunderstorms, but still nice. Secondly, you could swap most of the buildings and never know the difference. Lastly, the french bread. It was almost as ubiquitous as the motorcycles, and every bit as delicious as its namesake on the other side of the world.
Of course, Western influence has its ups and downs:
We got a little turned around on our way to Saigon Central Mosque, so I asked one of the green-uniformed tourist police for directions. As it turns out, even amongst the tourist police, English is a rarity. However, he was very friendly and gave me the most useful item of this entire trip: a map. Thanks to the map and my questionable navigation skills, we finally found the street we wanted:
Of course, along the way, we couldn't resist taking pictures of the Japanese restaurant sign featuring Doraemon.
The statues, though, were a little bit over-the-top. Go Japan, and God bless you.
A few blocks down, we found the mosque:
Lo, and behold! Guess what takes up about 1/3 of the mosque grounds? Motorcycles.
Back towards the heart of the city, we found the slightly-less-famous-than-the-original Notre Dame Cathedral. Beautiful nonetheless, right?
Look closely, and you'll see that hallo-hallo-copy-church even has Notre Dame's same notorious pigeon infestation.
Just down the street from the Cathedral, we came across the Central Post Office which, technically, hasn't been in use since the late 1800s. Too bad, though, because the building is so nice.
Although not part of the original building, the main attraction at the Central Post Office is now Ho Chi Minh's portrait, which you can see towards the back:
Old telephone booths, which are now available for tourists' use:
Outside the post office, we saw a very typical Vietnamese street vendor. Although these women are on every street corner of Ho Chi Minh City, I wanted to share this photo with y'all. You can see she's selling mangoes, eggs, longan, and other snack foods.
By around 2:00pm, we were all ready for some lunch. Actually, we mostly wanted more Vietnamese coffee, but food was a close second.
After lunch, we came to the Reunification Palace, formerly known as Independence Palace. Pardon my slight detour into history, but this requires some explanation. This palace served as headquarters for Ngo Dinh Diem. Remember him? If you do, it's probably not too fondly. Even so, he lived and worked in this building for years before his assassination. For those who might not be familiar with the details here, I'll offer a brief explanation. Ngo Dinh Diem was French-educated man from a rich, Vietnamese family. He became the first President of South Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Accords, in which the French officially withdrew from Vietnam. The US provided him with strong support, both political and military, because of his fiercely anti-Communist views. However, Diem's rule had a lot of problems. For instance, Diem himself was a Roman Catholic, and he tried to force his religious views on the Vietnamese people, the majority of whom were Buddhist. Under pressure from his brother (whom he had helped become Archbishop of Hue by using his political connections), Diem outlawed the celebration of certain Buddhist holidays, and intimidated many Vietnamese soldiers into converting to Catholicism. The religious crisis became so bad that the Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, staged a protest in the middle of a Saigon street by setting himself on fire. I'm sure that you've all seen the famous image here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/Burningmonk.jpg. Eventually, the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) planned a coup d'etat. On hearing about the plan, President John F. Kennedy ordered the American Ambassador to Vietnam not to meet with Diem, and also gave reassurances to the ARVN that the US would not interfere in the coup d'etat. The ARVN offered Diem exile instead of execution, provided that he surrender. However, Diem used the secret underground passage in the Independence Palace to escape with his family to Cholon, which is on the other side of Saigon. The ARVN discovered them the following morning and took Diem and his brother the Archbishop into an armored personnel carrier, where both of them were shot to death. After Diem's death, South Vietnam remained politically unstable throughout the Vietnam War, which bolstered the moral of the North Vietnamese soldiers. Of course, we know who eventually won that battle. Anyway, I promised it would be short, so I'll end the history here for now. Below is the Reunification Palace (formerly the Independence Palace):
Considering that many people in Vietnam live on less than US$2 per day today, consider the wealth it took to build all this over 50 years ago:
I just wanted to show y'all a traditional Vietnamese dress. Our tour guide was wearing one:
The library:
Personal movie theater:
Helicopter pad outside the personal movie theater:
Gambling room, I kid you not. Mahjong anyone?
El hanging out by the projector for the movie theater:
And then dancing in the ballroom:
From the ballroom, we actually got a really good look at the helicopter:
Then, we went underground to the commanding room.
Here, we got to look at several old maps with battle plans drawn out on them. It's so eerie to know that you're in the room where so many historic decisions were made.
There were halls after halls of underground barracks, designed to house soldiers in the case of a nuclear attack. There were also special accommodations for Ngo Dinh Diem and his family. Someone had to feed all those hungry people, though! One of our last stops on the tour was the kitchen. Just look at the size of this mixer!
On the way out, we were able to see the Jeep that secretly took Diem and his brother to Cholon the night before their deaths.
And then Diem's daily car for personal use:
A small museum housed several iconic images from the war. Here, you can see a US tank plowing through the gate of the Independence Palace.
The tanks are still on site just outside, near the gate that they crashed through so many years ago.
The history available at Reunification Palace was truly fascinating. Even though I've learned this information before in various classes (American History, Mid-20th Century History, Political Economy of Southeast Asia), being there and seeing it for myself really completes the experience. I feel like my understanding has increased a lot and, although I remain a very patriotic American, it's a relief to finally be able to see both sides of the story.
We left the Reunification Palace around closing time, and then headed off to our next destination: Golden Theater Vietnamese Water Puppet Show. Water Puppetry is a Vietnamese tradition that dates back as far as the 11th century. Supposedly, it originated in Northern Vietnam, near the Red River Delta, where farmers would entertain each other using puppets in the flooded rice fields.
The puppets themselves are huge. The one behind us is real size.
This is what a typical water puppet stage looks like. The water in front is about waist-deep. The puppets themselves are partially submerged and supported by large rods underneath.
To complete the show, there was a band playing traditional Vietnamese folk music, also acting as the voices for the puppets. Yes, it was all in Vietnamese, but it was still very enjoyable.
Men driving oxen:
On a boat:
My favorite: the dance of the water fairies. The show turned out to be very elaborate, and well put-together.
When the show finished, it was already about 7:30pm. We took the 8:00pm (last) bus back to Cholon, and went for a late dinner. About the only places open were street vendors, but we were in a street-food kind of mood anyway. As per my suggestion, the three of us went for banh mi, often called "Vietnamese Deli" in other countries. It's essentially a loaf of french bread with pate, Vietnamese mayonnaise, roasted pork belly, head cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickled carrots and cucumbers, topped with a hearty dose of fish sauce and chili.
The master at work:
The banh mi was delicious, just like most (but not all) of the food we had in Vietnam. Keep in mind that I'm only writing about the really tasty ones. Thankfully, this is one item that's fairly popular in the US. So, does anyone want to let me know whether or not Pho Viet Restaurant in Columbia has banh mi on the menu?
After our long day out, we came back to the house. This is actually a snapshot of our room. We kept calling it a hobbit room because the ceiling was just about 4 inches higher than my head. Also, we had a lot to thank Jennie's relatives for. They actually set us up in the designated "gecko-free" room on the condition that we keep the door and window tightly closed--hence the lack of geckos.
The next morning, our first stop was Thien Hau Temple in Cholon. It actually looked a lot like Man Mo Temple on Hong Kong Island. However, there were some distinctive Vietnamese elements.
Perhaps you can't see it very clearly in the picture below, but that cage has birds in it. People coming to the temple can buy a bird and then release it from the cage, so they can do a "good deed." As wrong as it is, I suppose that where there's a demand, there will be a supply.
Next, we traveled to the Tran Hung Dao Temple, which took quite a long time. We rode the bus into downtown Saigon and then walked for 2 hours. Although the temple was beautiful, I say take a taxi. It's not worth 2 hours of dodging motorcycles and walking down filthy pot-hole ridden streets. In a way, though, that experience was kind of fun, too.
Tran Hung Dao is a Vietnamese national hero from the 13th century. Under his guidance, the Vietnamese army repelled two Mongol invasions, which were coordinated by the much more famous Kublai Khan. I've been particularly interested in Tran Hung Dao for a while, especially since he's considered one of the greatest military tacticians of all time. As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't rank as highly as my two favorite general masterminds throughout history--Cornwallis and Hannibal--but he's certainly up there around Vercingetorix and Tokugawa Ieyasu level. Forgive me, but I really love military history. Going to Vietnam satisfied that aspect of my personality in so many ways.
The vicious guard dog:
It started to rain while we were at the Tran Hung Dao Temple, so we took a taxi to our next destination: The War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the "American War Crimes Museum," but renamed not to offend American tourists as much).
Walking around the premises, you could see numerous tanks and airplanes from the US military:
The War Remnants Museum was really one of my favorite places that we went. Admittedly, I didn't feel good or happy as I left, but I came away with a much greater appreciation for what actually happened during the Vietnam War. I'm not a hippie nor a war-advocate. I'm simply an American citizen who wants to know.
Going to the Tokyo-Edo Museum in Japan in 2006 opened my eyes to the Japanese view of World War II. However, despite the tsunami and earthquake disasters on March 11th, and the explosion at Fukushima-Daiichi, Japan has almost entirely recovered from the damage of World War II. Vietnam, on the other hand, is still suffering from the Vietnamese War. For many people, you could even say the war isn't over yet. The degree of genocide that took place in the 1960s and 70s was appalling, and heinous crimes were committed on all sides.
To me, the most haunting part of the War Remnants Museum was the exhibit on the effects of Agent Orange.
Yes, most of you know what Agent Orange is, but have you seen the pictures? The wikipedia page offers some of the less disturbing images out of what I've seen. You can read about it here, but just let me warn you that some of them are quite disturbing. Not only were people mutilated during the Vietnam War, but prenatal exposure rendered countless more Vietnamese people severely deformed and retarded. Even more frightening is that Agent Orange actually mutates DNA. There are still children being born today with birth defects caused by Agent Orange, even if the effects skipped one or two generations. Many of you probably have seen the pictures in books and on television of people affected by Agent Orange. However, in Vietnam, these weren't just museum pieces. All over Ho Chi Minh City, we saw alarming numbers of highly deformed individuals, many of them the same age or even younger than us. I can't even use words to describe what I thought or felt, but perhaps all I can do is to know, and to pray. Please, everyone, pray for the people of Vietnam. What we think of as history is still a daily nightmare for so many of them.
Although the War Remnants Museum put us all in a solemn mood, not even one of us regretted going. In fact, after talking about it later, we all agreed it was one of the most interesting parts of the trip. Thankfully, we had planned something fun for later to take our minds off of it. First, we went back to the house in Cholon to get cleaned up and eat some Chinese pork buns. El loved playing with the dog, literally named "Puppy." Interestingly, Puppy is about 10 years old, and has been living off rice instead of dog food. I feel a bit bad for him. Dogs weren't made to live off rice.
As for our fun evening, we decided to go to the Ho Chi Minh City Circus!
We were a little sunburned, but otherwise OK. Actually, I got very little sunburn at all, and the weather was very similar to back at home. I felt quite comfortable. Things were a little harder on El and Jennie:
The circus itself turned out to be much better than expected:
The acrobats seemed pretty old, since most of them looked like they were in their late 30s.
However, they certainly had kept their moves:
This guy balanced a series of larger and larger bowls on his head:
The dogs were the cutest, of course, but they also misbehaved the most.
Here, the dogs are supposed to "do math" like they're in a classroom, but they didn't feel like participating this time, except for the one on the bottom left:
The unicycle guy. It was cool watching him bounce the unicycle up the set of steps to the platform:
This part of the circus was the most memorable. Imagine all the lights going out then suddenly coming back on with the theme music from "Pirates of the Caribbean" blasting from the speakers. These two guys are squatting on the platform, and one suddenly stands up. He flexes his muscles for a while to the tune of the music and then the other guy gets up and does the same, only getting way more into it. Then they start doing this acrobatic routine where the one guy balances himself with his head on top of the other guy's head. Like so:
The guy on top was definitely much more into the performance than the bottom guy. They were both doing the whole flexing, muscle-man thing, but the top guy was eating up every minute of it. It probably had something to do with the fact that he was some kind of audience favorite--at least among the women. After their performance, women and little girls kept running up to give the top guy money and flowers, while the bottom guy got absolutely nothing. El, Jennie, and I have our theories on this. Firstly, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" music seems to render women helpless in the presence of sweaty, muscley men flexing to it. Based on our observations of exchange students from around the world, this is a global phenomenon. Second, the top guy had a pony-tail, whereas the bottom guy did not. Enough said. Lastly, we unanimously decided that the top guy was the "Manliest Man in Asia." For those ladies who have been with me in Asia for a while now, we know that there is a severe shortage of manly men. Japanese actors wear make-up, Korean teeny-boppers dance like Brittany Spears, and male CUHK students wear capri pants and carry women's handbags. We are suffering from an international crisis here! It's no wonder those Vietnamese ladies were going gaga over a little sweat, muscle, and hair. Here's to you, Mr. Manliest Man in Asia, for making this corner of the world a little less pink and covered in Hello Kitty. We salute you.
The next day was Sunday, and so our last full day in Vietnam. El and I signed up for a one-day tour of the Mekong River Delta so Jennie would have some time to spend visiting with her relatives. Of course, that meant the two of us had to be up bright and early to meet the tour bus that would drive us 2 hours to My Tho village. We slept on the bus, or at least tried to.
Our first stop was a boat ride on the Mekong River. El looked like she'd rather be in bed. At least she just looked like it, though. I felt like it!
A boat just like ours out on the river:
These are Vietnamese house-boats. It takes about US$4000 to set one of these babies up. There's a huge net under the houseboat that catches fish. The residents feed the fish for 3-4 months then catch and sell them at the wet market.
We stopped at a small island to try some of the local specialties.
First, we visited a bee farm. Our tour-guide is bravely holding up the bees:
Here's a delicious drink to try at home: Honey Tea! Add one spoonful honey to the bottom of a shot-glass and pour hot water on top. Squeeze the juice from a wedge of lemon or lime and mix together. This is truly delightful:
And this is not. If anyone ever offers you banana wine, just say no.
We had all kinds of delicious tropical fruit to get the banana wine taste out of our mouths, though. Pineapple used to be my favorite but, since coming to Asia, it has been replaced by the delectable papaya (front-most). Those tour-guides didn't know what they were doing when they put that big plate of papaya right in front of me.
We enjoyed some traditional singing and folk music:
I really wish I could bring one of these Jackfruit home. The taste is very unique and rich, and the fruit is the largest in the world.
Next, we went for a little ride in the fishing boats, complete with ever-so-fashionable hats:
Look closely, and you'll notice the boat has eyes painted on it. They actually do this all across Asia, and there are two main reasons for it. (1) Common belief is that a boat needs eyes so it can safely bring its crew back to shore, and (2) Boats from certain locales all have the same style of eyes, so that it's very easy to identify a foreign boat.
Next, we stopped at another island to see how to make coconut candy. Here, our tour guide holds up the coconut he is about to totally mutilate in a poor attempt to make candy.
First, you crack the coconut open and tear off the outer layer. Then, the contents are put through the grinder. The white, flaky stuff is called the "rice" of the coconut. I know, I know, everything's rice around here.
The "rice" is gathered up into these small bundles and smashed until all the liquid is gone. That liquid is coconut milk, which we use to make curry and tom yum soup.
The coconut milk is mixed with sugar for several hours, until it becomes thick:
And, then, it is rolled out into a ball and cut into tiny pieces.
Each piece is wrapped by hand:
We didn't buy any, but the free samples sure went quickly:
Huong Dua is Vietnamese for "coconut candy." Surprised, no?
We took the little fishing boat out to our bigger river boat and headed back to the port.
We rode back to Ho Chi Minh City for another 2 hours, and I think we slept all the way back too. When we returned, Jennie's aunt took us to eat banh xeo, commonly known as "Vietnamese Pancake." It's a pancake made of rice flour, water, coconut milk, and tumeric, which makes it bright yellow. Inside, it has bean sprouts, shrimp, eggs, and mung beans. Without Jennie's aunt, we would have had no idea how to eat it. Apparently, you pull off little pieces with your chopsticks, then roll the pancake pieces up in basil, mint, thyme, and lettuce leaves. Once you have a roll, you top it with (you guessed it) pickled carrots and cucumbers, and fish sauce. It took us forever to eat them because (1) they were huge, and (2) we were clumsy. It was fun, though, and a great way to end the day.
After dinner, we came back to Jennie's family's house and ate pandan cake while watching "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" with Puppy. We packed our bags and took one short, cold shower each before trying to sleep for a couple hours. However, we had to catch a taxi at 4:30am to go to the airport. Yes, we were exhausted, but believe it or not, every single one of us made it back to campus in time for our Monday morning classes. I missed not a single class. Is that awesome or what?
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