Saigon

On the 29th we flew from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City (aka HCMC, aka Saigon).  Our hotel was in a great location in the Dong Khoi area with a view over the Saigon River and the still mostly undeveloped District 2 beyond.  Our flight was in the middle of the day, so by the time we made it to the hotel we just unpacked and found a place for dinner.

Our first full day we did a half day tour of the city with a guide.  We went through a food market we probably would never have found ourselves.  The variety and the unusual nature of the items were amazing.  Fish, eels, different types of mollusks, and snails were all on display.  One stall had live frogs tied together in bunches of five or six.  They would all try to hop in different directions and wind up going nowhere.  Nearby another vendor had frogs beheaded and skinned still hopping around in a shallow pan. The market seemed to be truly a local market. Some of the locals even took pictures of us!

Our guide also took us to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, a small Chinese pagoda that blends Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian beliefs.  Since most of Thailand and Laos is Buddhist, we had not been exposed to any other religious traditions on our trip.  There among the statues of Jade Emperor Ngoc Hoang and the God of Hell Thanh Hoang and the smoke from hundreds of sticks of incense, our guide explained many of the local beliefs and rituals.  We finished with a tour of a local shop that still makes lacquer-ware by hand.

In the afternoon we toured the War Remnants Museum.  The top floor had an excellent exhibit of the work done by photojournalists from many countries who died covering the war in Vietnam.  One floor below was a sobering exhibit on the devastating effects of dioxin from Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people.  These include genetic defects, with the consequence that the victims are not just those exposed to the chemical, but their descendants as well.  In the evening we attended a show at the Opera House called the A O Show, which was a sort of Vietnamese Cirque Du Soleil - a blend of music, dance and gymnastics using props made from bamboo poles and wicker baskets.  It was very original and very entertaining.

After the show, our guide took us to see the roof of the former Pittman Apartments.  One of the most famous pictures from the Vietnam war was taken by Dutch photojournalist Hubert van Es.

The original photo.  The building is often miss-identified as the American Embassy.

 It recorded some of the last South Vietnamese collaborators air-lifted out of from Saigon from that rooftop before the fall of the city to the North Vietnamese forces.  

Same rooftop today

It is not open to the public, but a few dollars in coffee money into the right hands got us onto the roof for a few pics and beer provided by the guard for a toast.  

With our guide on the roof of  22 Lý Tự Trọng Street

The building is scheduled for demolition, so this was a unique opportunity to see a part of history that will soon vanish.  

We finished the day with dinner at restaurant where you grilled your own food. We were surprised when the prawns arrived on skewers with the legs still wiggling! We had heard the seafood was fresher than we were used to at home, but we didn't expect it to be that fresh. At least we didn't have to skewer them ourselves! 

The second day we toured the Reunification palace in the morning.  The building was originally built for Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm, who was killed in a coup before it was completed.  It was used by General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and briefly by two successors until the fall of Saigon.  The palace has been preserved almost unchanged from the day when North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the front gates in 1975.  It is considered one the the architectural treasures of

In the afternoon, we attended a cooking class near our hotel.  We made three dishes: a sort of spring roll with mustard leaf wrapping, a deep fried sticky rice dumpling with beef and carrots and a BBQ pork noodle salad.

Mark made the prettiest rolls

Ditto on the dumplings

The third day we spent the morning at Cu Chi tunnels north of Saigon.  We were a little apprehensive after reading something on the internet about someone who was stung by a scorpion in the tunnels and died.  Going into the tunnels was actually a little anti-climactic.  The parts we traversed did not require any crawling on hands and knees, just crouching.  Every 50 feet or so there was a outlet if anyone felt too claustrophobic. 

Going...

Going...

Gone.  Well almost...

More interesting was learning about the history of the tunnels, which dated back to the war of independence with France in the late 1940s.  The most amazing part was the sheer size and complexity of the tunnels, over 200km worth all dug by hand over 25 years.  While the people could emerge in times of safety and obviously had to grow food outside the tunnels, almost all other aspects of life could take place underground.  There were dining areas, meeting rooms, surgical centers and weapons manufacturing areas.  Children were even born in the tunnels.

In the afternoon we strolled through one of the nearby markets, took a quick tour through the fine arts museum and had lunch at the local chain restaurant Phở  24, which everyone agreed compared favorably with other phở we had eaten during our time in Vietnam.

Overall Saigon seemed much less overwhelming than Hanoi, even though it is a bigger city. I think this was simply due to the relative location of our hotels in the two cities, but it may have been in part due to cultural differences between north and south.  One thing is certain though: the drivers in Saigon do not honk as much as the drivers in Hanoi.