28th - 31st October 2011
Settling into our 4th floor-seven-dollar-a-night hotel room we had yet another shower and then went out for some food, dodging the mental traffic.
After an early night we were up bright and breezy at some point after 6am, we were out of our hotel just after 7.30 and looking forward to some noodles soup at Ben Thanh market not all that far from our hotel. We walked through a long park making a pleasant green city escape between two roads, every so often passing by a covered wooden platform hosting dancing couples. It made us smile, what a wonderful start to the day, the music was some dance type stuff but people did their own thing; hip hop, jive, straight forward ballroom (actually I'm just guessing at the dancing styles but they were all different).
We made it across the roundabout and into the market. We wandered for quite a while trying to find the food section, when we eventually did find find it, we spent more time trying to find a cheap bowl of noodles. Just to put it in perspective, a bowl of excellent street noodles cost us less than a dollar and a half for two bowls and in the market the same money bought us only one bowl. We were hungry, we sat down to eat, it was good, Djalma had mixed seafood which was much better than my boring beef noodles, I was discouraged from eating more of his due to the amount of chilli he put in.
Fuelled and raring to go we started the walking tour around Ho Chi Minh City that we wouldn't finish. We passed by the Fine Arts Museum and down a very pretty French street which was all apartments on one side and all antiques and beautiful Chinese vases on the other.
We got a little disorientated looking for the famed Fannie's. According to our guidebook Fannie's had the best ice-cream in Saigon (and probably Vietnam) I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity for wonderful ice-cream just because we couldn't find it on the first or second go. Turning the corner round one road we spotted the swanky façade and had a look at the menu. The ice-cream “cocktails” or sundaes looked beautiful and of course, expensive. We walked into the parlour and saw the display and Djalma allowed that they could charge so much because it looked so beautiful.
After much deliberation we decided to get a couple of pots so we could eat and walk at the same time. I almost bought some Durian ice-cream but after a little taste of the sweet smelling rotten tasting stuff I settled on coconut. Boys and girls, I was not disappointed. Djalma chose a fresh mango sorbet and after a few more pictures with this wonderful ice-cream we actually ate it. HEAVEN in a cup and before 10am!
We walked and ate, demolishing our cups of goodness in a few minutes, we stopped to buy a memory card for Djalma's GoPro and then made a little detour to the river where we got a good look at Djalma's new favourite building, he could not stop looking at it.
We passed by a fountain serving as a roundabout and a statue of Uncle Ho, the sun was beating down and we were gulping down water like no-bodies business, sweating it and our sun-cream out the whole time.
We made our way to the Reunification Palace which was stormed by the commies and then left to serve as a memorial... of something. I was expecting signs of violence, some bullet holes of machine gun fire in the façade but they gave up before it came to being forced out. We jumped on the back of a buggy and were given a free tour round the outside, it was boring but at least we didn't have to walk. Inside things didn't pick up much, we took pictures of rooms, some of which looked so seventies it was untrue and then when we got to the basement we started to amuse ourselves.
We, well Djalma, picked up things that shouldn't have been picked up, sat in chairs that weren't allowed to be sat in and generally touched things that no-one was allowed to touch. It was hysterical, if you ever visit this place, do yourself a favour and take photos of your harmless misdemeanour's, much more fun. On the way out, a lady was playing some kind of horizontal guitar/harp making beautiful sounds, Djalma had a go as well, hilarious (I thought the boy had rhythm?!).
We left the palace behind and walked to the War Remnants Museum, it was closed for lunch so we walked to a nearby park where Djalma met this guy who could do controlled spins on the monkey bars, meet Djalma's new hero.
After Djalma had managed a few of these spins, for the first time, we decided to head back to a restaurant recommended in the LP, we originally decided to give it a miss because it looked so fancy that we thought it shouldn't belong in a budgeteers guidebook, how mean of you LP! But we returned, the prices for some things weren't so bad and we shared a couple of starters; a traditional Vietnamese pancakes filled with mushroom and bean sprouts and a green papaya salad with dried beef and a dressing reminiscent of our favourite Thai salad (with sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and some secret ingredient). Appetite sated, thirst quenched and faces washed and re-suncreamed we headed back to what would be our final destination of the day and a real downer at that.
The War remnants Museum receives half a million visitors every year and educates them on the brutalities of the Vietnam war. Outside the front there were plenty of American choppers and planes, a place showing our captors lived and signs describing how they were treated, it was so awful I couldn't finish reading it, I choose not to share the details here , there are photos of burn victims that horrify the soul enough.
Inside there were several exhibitions, the ones we saw could be divided roughly into three groups;
The victims of 'Agent Orange' the chemical warfare that included photos of people who had been burned and scarred by phosphorous and napalm and the birth defects of those who had been exposed to the chemical, directly or through contaminated food and water. It was heartbreaking, utterly heart breaking, there were also a few photos of American children who had been born to parent/s who had also been exposed to the chemicals.
War photos of photographers who had died while documenting the war, this was the most impressive section in terms of excellent photography. Some of the pictures were so beautifully shot, others were graphic and some were there because they were on the last roll of film before said photographer as victim to land-mines or helicopter crashes.
Pro communism/Anti American posters and photos, this was the most obviously biased section but it was interesting to see different posters supporting the Communist North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) in their fight to reunite their country with the South (supported by the Americans).
We had a late lunch in a small restaurant not far from the Museum, chips and salad and grilled lamb washed down with a water beer. Feeling rather tired by now, it was almost 6pm, we decided to leave the rest on our itinerary for the following day.
The next day rolled round and we decided to sort out laundry and onwards tickets and hopefully our postcards. We took our bundle of washing out but everything was so expensive that we decided to leave it for the next place. Annoyingly, we couldn't find any laundry service that was open, when we were they charged too much (for us) and when we decided that we were going to wait, loads more places opened. We had breakfast and dropped our things back at the hotel. I went off to get our postcards printed and then collected the computer and the prints and sat and wrote them in a small Mexican restaurant, Djalma joined me after booking a couple of tickets for the following morning up the coast to Mui Ne.
After a Rambo lunch which Rambo's girlfriend might have approved of but certainly not the man himself, we headed back to our hotel to a sleep and then get ready for a night out in Saigon. The sleep didn't work, I just lay in bed but we felt a little more rested and ready for a night out.
We got dressed took a picture and then got on a cyclo (me sitting between Djalma;'s legs trying not to flash my pants), we got dropped off at the beautiful post office which should have been open until 9.30pmn but was dark and closed. The Notre Dame Cathedral was right next door and the grounds were packed with teenagers and families and of course the odd churchgoer. It was Sunday and Halloween, everywhere was packed, the roads were chock full of scooters and the pavements with scooters and groups of young friends. We got a walking beer and went to find some cheap bia hoi (draught beer) and some dinner. We ate and drank vodka with the red bull that's illegal in the UK (and plenty of other places too). It was cheap and it did the trick, I remember going to the bar and dancing but not about Djalma getting me home and making me drink water.
I couldn't thank him enough the next day, when despite only three hours of sleep, I didn't have a headache! Wow! I did feel rather grotty though. We showered off the smoke and the sweat from the previous night, and headed out to wait for the bus five minutes before it was due to arrive. It was late and we had time for a much needed sandwich before it finally showed up. A sleeper bus! All the seats were on the floor and you could stretch out our legs (unless you were Djalma) and sleep. The 6 hour journey passed in a flash. By 2 in the afternoon we were in the very touristy Mui Ne and looking for a hotel at some point along the 12 mile strip of sand. While we were walking a girl wobbled by on a scooter and fell off trying to turn, we helped her back up and Djalma took the poor, shaken and now burnt girl to a chemist and then back to her hotel. An hour later our search resumed and we found a placed for 7 dollars a night, no small miracle considering all the cheapest rooms start at 10USD.
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