Saigon

PHOTO ALBUM - Saigon

I’ve found I really like the big cities we’ve been to in Asia because there’s just so much for the senses to take in. There are smells everywhere from all the food and drink vendors on the sidewalks, a constant stream of motorbikes zooming around honking their horns, and usually an array of French or British colonial-style buildings mixed in with the modern architecture and run-down buildings. Saigon definitely ranks high on my list of major cities we’ve been in so far. The city itself is very visually impressive. Lots of modern, unique sky-scrapers (that are even more interesting when they’re lit up at night),  architecturally beautiful museums, churches, government buildings, etc, and parts of the city wouldn’t look out of place in Seattle with all the high-end retail and cafes. There are well-taken care of parks scattered throughout the city center, as well. It was fun to walk through the park near our guesthouse in the evenings, just to see the power-walkers, the kids playing hackey-sack with a shuttle-cock looking thing, and watching the dance lessons under the pavilions.

Brian and I found plenty of people-watching opportunities, as well. Drink vendors just set up little tables on the sidewalk, so we’d enjoy a ca phe sua da (super-strong coffee with condensed milk over ice  - my newest guilty pleasure on this trip) in the morning or a beer at the end of the day. It’s a fun way to mingle with both fellow travelers and locals. One night we were seated at a table with couple older Vietnamese guys who looked like they had just gotten off work and were having a beer. We were on one side of the table, they were on the other, and for the most part we had just been minding our own businesses. Given it was a hot day, which in turn was warming up the beer faster than usual, Brian and I decided to commit what is in America one of the cardinal sins of beer-drinking and asked for ice for our glass. This is common practice here, and although we resisted doing this for a long time, we inadvertently had to try it once in Cambodia, and found it really wasn’t that bad. It’s not like the beer isn’t only a step above water, anyway.  So we were brought a bucket of ice for the table (since of course, the Vietnamese we were sharing the table with were drinking their beer with ice), and suddenly, we were their new drinking buddies. There were rounds of ‘cheers’ (“Yo” in Vietnamese) every few minutes, and they kept insisting we share their bag of cut-up mango with them (I know, I know – mango and beer, we are committing beer-drinking sins left and right. But they eat mango while it’s still not ripe, so it’s really crunchy and not so sweet, and they dip into a spicy/salty mixture, which does go quite well with beer).  They spoke zero English, so we learned a couple more Vietnamese words – mango in Vietnamese at least sounds the same as it did in Khmer, so that’s easy for me to remember, although I’m still not sure how to say ice correctly (Dah? Dai? Deh?).  It definitely made for an entertaining happy hour.  Lesson learned that afternoon: “When in Rome…”

Speaking of that saying, we had to take it to heart to learn how to cross the street here. I think this is a city of 6 million people, and there are probably just as many motorbikes.  Crossing the street is a science that we can’t say we mastered, but faked our way through well-enough to not get creamed.  Consider that motorbikes (and often cars) don’t drive in a lane, they drive in whatever open space they can find (sometimes, going the wrong direction). With the number of motorbikes around Saigon, there just aren’t many open spaces left in the steady stream of traffic – so the ‘gap’ we generally look for to cross a street is just never there.  So we did as the locals do, and said a little prayer and just start walking slowly, trying to telegraph our every move to the drivers coming by.  It is amazing – you simply put your faith into the hands of hundreds of motorbike drivers speeding down the road, walk slowly and steadily across the street, and the virtual river of bikes just magically parts and “flows” around you.

While we were here, we also took advantage of the opportunity to educate ourselves on the Vietnam War (or as it is known here, the “War of American Aggression”).  Neither one of us really know much about the war or politics of that time period, as we’ve started to see a pattern in how US history that doesn’t reflect so greatly on the US isn’t really taught in too much detail in school. We went to the Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, and the Cu Chi tunnels while we were here, so we definitely got to see plenty of the Vietnamese perspective.  The Vietnamese talk of their defeat of the French in the colonial days and America in the Vietnam War to win their independence with a pride similar to how we talk about our defeat of the British to win ours. My understanding of the war was always that the communist north invaded the non-communist south, and since US foreign policy at that time seemed to be attempting to prevent the spread of communism at all costs, we went in to support South Vietnam.  From the Vietnamese perspective, the north was liberating the south from the oppressive US puppet government put in place, so that the country could be reunified.  My guess is the actual truth is somewhere in between the Vietnamese and American perspective. Regardless of the politics of leading into the war, the civilian casualties inflicted by the US was appalling, as is the long-lasting impacts of the defoliants (ie,Agent Orange) we used.  I know there probably atrocities on both sides (they don’t really discuss treatment of American POW’s), but it’s still disturbing to hear what people are capable of during a war. We were the only Americans on the tour we took to the Cu Chi tunnels, and the guide came up to us a few different times to apologize for talking about some of the brutal things that were done by Americans during the war, and reassure us that everything was fine now, Vietnamese and Americans are friendly today.  On the flip side, I was admittedly disturbed by the 1968 video we were shown at the Cu Chi Tunnels, in which they kept talking about the brave young Vietnamese men and women who received medals for being good “American Killers”.  They should probably consider updating that video, as it was clearly propaganda used to motivate peasants to fight against the Americans in the 1960’s.   The Cu Chi tunnel visit was quite interesting – the Vietnamese had built this entire underground tunnel system to for people to hide during bombing and attacks, and to facilitate movement of the Viet Cong soldiers and weapons into Saigon.  We got to crawl around through a small portion of the original tunnels, and it’s a pretty tight fit. Definitely not a comfortable way to walk around…I can’t imagine traversing those on a daily basis (or even for longer than the 50 m or so we walked through!).

On the same tour in which we went to the Cu Chi tunnels, they also took us to visit a Cau Dai temple. Cau Dai is a religion that originated in Vietnam in the 20^th century, and to be honest, I still don’t really grasp it. It seems like they’ve incorporated parts of Buddhism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and probably some other religions.  Jesus and Buddha are both worshipped, as is Victor Hugo.  Yes, Victor Hugo, the French poet.  Regardless, the temple itself was really colorful and full of symbolism from all the religions named above (and there’s even a nice painting with Victor Hugo). We got to watch the noon prayer service, which while fascinating, made me a bit uncomfortable – I can’t imagine going to church and having 100 tourists standing above taking pictures of everyone worshipping.  I think these tours to this temple run every day, though, so I guess they’re used to it.

In another example of backwards business practices in Vietnam, we had some drama at the end of the Cau Dai Temple/Cu Chi Tunnel tour. Everyone booked the tour through different travel agencies, and if the travel agency doesn’t have enough people to do a full tour on their own, they send them to another travel agency to run the tour. So everyone ends up being consolidated into one tour group. Turns out, one of the agencies that had signed up 11 passengers and then shipped them to the tour company we were with never actually gave the tour company the money that the passengers paid. Apparently ,this had been a problem in the past, and the way the tour company handled it was to tell this agency that the next time they didn’t pay for the passengers sent to their tour, they would leave the passengers and not take them back to Saigon on the bus.  As you can imagine, this did not sit well with 11 passengers who were told they would be stranded at the Cu Chi tunnels, and would have to find a taxi ride back to Saigon.  After about 15 minutes of the tourists trying to talk some sense into the tour guide by reasoning that this was not the tourists’ problem and would result in poor customer satisfaction that would be damaging both tour companies (of course our tour-guide was put in the middle– this was his boss’s decision), the boss finally called and said that the passengers could get on the bus because the delinquent tour company finally agreed to pay. All ended well – but talk about a screwed up business strategy!!

We’ve since moved on to Dalat, in south-central Vietnam. We’re at almost 5000 feet elevation here, which is making for dry days and cool nights, a pleasant change from the heat of Saigon.  We are told this was a popular honeymoon destination for the Vietnamese, and I can see why – cute French colonial architecture, a nice man-made lake in the center of town, plenty of flowers around, and supposedly there’s a “Valley of Love” just outside of town. They even make some drinkable wine here, which at $1.50 - $3/bottle, we plan to stock up on before we leave. We've been enjoying the beautiful countryside the last couple days before we heading to Mui Ne for more beach time.