Hello from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly called Saigon),
After traveling 22 hours from our home in Seattle, we finally arrived, late at night, in Ho Chi Minh City. It’s often referred to as Saigon, it’s former name before north and south Vietnam were united and the capital was moved north to Hanoi. Since it’s so hard to type it, I’ll hereafter refer to it as HCMC, as they do.
Our first day here we decided to follow a walking tour of the city’s interesting sites, but weren’t quite prepared yet for how difficult it would be to cross the street. As in most other southeast Asian cities, traffic is a nightmare here. We had experienced this before but still, somehow, we weren’t prepared. HCMC has a little over 8 million residents and almost 6 million registered motorbikes. And, I think most of them are on the street (or the sidewalk, as the case may be) all the time. There is very little traffic control at most intersections and no one ever stops. They just proceed through and maneuver around each other to get through. It’s a little like organized chaos. And, they carry amazing things on their motorbikes. I saw one carrying a double bed mattress, another carrying a 10 foot long box and yet another carrying about 6 five-gallon bottles of water. I saw a motorbike driving down the street with a platter of food in one hand and steering with the other. And, I saw a family of 5 on one motorbike, three children and two parents. Traffic moves in swarms like schools of fish flowing around any obstacle in its path. I put a one minute example movie at the end of our photo gallery if you care to take a look.
To cross the street you have to walk slowly, with determination, and let the swarm of motorbikes flow around you. You can’t avoid them. You must let them avoid you. Right off the bat we nearly got run down by a speeding motorbike ON THE SIDEWALK. We were walking along a wall as we approached an intersection. As we stepped past the end of the wall, at the corner, a speeding motorcycle was racing toward us from the approaching sidewalk. We had to stop abruptly to keep from becoming roadkill. It was good that this happened on our first day here so as to properly instill a fear of motorbikes in our brains for the rest of the week. A couple of times we were thinking of renting a motorbike cab just to take us across the street.
Speaking of motorbikes, on our first night here we decided to start our research into Vietnamese food by taking a 3 hour street food tour on the back of a motorbike. Two motorbikes showed up at our hotel with helmets in hand. We hopped on the back and they took us for a 15 minute ride to a suburb famous for good street food. If you are going to venture into street food it’s best to have someone who knows the quality and cleanliness of the vendors take you around. We went to 4 vendors sampling 4 kinds of food, ending with a desert in a bowl of liquid with lotus seeds, water chestnuts, palm nuts and cooked strands of clear seaweed. One interesting new thing we tried was “broken rice.” When rice is harvested and hulled some of the grains are broken into small pieces that are removed from the whole grains. These broken pieces are sold as a poorer version of rice. It resembles couscous in texture and I think I actually like it better than normal rice.
The next day we took a Vietnamese cooking class at the former residence of the US Ambassador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge. Now a private residence, it is used for this type of event. Before the class the teacher, the Sous-Chef of the Intercontinental Hotel here, took us throughout the local market to show us all the different meats and vegetables available here. Of course many of them we had not seen before, like pig udder, snakehead fish and milk apple, to name a few. They also eat a lot of Durian here. If you’ve never experienced Durian before (we first saw and smelled it in Singapore years ago) you don’t know what you’re missing. Our guide described it as a fruit that “smells like hell but tastes like heaven.” He also described it as “like eating avocado in a toilet.” My description would be that it smells like a natural gas leak in your kitchen (that’s the natural gas you use in your stove, not the “natural” gas from humans). At any rate, everyone here loves it, but I can’t stand to be in the same room with it. At the class we learned about all the different herbs other ingredients that go into Vietnamese cooking and made some nice egg rolls and Banh Xeo, among other things, for our lunch. Check out our photo gallery for some pix of it.
Our third adventure into Vietnamese cooking was a Traditional Meal Tour, through a volunteer university organization called Saigon HotPot. (Carol finds these things. I don’t know what I’d do without her.) Three university coeds, ages 18 to 20, were assigned to take us through the market, buy food and prepare a meal for us at their home. Ngan showed up at our hotel on her motorbike (of course) and toured us through a typical market. We then took a cab to the home of Duong, our hostess, where Linh was feverishly preparing ingredients for our “traditional family meal.” All three girls were university students. Ngan, our guide, was studying English Literature; Duong, the hostess was studying communication; and Linh, the cook, was studying food science and technology. As we helped them prepare the meal we had a delightful conversation about life, school and the future. There are a few pix in the photo gallery.
In between our food research appointments we took a speed boat trip to the famous Chu Chi Tunnels that the Viet Cong used during their invasion of the south during the Vietnam war. In all there were 155 miles of tunnels, three levels down, connecting workshops, kitchens and other facilities UNDER GROUND where the Vietcong would hide while invading the south. It was like an underground city interconnected with tunnel passages barely big enough to crawl through. The passages were dug for 15 years and connected to the river under the water.
Visitors are allowed to crawl into the passages, to see what they are like. A rather large man from Scotland in our group decided to try fitting into one of the “tiny” access holes. He got in as far as his waste and then got stuck. For ten minutes they tried to free him, but he was caught between his belly on top and his belt just below the access hole rim, underneath. Finally, it took 5 men to pull him out of the hole. Pictures, of course, in the photo gallery.
On the way to the tunnels the speed boat had to navigate through large growths of water hyacinths covering the river. We had to stop the boat twice to clear the propeller. The guide told us that once the growth was so severe that the boat could not plow through it and they had to stop and put everyone on a bus. The journey was 44 miles up the Saigon river and took about an hour and a half, which was pretty fast in a boat. On the way back at a narrowing in the river, we encountered two large sand barges that had drifted to the middle of the river, leaving only a small passage on either side for our boat to pass. The captain stood and looked carefully before choosing the left side. Then, as we passed the barges at full speed the captain suddenly cut the power and the boat came to a jolting stop. We had caught one of the mooring lines for the sand barges just beneath the surface. Fortunately, the captain had cut the power in time and there was no damage to our boat. However, the co-pilot had to get into the water to untangle the line from the propeller.
Another of our in city adventures was to the War Remnants Museum. The yard outside had a bunch of US aircraft, bombs, tanks, canons etc. captured after our withdrawal. Inside were a lot of photographs of the brutal devastation of the war. Most of the photos were very graphic and only told the war from the Viet Cong perspective (which is what I would expect). However, 46 years after the “American War”, as they call it, no one even thinks about it much. The vast majority of the population is under 30 years old and much prosperity has come to Vietnam. The Communist Government here appears to be in name only. There is no socialism here. Everyone has to work to survive. Nothing is free to anyone. People who can’t work end up selling lottery tickets on the street to make money. One of our guides remarked that they are actually more capitalist than we are because they have no social safety-net at all. They are strongly encouraged to have no more than two children per family.
The weather here has been oppressively hot, but sunny with very dry air. This makes it tolerable if you stay out of the sun and drink lots of coconut smoothies (which I did). On our last night here we went to see the Golden Dragon Underwater Puppet Show. It’s a uniquely Vietnamese attraction. A bunch of puppeteers behind a screen in a large pool of water operate puppets with long poles and cables under the water. It’s hard to believe how they delicately manipulate the puppets in this manner. If you ever come to Vietnam, this show is not to be missed.
There is lots more to be said, but I’ve gone on too long as it is. Our next stop is Taipei, in Taiwan. With any luck I’ll be able to talk to you about that very soon. Carol has posted her blog on Saigon food and our photo gallery is waiting for customers. Here are the links:
Be sure to check out the photos to the right and Carol’s blog below:
https://carolapucci-tips.blogspot.com/search?q=saigon
Later…….. your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol
Saigon Photos
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