Streets of Saigon

Over our entire trip, we’ve spent about six days in Saigon, so it just wouldn’t be right if I didn’t touch on what makes this city so wonderful!  Aside from the motorbike incident and seeing the Ao Show, much of our time was spent walking around the city exploring the parks, shops, and restaurants and meeting the people.  We’ve managed to walk all over the city, including the highlights such as the Ben Thanh market, the Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, the Post Office, and their version of Notre Dame.  We found some fantastic places to eat too including, Wang Hai Gnon (It actually means “Delicious,” but I guarantee I botched up the name.), Tandoor (Indian), Jaspers (Awesome Western breakfast, buy 1 get 1 free on Sundays), Pat a Chou (best pain au chocolat around!), and a fruit smoothie food cart in an alley near our hotel.

In Saigon, the street food culture is not as prominent as in Hanoi, but we definitely took a chance on some of the smaller restaurants or food stalls.  One in particular has the best Pho we’ve tried in the entire two weeks of venturing throughout Vietnam.  It was a small family-owned restaurant at the bottom of their home.   One of the best aspects of the Pho is that with each order you get a pile of mint leaves, bean sprouts, lettuce, basil, chilies, and limes to put inside of the Pho while you’re eating it! 

Our lunch was incredibly inexpensive.  We managed to have three Vietnamese coffees and two Pho soups for about six dollars.  And they were so nice that when I asked if I could use their toilet, they cleaned off the stairs to let me into their home to use their personal toilet since the dining section didn’t have one.   

Oh and the Vietnamese iced coffees, woo baby!  They are soooo good!  I could’ve sworn they had chocolate syrup in them or something!  But our friend, Huong (Helen) said that’s just the combination of the rich Vietnamese coffee flavor and sweetened condensed milk.  These are definitely a must-have when you visit Vietnam.

As our trip is coming to an end, here are some final thoughts...  I was most amazed at how well-kept and picturesque the parks were in both Hanoi and Saigon.  With the sporadic French architecture, at times it felt as if I was strolling through Europe. 

The War Remnants museum was a huge eye opener because it is the most Anti-American place I had ever been.  Any coy remarks I have ever heard while studying in France could not match the passive aggressive Anti-American approach of this museum.  The museum showed pictures of at least 20 other countries who supported northern Vietnam and wanted the USA out of Vietnam.  It posted photos depicting American soldiers posing cheerfully while holding the heads of beheaded Vietnamese soldiers.  This is only one example of the wretched things that American soldiers did while abroad… but this museum only told one side.  There was nothing said about Vietnamese soldiers torturing our Prisoners of War, nothing said about protests in America commanding the US to get out of Vietnam.  No, if I didn’t know much about the US, and visited that musuem I would think the worst of our government and people.  Growing up I had heard brief stories of the mental health issues and counseling that war veterans need when they return, specifically about the Vietnam War.  When in a war like this where the Vietnamese soldiers were essentially hiding underground and randomly popping up and surprising American soldiers time and again, I can imagine that it drove soldiers to paranoia and being immersed in this environment drove them to do things completely out of character for them.  How can they possibly return to their normal lives when their worst nightmares were a reality just months before?

Along the outside of the museum are American fighter planes and tanks that were captured after the war, very overtly stating the Vietnamese pride for winning the war.  Seeing all of this made me pretty uncomfortable, but the museum gave us such a different perspective on the war that we stayed there for over two hours examining every bit of it.  I must admit that I didn’t feel quite proud to be an American after leaving that museum.

After discussing the how the US was depicted, Eric and I agreed that there are many details that were not told in this museum, it’s only one perspective of the war, and was obviously trying to victimize northern Vietnam, by criminalizing all Americans.  This was a good learning experience, but it also reinforced the fact that you should take just about everything with a grain of salt, biased perspectives often skew reality. 

Prior to coming to Vietnam, I was a little concerned as to how Americans would be received.  Even before coming to this museum, Eric and I told a fair share of locals that we were Canadian.  This claim was a pretty good safe-guard against any people who may hold a grudge against Americans.  What we learned though is that aside from the head honcho at the police station, the Vietnamese were very pleased when they heard we were American, and I admired that ability for the people to let go of the past.  Especially when so often a country's history dictates people’s actions in the present… right or wrong.

Don’t’ get me wrong with all of this talk about the museum and posing as a Canadian at times.  I am still proud to be an American and strongly believe that the values and way of life in the U.S. are highly desirable.   We just know that not everyone is as fond of the US as we are and heed on the side of caution whenever someone, say our motorbike driver has our life in his hands.

Speaking of motorbikes, this is another big takeaway from the trip.  I am normally a big scared-y cat when it comes to riding a motorbike, but I really tried to leave this inhibition back at home in the States.  I’m glad I did because we had so much fun taking motorbike rides with Sai Oms (essentially unofficial taxi motorbike riders) who would take us just about anywhere in the city for a dollar or two.  It was always invigorating jumping on the motorbike and swarming around traffic like we were part of a school of fish.  This and taking that day-long motorbike ride with Eric have made me feel much more comfortable on a motorbike… who knows maybe we’ll eventually get that scooter Eric’s been anxious to buy!

Both China and Vietnam were amazing, but Vietnam was extra good because I had my favorite travel buddy with me!  We went on this trip because Eric was so infatuated with Saigon that he wanted me to experience the thrills too.  What a guy, right?  It’s been yet another amazing adventure, with it’s own flavor of discovery.  We’ve already decided that we need to come back and see the Mekong Delta, Hoi An, Sapa, Cambodia, and Laos.  So many places to go, so much to see.

Curiosity is a gift that needs nurtured to flourish so travel the world and watch your curiosity liven your appetite for adventure! 

Ha Long Bay and Hanoi

For the past few days we’ve been in northern Vietnam, and what a pleasant surprise it has been!  Prior to our trip, I booked a one-night stay at Charming Hotel on-line.  I found this hotel on Trip Advisor and reviews really emphasized their genuine attitude and superb customer service.  Boy were they right!  They even saved us about a 100,000 Dong ($10) on our cab ride from the airport.

While in Hanoi, we took a cruise with Galaxy Cruise lines in Ha Long Bay, one of the seven natural wonders of the world!  Ha Long Bay consists of almost 2,000 mountains protruding out of the bay.  It was incredible!  We even took a stroll through one of the largest limestone caves in the world called the “Surprise Cave.”  It’s called that because the first “chamber” you walk into is relatively small, but the next two chambers are enormous!  Apparently, it was discovered by two French FEMALE explorers!  Can you imagine how amazing that would be to uncover a ginormous limestone cave?!

After visiting the cave we went kayaking in the Bay which is also considered the South China Sea, and later went swimming.  Not just swimming though, we jumped off of the very top of our boat, at least 20 feet high!  There have been few times in my life where I’ve been as scared as I was when I jumped off that daggone boat.  At first I planned on holding my nose, but when I was in the air my body went into panic mode and I started flailing my arms as I fell into the water.  Luckily the water was nice and warm so it was a relief when my feet crashed into the water. 

Afterwards we had a fantastic dinner and finished the night off with squid fishing (didn’t catch anything though) and karaoke.  There were only about 14-16 passengers on this boat; a Vietnamese family of about eight, Eric and I, a New Zealander, and a British couple.  Alex, from New Zealand and Val and George (from England) really made this trip extra-good, especially after a night of singing… I Will Survive, Mountain Roads, a song about Sheila, Sweet Caroline, and some beautiful Vietnamese love songs, our karaoke night was a blast and really put this trip on a pedestal.  Although, I must admit, our Vietnamese boat staff pretty much blew us (the Westerners) out of the water in regards to talent, but we were most definitely the life of the party; dancing and carrying on till the crew told us to go to bed!

Back in Hanoi we had the opportunity to venture about with our new found friend, Long (his name means dragon king in Vietnamese, how sweet is that?!).  Long took us to the best ice cream shop in Hanoi, Kem Trang Tien.  Trang Tien has only one flavor of actual ice cream, vanilla.  But this wasn’t your average vanilla bean flavor you get in the States.  This vanilla tasted like a pina colada!  It was sooo good we had one of those and were so enamored with the new flavor that we tried three of their fudge popsicle assortments; coconut milk, green bean, and the com rice flavor.  They kind of tasted like Indian burfi sweets.  Yummy!

One of the neatest adventures we went on with Long was ironically on Long Bien bridge, a 100 year-old bridge extending about two miles.  Our last night in Hanoi, Long took us for a walk along the wooden boarded sidewalk atop this crazy long bridge, and we found a pleasant surprise just as we approached the middle of the bridge above the river.  Many young people were gathered along the railing sitting on bamboo mats.  They were playing cards, sipping on iced dracontomelon tea, and just enjoying each other’s company.  We decided to join them for a bit and bought a few glasses of this Vietnamese iced tea made of up small balls of sweetish, sourish fruit called dracontomelon.  It was delicious and tasted like an exotic version of lemonade with mini melon balls in it.  We sat there for a while and left while a child around four years old started busting a move to Michael Jackson.  (I joined in a bit, but didn’t want to take the spotlight away from that little sweetie!)

We spent the night traipsing around the Old Quarter and ended the night with some sweets, including a red dragon fruit smoothie!  No joke!

Our last day was started bright and early at Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum.  Now I didn’t know what a Mausoleum was before this, so just to fill you in a bit, this was essentially a memorial or shrine for the infamous Vietnamese leader during the first part of the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh.  Vietnam’s most famous city, Saigon, was actually renamed Ho Chi Minh City because it was this leader’s favorite city.  Anyone looking to rename Chicago to Obama City?  That’s what this would essentially be like doing. 

Ok, I’m exaggerating it’s a bit different.  I’m no expert on the Vietnam War, but Ho Chi Minh was the Communist leader of the North leading the Communists to eventually win the war.  From conversations with Vietnamese who are living in Vietnam, it seems like he is highly admired for his good nature and caring attitude.  In fact, he’s commonly known as Uncle Ho to the Vietnamese. 

In the Mausoleum, we walked through the room where his preserved body lies.  It was like walking through the funeral of a highly revered individual, except no one was crying, everyone was completely silent, and did not take their eyes off of Ho Chi Minh’s preserved body lying in the middle of the room.  Even I was pretty mesmerized by this lifeless body just lying there in the middle of the room. 

This was an odd experience because throughout my life I’ve heard about how bad Communism is and here I see so many people admiring this Communist leader, even willingly calling him Uncle Ho.  Both young and old generations were doing so.  In these circumstances, it’s very easy to forget why Communism is disliked by Democratic societies.

Just a few days prior to going to Hanoi, we had met a French traveler who has been living in Vietnam for the past six years.  He was the one who had strongly encouraged us to go to the Mausoleum, largely because, he said, in Vietnam it doesn’t seem like it is Communist society, but you are reminded by the Communist mindset when you venture into that room just by experiencing the silence that runs through the walls as hundreds of people pass by Uncle Ho's body… and by seeing the soldiers adorned in white uniforms, standing like porcelain dolls at each corner of the bed Uncle Ho lies in.  I’m not gonna lie, it was a tad bit creepy in that room, and my experience there as well as at the War Remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City have given me a new appreciation and understanding of the horrors the war soldiers endured during the war.

Afterwards, we explored Ho Chi Minh’s Presidential Palace and almost got pummeled by mangoes dropping from trees on the appropriately named, Mango Road.  We tried all kinds of street foods from Eel Mien noodle soup to Bun Cha, a northern Vietnamese specialty composed of rice noodles, pork patties, and the freshest mint leaves, weed-ish herbs, beansprouts, lime, and chili sauce.  Honestly, it was like we just pulled up an entire herbal garden in a plate!

Lastly, we really put our negotiating skills to work while buying three paintings…  looking forward to having a place where we can proudly put our new home additions on display.

Phu Quoc Island

After our little Cambodian visa fiasco, Eric and I decided to do something that most American tourists in Vietnam don’t do… go to Phu Quoc island.  Just the name Phu Quoc makes you take a deep breath and sigh… 

Just imagine.  Currently, I am sitting outside of our very own one room bungalow that sits directly on the beach.  We have a giant bed with a mosquito net surrounding the entire mattress.  (It’s like Scrooge’s bed in the movie a Christmas Carol!)   Our lullaby at night is the sound of the waves crashing against the sand.  Incredible, right?  We’re staying at a place called the Tropicana on Long Beach.  It’s truly breathtaking.

Our first night here we took a swim and then walked to the Town Centre which is about 1.5 km away.  We had some absolutely delicious spiked banana and pineapple smoothies and milkshakes.  Then we went to the night market which is really a fish market.  There were multiple stands of giant blue lobsters, red snappers, sharks, all kinds of shrimp, crabs, and clams!  And they were all so fresh, probably pulled right out of the ocean that day. 

We picked out a HUGE Tiger Shrimp which they grilled in garlic…. Let me emphasize that we had A shrimp for dinner… THAT’s how big it was.  In addition, we picked out two pretty big squids which were grilled and served with the island’s famous salt, pepper, and lime sauce.  With a side of roasted veggies, it was an awesome island-style meal! 

We enjoyed a nice stroll along the market and on our way home we saw a cute restaurant alongside the road called Chez Carole.  It looked like a Filipino band would be playing soon and I thought we needed some good ol’ dancing to end the night.  So we stayed there for about an hour or two and cut a rug on the dance floor! A great way to finish a flawless day!

Now we were certainly enjoying the serene ocean setting, waking up early in the morning for a swim and spending the evening sitting alongside the water digging our toes in the sand.  BUT… you know the curiosity in us never ends!

I told you that we would be renting a motorbike, right?  Well, on our second day on the island, we rented a motorbike and after that incident in Saigon, Eric has definitely redeemed himself as a highly capable driver!  We rode all the way down to the southern tip of the island to a beach called Bai Sao (Sao Beach).  That’s about 25 km from the Tropicana.  Now this should normally take an hour (if you’re going as slow as we go), but the roads down here are either horrendous or under construction… meaning they are dirt roads.  And there are no signs to direct us to Bai Sao.  AND we’re here during their rainy season so it POURS at least once a day.

So…  given all of that it took us about 2 hours and 45 minutes to reach Bai Sao.  But let me tell you… it was worth it!  We had so much fun getting lost,  switching directions, and running into dead ends. We managed to just barely miss getting drenched in a rainstorm by ducking into a small “restaurant” along the road.  Eric was a good driver too!  Honestly!  I was certainly worried about this…I’m not going to deny that, but he was very even-keeled and cautious, even when the giant dump trucks would want to pass us and were basically shoving us off the road, he played it safe.  I was super proud of him and I loved seeing such untouched land throughout our journey.  The island truly is beautiful, but it’s also a little strange.

The airport is very modern and pretty large considering only five flights fly in and out of the island per day.  And yet, the road infrastructure is horrendous even to get from one beautiful beach (Long Beach) to another (Bai Sao) or to the pier for fresh crabs (Ham Nimh).  At least half of the way to each destination is dirt or rock roads! 

Then when we reached Bai Sao, the white sand and clear turquoise waters were slightly overshadowed by the garbage that we would find laying around.  If Vietnam truly wants Phu Quoc to live up to its claim that it’s one of the most beautiful beaches in Asia then it at least needs to put a stronger focus on garbage cleanup along the beaches.  Now granted, not all areas were like this.  In fact, our hotel at the Tropicana had its own cleaning crew, and we found a beautiful area at Bai Sao that had very little garbage so it was still very picturesque. 

Anyway enough of that rant.  Our lunch on the beach was awesome!  Grilled shrimp with some really yummy sauces and a traditional southern Vietnamese fish soup with okra, onions, and pineapple really satisfied us after such a long journey.  It was easily enough food to feed a family of five, but we did a pretty good job of scarfing it down. 

We stayed at Bai Sao for around three and half hours, and really enjoyed exploring the beach, swimming, and watching a fisherman reel in his seine.  We got so close that we could pretty much touch the fish that he had pulled up in the net.  I’ve never seen so many fish at once! 

Our bike ride home was much quicker than our ride into Sao Beach, exactly an hour.  We made it home just in time to watch the sunset on the beach. 

That night we planned to go back to the town for dinner, but a massive storm came ashore and we were pretty much trapped inside of our bungalow for the night. I felt a bit like a kid camping in a little hut.  We turned off all of the lights so it was pitch black and sat inside the mosquito net and just chatted for hours while listening to the thunderous rain and watching the lightening reflect off the water.  Our dinner that night consisted of blueberry crisp and oatmeal raisin Cliff Bars, a tad bit different from our island feasts we’d been having the past couple days, huh?

Our last day in Phu Quoc was spent swimming in the ocean and the pool for a bit and then watching a storm from a restaurant sitting directly on the beach while having banana juice, spring rolls, and freshly cut pineapple from a woman walking along the beach.

Phu Quoc was such a wonderful adventure!  From the freedom of riding our own motorbike across the island to picking out our own seafood to jumping around in the Gulf of Thailand; it was all amazing!  I really appreciated the slower pace of life at Phu Quoc.  Now back to the city amongst the millions of motorbikes and street vendors!

Visa Fiasco: New Plan

Just to bring down your heightened alert mode, we didn’t actually bribe a police officer.  In fact, we didn't actually know how this guy was related to the police station, but we think he worked for one of the officers as kind of a ‘scrub.’ 

It all started when we were making our plans to go to Angkor Wat, Cambodia.  We discovered that our visas were only single entry to Vietnam versus multiple entry.  This was a big deal because if we left Vietnam we wouldn’t be able to come back and our international flight home left from Saigon.  We discovered that we could relatively easily correct our visa… or so we thought.  (Why is everything harder than what it seems?)

After going to the Canadian Embassy (our visas were issued in Ottawa) and them directing us to the Vietnam Immigration Services, we were given a form and instructed to get the signature of someone at our hotel and the local police station.  Easy enough, right?  WRONG.  (hehe, sounds familiar, eh?)

It was quite easy to get the signature from our hotel, but the local police station was much more difficult.  We initially went to police station and they instructed us to get the reservation confirmation from our hotel.  So we went back to our hotel and they had not input us into the system when we checked in so we could only take our receipt for one paid night to the police station.  A man sitting outside of the police station waved us over and said he’ll help us get the stamp from the police if we pay him 400,000 Dong (equal to $20).  Eric didn’t trust this guy, and didn’t want to be involved in any bribes.  I didn’t see it as a bribe.  I saw it as being necessary in order to get anything done here.  So we agreed that if he could get the police to sign our form by 4:00pm today then we would pay him.  That man tried his darnedest but his efforts didn’t pay off.

In fact, after an hour of waiting in the police station, the police chief came back with our paperwork and started yelling at the receptionist in Vietnamese about our forms while we were sitting right there.  After he left, she said today’s boss is grumpy and that we should come back in the morning when we have a happy boss. Okay… we came back the next morning and the new boss still would not sign our form either.  It was ridiculous!  We were given no explanation either! 

So we ended up cancelling our trip to Cambodia, wishing we would’ve just paid $140 per person to get a travel agency to change our visas.  Lesson to be had… nothing is ever as easy as it seems when traveling and there’s a reason that travel agencies offer visa services because the local police station are nin-com-poops!

We weren’t going to let this sour our time though and wanted to make the best of our extra days in Vietnam.  Since we couldn't leave the country, we booked a trip immediately to Phu Quoc island and northern Vietnam in the capital, Hanoi, experiencing one of the seven natural wonders of the world, Ha Long Bay!  But I’ll leave that adventure for another blog.