City Tour of Ho Chi Minh City - Oct. 31, 2010

 October 31, 2010

Senne's Summary: We did a city tour of Saigon and saw A LOT of things!

We arranged a full day tour of Saigon through our hotel at the bargain price of $9 a person! This included the bus (with about 20 people), an English speaking tour guide and a basic lunch.

On the bus ready to go!

We started the tour at the "War Remnants Museum". This was an incredibly sad place (I’m glad we went there first!) It’s a chronicle of the war and how it affected the Vietnamese people. There were so many photographs and anecdotes of the tragedies people lived through. I think it was important to see, but still incredibly sad.

Next we moved on to a little teahouse/store. Here we were able to sample some local foods and lotus tea. We also had the opportunity to sample weasel coffee, which we both declined. Besides the fact that we don’t drink coffee, the information about how the weasel coffee was made did not make us enthusiastic to give it a try. Apparently, the weasels eat the coffee beans and then something in their gastric juices adds more flavour… so when the weasel poops out the bean it is used to make weasel coffee. Seriously. Apparently it’s quite wonderful and they give it to visiting diplomats! No thanks. Some people who were with us did try it and said it was quite nice, but smelled quite disgusting when it was in the bag.

Check out how they fix the wires!

After this we went to “The Pagoda” which was a Buddhist Temple in China Town. This was interesting… our first Buddhist Temple.

There was a lot of incense burning. Po (our tour guide) explained to us that when people die their spirits live in the temple for 49 days. The smoke from the incense is what feeds their spirits.

There were a lot of prayer intentions on the walls and on incense coils.

Our next stop was the Cho Binh Tay Market. This was a CRAZY place!

This is the parking lot at the market!

It was just wall-to-wall stuff. You could barely walk through the aisles. We saw a lot of knock-off stuff, you know, “Calvin Klein Jenes” and stuff like that. There was pretty much anything you could want to buy in there. We bought nothing since we don’t need anymore stuff 😀

You can literally find anything you want in here!

After this we went to a little restaurant for lunch. The tour provided a basic lunch but we also got a couple of drinks and both upgraded our lunch a little. This cost us a grand total of $2.50. It’s actually quite shocking how inexpensive the food is here! We sat at a table with a young couple from Britain (also travelling for 14 months), a lady from Quebec and a man from Malaysia. It’s one of the other things I enjoy about travelling is meeting new people and learning just a little bit about them and where they’ve been.

Another traffic picture… still amazes me every day. Can you tell whose turn it is?

After lunch our tour went to the “Reunification Palace”. It was the home for the President of South Vietnam when South Vietnam was a separate country. It is very 70’s in décor. 😀 One thing that was interesting is how the president’s chair is always the biggest chair and has a dragon carved into the top of the back.

Big desk for an important person. I wonder why the phones are different colours?

One thing that kind of bugged me was that they had these beautiful gigantic chandeliers but they had those ugly fluorescent twisty bulbs in them. The fluorescent bulb company needs to get a designer to work with them so those bulbs aren’t so ugly. (I know, I know… in the general scheme of things who cares? Apparently, me!) We also saw the president’s private theatre, escape helicopter, dance hall (what keeps the president’s wife happy), and the basement where all the secret command stuff happened.

Of course I had to include a photo of the escape helicopter!

Next we headed to the lacquer workshop. This is a government shop where handicapped people make lacquer handicrafts. It was interesting to see the process.

I especially liked watching the designs they made with eggshells. I’m wishing now that I had bought a small one (was worried about carting it around) but I’m sure I’ll find them somewhere else in Vietnam.

This was made with eggshells!

After the lacquer workshop we headed to our last stop, the post office and Notre Dame Cathedral. I think the post office is on the trip because it is a building from the 1800’s. I suspect not much was left standing of those old buildings after the destruction from the war.

Inside the post office.

We had a little look around, and also looked inside the Cathedral. It was nice, but didn’t really compare to any of the others we’d seen in Europe this summer.

The Cathedral

Again, we were asked to be in a photo. Some Vietnamese people were taking pictures of each other and when they saw us decided they wanted a photo of us. I’m not really sure what the appeal is. Perhaps they think Steve is Matthew McConaughey (or some other famous celebrity)?!?

While Steve was posing for celebrity photos,
I took a picture of this cute little girl commanding the birds!

As we were outside the bus waiting to go, we were talking to the British couple again. A teenage girl came up to us that was selling flowers. She asked Steve if he wanted to buy any flowers because he had 1, 2, 3 girlfriends. (The British guy had medium length curly hair so I guess she decided he was a girl!) She just wouldn’t let up and actually kept talking to us when we were on the bus. She said to the British guy, “Oh you must be girlie boy… you 50/50.” This definitely did not make him want to buy a flower from her 😉…the rest of us thought it was hilarious.

After we finished our tour (PHEW! That was a lot of stuff to see in one day!) we decided that we needed a massage to relax. Well actually we didn’t need to relax we wanted to help stimulate the Vietnamese economy some more. Okay, okay, we just like massages 😀 Anyway, they must have liked Steve’s tip last time, because this time the massage was not only the feet and legs, but the arms, hands, head, face, neck and shoulders… still for the same bargain price of $6.

After the massage we had a delicious Thai Food dinner and then spent a relaxing evening just hanging out.

Side note: You’d never even know its Halloween here. The occasional bar had a sign about Halloween parties (I think for the western tourists) but I didn’t see any kids or adults in costumes.

And just for good measure... here's one more photo of things you can carry on your scooter!