Vietnam from dusk to dawn: Stories from Saigon
This is going to be long, so I’ll add a summary of content. Unfortunately I can’t add link to the section, but hopefully the titles make them easy to find. Feel free to skip to the most interesting part :) .
First a short introduction on how it begun, the description of my flight and how I decided to go to Vietnam. Then the post is divided by the different visits: the French district, visit through the temples on a Two-wheels taxi, the war museum, my walking tour in the city, the city centre, the zoo, Le Van Tam park, were I meet some lovely kids that wanted to learn English, Tay Ninh, a Vatican-like city, the Cu Chi tunnels that were used by Vietcong during the Vietnam war, and finally the amazing tour through the Mekong Delta (a must if you are visiting Vietnam).
How it begun
My travel to Vietnam was gifted to me from my parents and granny for the conclusion of my long, hard university career. I don’t know if it was well-deserved, but it was for sure needed.
Luckily enough, I graduated just before my father was about to go on a business travel to Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon). Why not go with him and visit the city while he works? I immediately packed my luggage. My father used to travel quite a lot for work. He visited more than 60 countries and always told me how much he liked Vietnam. It was the perfect gift.
The travel was quite exhausting, two 5–6 hours flights with 9 hours of lay-over in Dubai (that day I learned: never have more than 4 hours of lay-over). It was night already when we landed in Ho Chi Minh City. Already from the taxi to the hotel I was in love with the city: hundreds of motorcycles flanked us, moving in the huge traffic they themselves were creating. Horning, roaring, they were creating a modern confusing melody. I would have been surprised that no one had a helmet, but I was too busy questioning all physics laws I studied when I saw entire families, with their cats and groceries, passing us on a single motorcycle.
It was still April, but it was warmer than an Italian summer evening. Before let us be overwhelmed by tiredness, we enjoyed a cocktail on Hotel Rex terrace. There are plenty of terraces to see the city from above in that Area, enjoy a colourful cocktail, smell the flower and listen to live music. It helps that prices are generally cheaper than Europe. Local currency (Dong) as well as US Dollars are accepted everywhere, but they may be not really generous with the exchange rate if you chose the latter.
From the terrace, we could see Hotel Continental, famous since most of the Vietnam war correspondents were staying there. I always try to immagine what it meant to live in a fancy hotel, but surrounded by an ugly war (well, they all are). We were in the middle of colonials buildings, skyscrapers, and enormous trees alternating in an infinite view. My father said it changed so much since the last time he was there four years ago. New buildings were started every week in the growing finance hearth and most populated city of Vietnam.
The French district
The following day, my father started his working week, while I was free to explore the city. My first stop was the Central Post Office, a must-visit in Ho Chi Minh. The postal office is a Gothic, Renaissance with French influences build at the end of XIX, when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina.
The big painting of Ho Chi Minh dominates the entire office, constant reminder of the revolutionary man that led to the independence of Nord Vietnam, and whose the city was re-named after. The iron columns painted green and the orange painting give the office a feeling of clean elegance.
Just in front of the office, literally 50m away, there’s Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica, build in the same period of the office by French colonialists. For these couple of building in particular, Ho Chi Minh is also known as the Paris of Asia. Looking at the building (and at its name), is easy to guess the influence.
Two wheels taxi
In front of the basilica you can meet people that will taxi you around with a motorcycle (apparently it’s called Xe Ôm). Please be smarter than me and bargain the price before hand, and make sure you don’t travel with them past the accorded time (also, I read here you shouldn’t use them at night).
Motorcycle taxi is one of the best way to travel in Saigon, since it’s easy for them to drive in the traffic. Most of the time, because they use sidewalks as well, and they take traffic lights as suggestions. In the US you can go right when the traffic light is red if no car is passing, but in Europe you can’t, so for me it was even more strange to see those people crossing intersections with red all the time.
One of the most important skill to learn when you arrive in Saigon is how to cross the road, since motorbikes are going to ignore the fact that you are in the crosswalk. They are not going to stop. Ever. But they are going to dodge you, as long as you walk when there’s space in front of you and never step back. Try to follow someone who’s doing that the first times.
The temples
My taxi driver took me to visit some temples. Most of them are Buddhist temples called Pagoda. They are all around the city, and you can recognise them easily due to the pyramid like roofs, the bright colours, and the incredible detailed decorations and statues. You can often find people praying there at any time of the day. They buy a bunch of long incense sticks, light them, and then they bow multiple times in front of the many statues in the temple.
It’s important to take your shoes off in the temples, but they are really clean. Indeed, most of the time you’ll find brooms and detergents near statues, stairs or terraces of the temples. That’s something that really stuck with me, since we usually hide cleaning tools from visitors. While I found it strange at the beginning, I then realised how we care way too much about appearances. It’s way more important to have a clean, nice place to go praying than not seeing all those tools.
One thing that I really loved about Vietnam is how lots of people started conversations with me just for the sake of it. They are really curious and they try to improve their English (not that I could teach much). Mostly, they liked to tell me about all the Italian soccer teams they knew.
The war museum
The following day I visited the war museum. That war museum. It was an enlightening experience. We didn’t study too much about the war during high school, and most of my knowledge came from Hollywood movies. Looking at the war with their eyes, looking at the experiments and torture that happened during the war, was shattering. Most of those weren’t much different from what they tell about Nazi’s ones, but there wasn’t any Norimberga process for this war.
Vietnamese people aren’t bitter about this though. People and guides in the museum weren’t saying anything bad about the war, they just wanted the museum to be a testimony to avoid that similar things to happen in the future. On the other hand, I had an interesting conversation around the damage that has been done to the environment and the population. Damage that has still impact on the economy. For example, Agent Orange damages DNA, and it’s transmitted to younger generations. Due to that, they need assistance from the government. So there are kids nowadays that are still paying the consequences of the war, because their grandparents where fighting in it. Compensations are given to American veterans who were affected by the agent, but none is recognised to the local population. On this point, I’d like to clarify that I think both Americans and Vietnamese soldiers where victims of the experiments of using chemicals as a weapon.
Walking through the city: the street
After an upsetting visit to the museum that left me quite sad, about that war and all the wars that are still happening, I walked around the city without a clear destination. Walking randomly like made me discover all the typical routine of the local people, all those little things that make you fall in love with a country.
The main sensation was heat and humidity, followed by the noise of hordes of motorbikes travelling through the city. Streets were quite big, and the ones that led to important buildings were sided by huge trees. The dimension of the trees was astonishing. I don’t think I have seen trees that tall in Italy. Most of the streets have smaller trees and long pols that held big black cables, often knotted around the poles.
Houses were mostly narrow but tall. Some skyscrapers, really old buildings and brand new hotels. Really narrow roads led to the older, really small houses that were hidden within those taller buildings. Most of the time, workers are working on them, at 2–3 store high without any ladder nor protection.
Along the streets, you always find people selling drinks, mostly water and coconuts that they cut so that you can drink its water. The flavour is much different from the one that you find in the supermarket, and is incredibly refreshing. You can also find street food such as samosa, Vietnamese buns, and some other fried tasty things which names I couldn’t understand.
On the whole 10 days of my trip, I saw only one beggar. It’s not well accepted in their culture, and hence most of the people on the streets sell stuff they make: food, hand made flutes, drawings, etc. Poorest people sell national lottery tickets.
I loved how people were eating at any time of the day, on small tables on the sidewalks. The tables and the chairs were made of plastic and really little, almost as a kid play-set. The food offered in these open air street restaurants is Pho, a typical dish similar to the better known Ramen. Pho can contains chicken or beef, and herbs (mints, lemongrass, chives, ..) and chili are served on the side for you to season it as you like it.
The city centre
Another Europe-like area is the district where the main theatre (the beautiful Opera House) and the city hall are. There one can find the hotels were war journalist used to stay during the infamous war (hotel Continental and Rex). In this district, it almost seems to be in Paris.
From the city hall, it’s passible to walk to one of Mekong tributary river, through a really large street, not available to cars.
In front of the city hall, a statue dedicated to Ho Chi Minh looks to the river. It’s surrounded by lovely flower beds, making a great place to hang out. Indeed, it’s not rare that some locals come to you to talk and practice their English. In that period of the year, I was one of the rare people that looked clearly European, so it happened quite a lot. I have to say that I really enjoyed talking to locals like that.
Streets perpendicular to the big street in front of the city hall are filled with discotheques and pubs. For example, we visited a whiskey bar popular among Japanese business man, and the ironic “Apocalypse Now”, a disco bar where you are welcomed by a big surfboard owned by a certain Charlie :).
The zoo
An interesting visit in the city, in particular if you are travelling with the family, is the zoo. The zoo is surrounded by trees everywhere. I felt like I was in a jungle. The trees are amazingly tall, and they create a great view, where you almost forget you are in an almost 9 million people city.
It’s possible to eat in the zoo. You can find street food such as pre-cut mango seasoned with salt and chilli peppers (when I saw it I was a little “WTF is this”, but it’s actually delicious). For lunch I got a really cheap but tasty Pho. I have one suggestion though. If you are not used to spicy food (as I am), please don’t underestimate spiciness of Vietnamese chilly. With pho (by the way, the portion is HUGE), you typically have spices and herbs on a side, and I thought two teaspoons of chilly would be just right. I kind of felt like a cartoon, with a red face and my head just about to explode. I didn’t want to leave it, since the people that helped me were so nice, so I ate almost all of it. I think I kind of know now how people feel when they say they are on fire.
During my zoo visit, I had one of those cuteness overload feeling when a group of young kids where following their teacher around. In order to make sure they didn’t get lost, they used a blue rope whit some yellow plastic rings attached, that kids where holding.
Making friends
Another great “it doesn’t look I am in the city” park is the Le Van Tam park. I wanted to stay there for a 30-min rest, but ended up spending the whole afternoon with a group of super nice high schoolers. They were looking for tourists to practice their English, and started talking (some where too shy and just listened) about their traditional food, their traditions, holidays, weather in Vietnam and Japanese anime (somehow I can’t hide my nerdiness, sorry-not-sorry). They even gifted me with a folding fan and a black and white guide to survive in Saigon, with English-to-Vietnamese words. I wasn’t able to reproduce some of the Vietnamese sounds, but the writing used our alphabet. Even without ideograms, it was quite difficult.
Tay Ninh
I spent two days in organised trips, that one can easily book in the city centre. In the first one I visited Tay Ninh, a small city similar to Vatican, in the sense that the biggest caodaism church is built there, and it’s used for their religious events. In the same trip, I then visited a Viet Cong camp.
Tay Ninh is a small walled city where a colourful church and priests homes are built. Everything it’s extremely colourful, in particular using blue, red and yellow, that represents the three pillars of caodaism. The eye of the god Cao Đài (similar to the eye of providence) looks at the followers of the religion from many different decorations.
Cu Chi Tunnels
After visiting Tay Ninh, the guide took us to the Cu Chi Tunnels, some of the remaining tunnels used by Viet Cong during the infamous Vietnam war. Weapons and camps of Viet Cong are simulated there, and guides explain the tactics and tricks used by Viet Cong.
It’s also possible to try the food used during the war: Tapioca roots, one of the few type of food available during the war.
Part of the tour consists on walking inside one of the biggest of those tunnels, that is incredibly humid and hot. Most of them are use too small to walk through, since they were built to crawl on them.
While vegetations during thee war was hiding those tunnels, it has since then completely changed due to Napalm, according to my guide.
The Must Do: Mekong Delta
If you have time to do one thing in Saigon, this is the organised trip you need to attend: one entire day on the Mekong delta.
The program of the day comprehend a stop in four of the mainMekong delta island. Those island are famous for their honey, coconut and clothes. This area is clearly more poor than the city, and often along the canals one can find huts where people live.
The confusion of the city is substituted by bright and colourful boats, some as smalls as canoe for the narrower river. During the trip, we moved using both big boats and canoe, as in the picture.
Food there was DELICIOUS. You could find honey, honey-sweets, coconut, coconut-sweets (sticky tasty squared sweets), fish and rice paper for the Vietnamese rolls. I tried cooking rolls at home, but it’s impossible to find a thin, tasty rice paper. It was also possible to see how they cooked all these things.
We had our lunch on one of the island, where we had a tasty fish and this particular ball of rice, empty on the inside. It was super sticky but I had half of it on my own, since it was so good! You could chose your drink between the famous Tiger beer and coconut water from a real coconut. I do suggest to try the coconut, it was way more tasty than the one you can find in the city.
You could buy sweets as well as clothes (one of the best bluse I have, I regret so much buying just one) and pickled snakes (not sure why I would want that).
As much as I loved food, it wasn’t the only great thing there. The scenery is gorgeous, so peaceful while rowing through it on the canoe. I always wonder what locals would think of our crazy restless world.
Conclusion
Finally, I’d love to thanks all the people that contributed to the trip, as well as all people who read through this. I didn’t write down everything (it’s already too much), but I do hope I made you a little bit willing to go to this amazing place. This was one of my favourite travel ever, and love to go back again, maybe visiting some North Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. If you are lucky enough to go, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, and fell in love with this place.
Originally published in Italian at http://lacittanascosta.com on November 17, 2018.
