Good Morning Vietnam!

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City last night after traveling for over 24 hours. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. My Thai Airlines flight from New York to Bangkok had an on demand entertainment system on the back of the seat in front of you. You could select from about 25 different movies, watch episodes of popular television shows, play video games, or listen to music. I watched 4 movies on the way over and played a little video blackjack to pass the time. With all the entertainment and the food they kept bringing, the flight really didn’t seem that long. When I finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, I made my way through customs and headed outside of the airport to find Courtney, Rachel, and Jason waiting for me. We all climbed into a taxi and headed off for Rachel and Jason’s apartment.

The cab ride provided my first look at all the moterbikes on the streets. They’re everywhere, and they seem to be coming from all directions. The cab we were in was being passed by bikes on both sides and the driver seemed to just be constantly honking the horn so the motercycle drivers knew he was there. There were bikes even coming at us down the “wrong” side of the road. I guess in Vietnam there is no wrong side of the road though.

Within about 10 to 15 minutes, we arrived at Rachel and Jason’s apartment building. I had to check in at the front desk and let them make a copy of my passport. Then we stepped into the convenience store located in the lobby of their building, and Courtney and Rachel bought three bottles of red wine. I guess the store was having a special – buy two bottles get one free. They had a hard time finding three bottles of red because they had taken advantage of the same deal the day before. Rachel managed to find one hidden behind one of the other bottles, and we headed upstairs. We spent the night enjoying some of the wine, and much to Courtney’s delight, playing a Karaoke game on their Playstation 2. I had my first taste of Dragon fruit. Its pink on the outside and shaped somewhat like an oversized pear with parts curving off of the sides of it. Inside it’s white with black seeds running throughout and looks somewhat like Cookies n’ Cream ice cream. It was good. It sort of tasted like a less sweet version of watermelon. At some point I actually went to bed.

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM! This morning I was the last one to wake up. I probably could of slept all day if Courtney hadn’t woken me up. The plan for the day was to see the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum. We got ready and headed off for breakfast. Before we left the apartment building I exchanged some US money for the local currency. I changed out $60 and thought I had won the lottery when she gave me the Vietnamese money. It was over 900000 Dong!

For breakfast we went to a nice little restaurant that served crepes. It was quite good. I had one stuffed with mozzerella, tomatoes, spinich, and mushrooms in a cream sauce with my morning dose of caffiene. After breakfast we decided to take a taxi over to the Jade Emperor Pagoda.



I’m still not sure what this place was. I’ll have to look it up in one of the guide books when I have a free moment. From what I can gather though it was some sort of Buddhist temple. I was feeling kind of sick, though, as we made our way through it. It was filled with the smoke from incense that was burning in every one of the rooms. We went through it fairly quickly and snapped off a bunch of pictures along the way. Outside there was a pond filled with turtles some of which were dead and floating on the surface. We had seen a lady outside selling baby turtles and figured that people bought the turtles and tossed them into the pond as some kind of offering.

After the Jade Emperor Pagoda, we took a taxi to one of the markets to get a little shopping in before the Reunification Palace reopened after lunch. The market was huge. It reminded me of the ones I saw in Sydney and Melbourne. Vendors were setup selling anything you could imagine and some things you could never imagine. I’m not even sure what many of the food items for sale were, but I can assure you they wouldn’t ever be entering my mouth.

From the market we walked over to the Reunification Palace. Over the years, the building was occupied by the French, South Vietnamese, the French again, then again by South Vietnamese with the US, and in 1975 it was taken over by the North. I think that’s how it all happened. I was having trouble following our guide. Now it stands as a tourist attraction. On the lawn of the palace they have the two tanks the North used to break down the gates in 1975. Inside it was a bunch of rooms with chairs and tables in them. One room was a conference room, another a dining hall, upstairs there were more of the same. There was a movie theater, a library, and the President’s office. It felt a little like going to Graceland. The President’s office was decorated with stuffed Cheetahs and Jaguars or other such animals. They give you pretty much free regin of the place though, and we wandered around all four floors and the basement.

The next stop was the War Remnants Museum. I didn’t really know what to expect here. I had read the short blurb about the place in one of the guide books and knew that it was fairly anti-American, but I wasn’t sure how it would be depicted. The museum consisted primarily of photographs and military vehicles. There were six different areas filled with photographs, and by the end, I had seen enough. It was kind of hard to follow as well because all of the information written in English was printed in small type below the larger Vietnamese information. I think I stopped reading about halfway through and just looked at the photos, many of which were very graphic scenes from the war.
After the museum, we went back to Rachel and Jason’s apartment and took a little break before heading out again to dinner. Rachel and Jason took us to an all you can eat Brazilian barbeque restaurant called Au Lac do Brazil. They advertised 17 meats or some ridiculous number like that. The food was really good. The wait staff just kept coming up to our table with giant hunks of meat on skewers and cutting it off on to our plates. I ate at least 5 different animals tonight, but I think my favorite was actually the fried bananas and some green leafy vegetable sauteed with garlic. Following dinner we stopped for a drink at I-Box, one of the bars nearby Rachel and Jason’s apartment. It was the perfect ending to a great first day in Vietnam!