Goodnight, Saigon.

We returned to Saigon from the Mekong Delta at around 3:00 pm. If you recall, on the previous day, I had gone out drinking early in the afternoon. Because of this I hadn’t had a chance to see many of the sights in Saigon, like the Reunification Palace or the War Atrocities Museum. I thought I’d take advantage of our final afternoon in Saigon and do that.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid schemes of mice and men. When we returned to Ho Chi Minh City, a couple of guys decided that on such a beautiful afternoon, it would be a good idea to go to an outdoor café and have a few beers. I couldn’t really find anything wrong with that idea, so I decided to join them. Knowing that we had things to do in the evening, this meant that my sightseeing opportunities in Ho Chi Minh City had come to an unfruitful end. (Because of this, I’m including some random photos of Saigon that somebody else took. Hope you enjoy them because I have no better photos to add for this entry.)

After some drinks, we met with the people in our group that is going on the final leg of the group tour that I’m doing. Other than two departures and two new folks, the group is completely identical as the Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City group. We went through the formalities of insurance and visas and then we went on to dinner.

Sadly, my final meal in Vietnam turned out to be a Western meal because that was the nature of the restaurant where we ate. That wasn’t a problem, though, because I’m pretty sure that I had had enough rice noodles to feel that I hadn’t wasted my opportunity to try the local cuisine in Vietnam. The most interesting part of dinner was the various people who came over to try and sell us things, particularly books. One woman was selling a bunch of Lonely Planet travel books. The guy sitting across from me bought one for Cambodia, bargaining the price down from US$15 to US$3. It was really interesting to see how the market was set because other people in the group also wanted to buy some travel books. The seller had lost of lot of her negotiating ability because she had already set the price at US$3, so when I tried to buy two books for six dollars and she started by asking for twelve, all I had to do was point at the guy in front of me and say, “he only paid three for his, so that’s all I’m going to pay, “ and then refuse to budge from that price. Needless to say, I bought my two books for six dollars.

That pretty much was it for my trip to Ho Chi Minh City. I sincerely regret not taking an opportunity to get around the city more and seeing some of the museums and governmental buildings. As was the case in Shanghai and Hong Kong, I think another day or two in Saigon would have been beneficial. When I start planning my next trip to Southeast Asia, another visit to Saigon definitely will be high on my list of places to go.

Touring The Mekong Delta

Our second day in Ho Chi Minh City, actually our only full day in Ho Chi Minh City, wasn’t really spent in Ho Chi Minh City for the most part. Instead, we left early in the morning to do a brief tour of the Mekong Delta.

According to our tour guide, the Mekong River is the fifth-longest river in the world, starting in China and traveling through Nepal, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and emptying out into the Pacific Ocean in Vietnam. All I really knew about the Mekong Delta is that it is often mentioned in Vietnam shows and movies. As beautiful as it was, it didn’t look like it would be a pleasant place to fight a war.

The trip started with a two-hour bus ride to a little town that serves as an entrance to the delta for tourists. There were souvenir shops everywhere as well as boats for hire to venture into the area. We already had a boat rented, so we went directly there and started on our journey through the delta.

We stopped at one of the largest islands in the area, which has been converted into a tourist stop. The star attraction on the island is the ability to watch the villagers make coconut candy (there were coconut palms everywhere on the island), from husking the coconut to the final stages. There also was a chance to sample some of the local wines and I had banana wine, coconut wine and snake wine. For the record, the snake wine was the best. The highlight of the island for me, though, was being able to hold an eight-foot python and to get my picture taken with the big dude.

From this island, it was time to head to the rowboats, though we didn’t do the actual rowing. We took about a 20-minute rowboat cruise down the river to a second island. The trip was hot and sticky and all I could think of the entire time was Apocalypse Now. I kept an eye out for Charlie, but I’m pretty sure I was safe the entire time. On the second island, we had lunch, which included fish egg rolls, soup and a few other items. We finished it off with a shot of honey wine, which I found to be a little too sweet, albeit tasty.

After lunch, we went on a little tour of the island in a cart seating six people that was hooked to the back of a motorbike. We had helmets, but the ride did seem a bit treacherous as we were going down narrow roads at a moderate speed and had to constantly be on the lookout for low hanging palm tree branches and electrical wires. We didn’t see a hell of a lot and I’m not sure what the purpose of it was except to demonstrate how the safety laws in everybody’s native country were inconsistent with those of Cambodia. Whatever, though. It was a fun-enough way to kill an hour or so.

We hopped back on the boat and returned to the little tourist town from which we started the trip. From there, it was a three-hour return by bus to Saigon – longer on the return trip because of the traffic. I think that I may have about 600 words left to say about Ho Chi Minh City, so I’ll try to finish it up in my next post.

Take Me Down To The Ho Chi Minh City

Okay, where was I. When I last posted, I was just arriving in Saigon at around six in the morning. From there, we went to the hotel in which we were staying but, because it was so early, we could not yet check in. Instead, we just dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are the system of underground tunnels dug by the Viet Cong underneath the heavy clay in the Cu Chi area to the west of the Mekong Delta. It took a couple of hours to bus there. Once we got to the area, there were a couple of opportunities to go inside some tunnels, including crawling about 100 meters across and ten meters down into a tunnel. Personally, I can’t even sit in a window seat of an airplane because of my claustrophobia – and from the expressions that I saw on the faces of those who actually made the crawl, I think I made the right decision. It is absolutely amazing, though, that these tunnels could be built and that thousands of people actually could live in them during the Vietnam War.

Another display at the Cu Chi Tunnels demonstrated various booby traps that the Vietnamese set for the Americans during the Vietnam War. Many of them involved bamboo or steel spikes and were of the kind that you could see if you watched the Green Berets or various other Vietnam War movies. (I only mention Green Berets because I think it may be the worst war movie ever made.) There also was a firing range in which some people were firing off M-16s and AK-47s. At $1.25 per round, I decided to opt out of that particular experience, but those who did it enjoyed it.

We came back to the hotel and then I got a call from a friend of a friend who lives in Ho Chi Minh City and wanted to meet up. We walked around Saigon for a little while, including a trip to another memorial set up for a monk who cremated himself on the sidewalk in Saigon in 1963. Afterwards, we went to a little roadside bar that I liked because there were no other white folks in it. We had some beer and he taught me a little about Vietnam and we had some conversations with folks at other tables. Things started to get a little awkward when my new friend’s 18-year old boy toy showed up, but it was still fun. Around 9:00, I headed back to my hotel looking for dinner and a nightcap.

As I was walking on the sidewalk, up the street from my hotel, I felt somebody rubbing my arm. I was startled and first and turned around. It was a woman on a motorbike. On the sidewalk. She asked me if I wanted a massage and if I had a room. I politely declined her proposition, even though she was gorgeous, and went into a restaurant for dinner.

As I entered the restaurant, there were two couples dining and so I went to the third table in the restaurant. I ordered a beer and some dinner and around the time the beer arrived, the couples finished their meals and left. The waitress asked if I would mind moving up a few tables, so I did. At this point, I was the only person eating in the restaurant and I had four waitresses standing a few feet from my table because they had nothing else to do and no other customers to serve. It made me eat a little faster and stop after the second beer.

I left the restaurant to return to my hotel. As I got to the street on which my hotel was located, I felt – you guessed it – somebody rubbing my right forearm. Less startled this time, I turned around. It was yet another woman, more beautiful than the last, on another motorbike on the same street who was inquiring about my desire for a good massage. I politely declined once again and decided that I had better get to my hotel soon, while I still had the willpower to decline these invitations.

That was my first day in Saigon. I only had two, so we’ll get to the other one in the next post.