Luckily we were OK. He had berths available in first class. I pulled out my wad of Vietnamese Dong and started counting out the fare. It was pretty damn funny to hear a total of one million, two hundred and fifty thousand as a price for something. That tells you something about their currency in Vietnam, too many damn digits involved, kind of like the old Italian Lira. 1,250,000d was about $78, which is a really nice price for two berths in first class for that long of a train ride.
I was going to buy our tickets for the daytime train we planned to take from Hué to Hanoi the day after the first train but I forgot to take enough money with me. I wasn't too worried about that, though, because we only needed seats on that one anyway.
Travel arrangements for that day done I went back to the hotel and got ready for the day. The wife and I had breakfast at the hotel then headed out to the streets.
The traffic in Ho Chi Minh City, holy shit. Dealing with crossing the streets in Bangkok and Cambodia had seemed pretty hard up to this point, but now those looked like child's play in comparison. It is really hard to describe what it was like trying to cross the street in HCMC and really do it any justice. The best I was able to come up with is that it was like playing a real-life version of the old video game Frogger. On acid.
At least in Frogger the cars stayed in their lanes. Here you didn't know where they were heading as all the motorbikes and cars would dodge and weave to jump at any open space they found in the madness. It is also really hard to capture in still pictures.
(As I recently discovered, click on any picture in my Asia posts for a much bigger version)
It basically worked like this: When you came to an intersection, you just walked out into the traffic. OK, that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. We learned that you couldn't wait for an opening because one would never actually come. The few traffic lights they had in the city were not always heeded too closely. Many times we had to cross by huge roundabouts where the traffic would never cease. What we had to do was find an opening just in the lane next to the curb and step out. Then we would just slowly make our way across as cars and bikes sped by on both sides of us in each direction. There was a lot of faith involved; you just have to trust that they are going to go around you.
We found, as did a lot of other tourists, that a really good method was to stand right next to a local and just go when they go, sticking right next to them the whole way across. If they are from Saigon and still living they must know what they are doing.
We made our first stop of the day at the huge Ben Thanh Market right around the corner from our hotel. One of those huge Vietnamese markets where you can find anything and everything you want. At the outside walls you can find you fresh flowers and produce...
...and inside just about everything else. Somewhere in this area we bought peanut butter to be able to take with us on our train ride the next day.
We went deeper into the market and it was a maze of goods. Shoes, shirts, handicrafts, nick-knacks, luggage, jewelry, ceramics and just about everything else you could think of. Lisa wanted to buy an áo dài while we were in Vietnam so we kept on the lookout for those. It wasn't too long before we found them; they were in the áo dài section, naturally. The market, like most we would see in Vietnam, was set up kind of like New York with its districts for everything. You want flowers in New York you go to the flower district or for Indian food you hit one of the Indian rows. Or for those of you who watch The Simpson's if you want a hammock you go to the hammock district.
We paused slightly in front of one of the áo dài stalls and we got pounced on quickly, as was the standard method of operation if you stopped for a millisecond and looked mildly interested in something.
A pregnant woman at the stand had Lisa in the stall and was putting them on her in no time, ripping open packages and snapping on the áo dài. While I was standing there watching another woman kept trying to get me to look at stuff, and held up a Polo shirt. I tried to explain politely that I hated Polo and she brought something else that looked very American. At one point she grabbed me hard by the arm and pulled me over to her stand. I eventually wrested myself away from her stand since she had mostly American looking clothes so what would really be the point of that except for paying less than I do back home?
Lisa was almost done trying on áo dài and had picked out two different colors and both black and white versions of the pants that go under them. The pregnant woman looked at me and told me my wife had "perfect Vietnamese body" for wearing the áo dài.
We eventually made our way around to other shops and I picked up a Vietnamese flag t-shirt that I would find out later I paid too much for. Then we hit up a hat stall.
Even though we were in SE Asia Lisa wanted to look at winter hats, because she can never find any she likes back home for under $300.
I really needed a hat, too. Have I mentioned so far in these posts that the whole trip up to this pint has been really freaking hot and humid? Well it was. And really sunny. I already got a slight sunburn and I didn't have a good hat for being in this part of the world. I started looking at hats and trying them on. This stand had just an insane amount of hats sitting out and they had even more in another location, because every time I tried one on and wanted to know if they had it in a different size or color the girl would throw it to another girl who would run off and come back with more versions of the hat.
Lisa got herself something for the winter and I scored the best hat in the world. A perfect traveling hat with a great rim that had instant character the second I put it on.
From here on out almost all of the outdoor pictures of me on this trip will have me wearing the hat, much like this one:
It cost me a total of 30,000d, or about two bucks.
And some point during the trip I decided it might be a good idea to find some sandals. My feet were pretty hot in closed shoes while we were walking around and Chuck Taylor's aren't exactly the perfect walking shoe.
I saw a huge sandal/shoe stall and sat down to try some on.
After being told a couple of times that one I was looking at didn't come in my size I had to just ask which ones I could try on. I've got fairly large feet, but I guess for Vietnam I have monstrous feet.
The girl at the stand put a pair on me and really had to shove them so my heal was right up against the very back. My toes were literally hanging over the front of the sandals and she declared, "Fit perfect!"
I took a different point of view, figuring that having my socks off weren't going to make up the difference. She said that was the biggest one they sold so I moved on. This wouldn't be even close to the last time I failed at finding sandals on this trip.
We took our bounty from the market and dropped it in out hotel room. We only had today as our real full day in HCMC so we decided to follow one of the Lonely Planet's walking tours, with some variation. This took us to most of the major sights in one day.
We hit the War Remnants Museum at one point. A very interesting place to see as an American - the Vietnam War from the point of view of the winners. Most of the grounds of the museum were old fighter, tanks and artillery guns left behind by the American military. I won't really go into a whole detailed version of the tone of the museum but up until Clinton re-established diplomatic ties with Vietnam the name of it was the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. That really tells you all you need to know.
As we walked through the city we saw signs of the one-party state that seemed pretty obvious in what it was trying to say.
And other random weirdness.
As well as the People's Committee Building with the statue of "Uncle Ho" in the plaza across the street.
We walked a ton that day and ended the tour near the Jade Emperor Pagoda. We were going to hit it up but it was on the other side of a major road with about five lanes in each direction. We decided we had enough of crossing big, busy streets that day and we were getting hungry.
We walked a little ways on our way back to the backpacker area but it was taking too long so we hailed a cab. It was like a five minute ride and I had made the mistake of not getting the price in advance. To be fair, this was the one place we'd been that the guidebooks said that the taxis actually used meters so you didn't need to get the price.
When the guy pulled up to the curb he tried to tell us it was 200,000d ($13) even though the meter read 12,000d (<$1). We weren't about to be ripped off by a guy that was trying to charge us about double what it would cost for a cab in New York at the same distance. He changed his tune to 120,000d when I pointed out the meter, trying to convince us that there was an extra zero there. I argued with the guy and finally told him I would give him 20,000d and no more. He acted all pissed but took it anyway. Guy was idiot, though. We probably would have given him 50,000d if he was honest, because we'd been tipping that well the whole trip.
We hit a vegetarian restaurant on mini-hotel row in the backpacker district the stopped for dessert at the cafe in the fancy and Westernized New World Hotel on the way back. Got an apple tort and a mousse to go. Walking into our room after a day of sweating a lot I don't think air-conditioning has ever felt so damn good.
Next - Vietnam's railroad seems to have the same management as Amtrak
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