Vietnam - Day 1 - Ho Chi Minh | Main | Vienam - Day 3 - Ho Chi Minh City
Today we got up about 8.30 and went down for the hotel buffet breakfast which is actually excellent if a little expensive by Viet standards (200,000 VND per person or about $15 AUD), we then bravely followed the Lonely Planet instructions for a 7 hour walk right around district 1, taking in the Fine Arts Museum, which is a remarkable building (if a little shambolic) and an interesting representation of art through the ages, with some china, sculpture and various styles of ink, paint and laquer on some kind of canvas.
Eve buying Rambutan's from a street vendor
Walking on from there we found a tiny street Nguyen Thai Binh which featured small antique stores, but a quick point of context. Saigon is a bit like Melbourne, lots of tupperware communities - all of the watch sellers are together, the people who fix and sell shoes have a street, as will various other groups, the logic seems that by bringing the businesses to the same location you can compete on service, quality, price, merchandise but you know that the buyers are coming to you?? or maybe I have it wrong and they are all just a little lazy.
It was blisteringly hot and humid today about 33c and 200% humidity which, when you are walking quite a long way tends to take it out of you - so we stopped in at a Hindu Temple for a break from the heat and saw some amazing tilework, then we continued around the corner for lunch at the lovely Continental Hotel which has a beautiful colonial courtyard in the centre - we enjoyed a couple of beers and some fine soup and noodles - quite delicious.
The power lines here have to be seen to be believed
After lunch we walked and walked up past the GPO and the Notre Dame Cathedral and all the way to the botanical gardens and Zoo which also houses a lovely Pagoda Temple and the History Museum - another fantastic building with a moderately interesting and badly curated collection. This seems to be the trend, that the lack of funds for the collection and small entry fees means that little restoration or even presentation has been completed. While we were at the History Museum we saw the Water Puppets well worth it but a bit weird when you pay to enter the park (7,000 VND) then to enter the museum (7,000 VND) and then the puppets ($2USD) the complete cost ends up being the equivalent of $4 AUD - not much money but you need to be ready to constantly have your hands in your pocket. And as soon as you do that someone is there to sell you a bottle of water, a postcard or shine your shoes.
amazing snakes with pointy noses - the man was not happy that I took this picture!
We walked back from the puppets along past the dock area, jumping rats avoiding the chaotic traffic (my favorite was two guys on a scooter, one holding an enormous model plane) and up to the hotel Majestic which I had originally tried to get us into on Dong Khoi over looking the river. They have a great roof top bar where you can quietly observe the chaos below including the river chaos while enjoying your beer, we rested up there for a while, lost in watching three ferries constantly crossing back and forth across the river loaded with scooters.
There is little rubbish on the streets due to the army of street cleaners like this one
From the majestic we walked home but not before chancing the lucky plaza, where Eve bought some phone bling and I bought my first fake watch (a montblanc - very nice!), we made it back to the hotel past the street where they sell small diesel generators, the alley where they cut mens hair, and the street where they repair watches.
Dinner was our first real street food vendor, a quick note on this - every where you go in HCM there is someone selling food, from a Cyclo, Bike, or on a Yoke, the pavements are improvised cafe's, restaurants and tea houses - some offer bowls and chopsticks, others simply a plastic bag of food. So we went to experience the night market, which converts at dusk to a maze of street restaurants.. It is quite amazing to see how this is all put up and pulled down every evening the kitchen the tables everything. We picked a place which looked good and had a fantastic meal, 3 courses and beer for about $10 for both of us.
Posted by crispin at December 22, 2007 11:19 AM