After spending yet another night in Kuala Lumpur airport we arrived in Saigon exhausted but psyched to be in Vietnam. We checked into a hotel that was recommended to us by Cameron and Nicole right in the thick of things in the Dong Khoi area. We have to agree with what we have heard from our fellow travelers in that Saigon is very loud, smoggy, hot/sticky, smelly and crazy, but it is a major city and it does have plenty of great qualities too. We really enjoyed our time there and we were able to take in a few sights, eat some great food plus visit the Mekong Delta.
Saigon is a city where tons of people move to in search of jobs and has a population of over 6.3 million people. It feels like it is literally bursting at the seams with people and traffic, most of which are motorbikes. Actually the city is known for the amount of motorbikes that crowd the streets at any hour of the day. When crossing the street as a pedestrian it is like taking your life in your hands every time. There are barely any street lights or stop signs, but miraculously the system of walking slowly into traffic works. It's like a sea of motorbikes parting for you... but the key is to walk slowly! In Saigon the average driver must be on alert at all times as people or other vehicles can appear in front of them at any time. It's some sort of organized chaos, and in most cases seems to work! Sometimes in heavy traffic the motorbikes will hop onto the sidewalk or even drive on the wrong side of the street to get where they are going. It isn't uncommon to see an entire family on one motorbike or someone carrying huge boxes or carrying a variety of other dangerous objects.
Hungry in Saigon
It seems that Saigon has put Andrew and me in a constant state of hunger or maybe it is a constant state of curiosity of the different types of food available. In Toronto we often go to Vietnamese restaurants, but here in Vietnam we are Novices because there are so many more dishes to choose from. We are so fascinated by the stalls on the street or the vendors in the markets that offer so many dishes only written in Vietnamese. We find Pho is a dish that you can always count on... the Vietnamese eat it at any time of the day. It is basically noodle soup with beef and you add your own veggies like mint leaves, lettuce or beansprouts to it. It also comes with a variety of condiments that can be added at your own discretion like fish sauce, soy, chilies etc. You can find Pho anywhere, there are street stalls on practically every street where you can get it, also you can order the dish in restaurants. When the weather is hot and sticky, soup actually cools you down and I find it is quite refreshing. I also find that the high you get from eating fresh chilies with Pho can't be explained. Even though it's not a pretty sight seeing sweat roll down our faces and off our brows it's worth it for the adrenaline that we experience. On one particular day after eating Pho for breakfast Andrew and I decided to go to the market and explore. Our curiosity got peeked as we pasted a vendor selling all different types of snails and shells. Andrew has been especially open to new foods during this trip, and decided that he wanted to try some shells. Not knowing what to order the vendor helped us decide on a plate of snails in coconut sauce and a few bigger ones grilled with dipping sauce. It was mildly weird as we sat in the middle of a market slurping them out of their shells. Not surprising... the snails were good! So good in fact that in that a few days we tried more snails and different shells.
The War Remnants museum & Reunification Palace
Although just sitting somewhere and watching life go by is very interesting for Andrew and me, we also enjoy seeing museums and other important things that the cities have to offer... even if we know it won’t be a particularly uplifting site.
The War Remnants museum is a place to show the atrocities the occurred to the Vietnamese people during and after the Vietnam War. On display are American tanks, bombs, weapons, planes and even a helicopter. There are horrific and terrible photos of women, men and children that had all fallen victim to the war. Not only are there pictures of devastating injuries but of tortures done by soldiers and awful deformities done by chemicals. It was graphic and brought knots to my stomach, but one of the worst things in the museum was the two unborn fetuses on display that they say were affected by Agent Orange, a potent chemical used by the Americans to spray over crops. There is a large section of the museum dedicated to showing the severe deformities and diseases that people contracted from the use of the chemical during the war and its affect after. There is also on display heart wrenching stories written by people who had lost family members during those times.
In Canada we have many immigrants from Vietnam and I can't believe that I knew so little about the history of their country. If you are interested to know more about Vietnam history, war or even Agent Orange I suggest to "google" it.
The Reunification Palace was interesting to visit we took a guided tour which explained the many rooms and what their function was. In the past the Palace sat the Southern Vietnamese government, until the first communist tanks arrived there in 1975 and crashed through the gates.
Scary bicycle taxi around the city
I'm not quite sure if the proper name for what I'm describing is "bicycle taxi", but I will describe it to you. There is a cyclist who peddles behind a small carriage; it is balanced by the weight of the cyclist vs. passenger(s).
We took a bicycle taxi around the city one day for an hour. It was interesting to see the city from a different perspective rather than on foot although the whole experience was a little frightening. The man peddling was smaller than me and assured us that he could ride with us (a heavy load of two Westerners) as mentioned earlier, the traffic in Saigon is crazy and our animated "driver" would peddle right onto oncoming traffic and barely slow down at red lights. At one point we even crossed a section of a highway. I discovered sometimes... it's better to close your eyes in Saigon.
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| Ho Chi Minh City - Saigon |
~Nicola
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