Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi-Minh City

I've finally gotten around to posting my pictures of Vietnam from my Chinese New Year vacation!

Although my trip technically began in Hanoi, I only spent one day there before flying south (eventually making my way back up there by the end of my trip), so I've decided instead to start with Ho Chi Minh and the South.

Upon arriving in Ho Chi Minh, the first thing that really struck me was the weather. Right as I had left Taiwan, much of Southern Asia had been hit with a serious wave of cold weather. On the day I left Taipei, locals were excitedly talking about the first snowfall on the neighbouring Yangmingshan in years and my five hour wait in Macau Airport on my way to Vietnam essentially felt like sitting outside in 4 degrees (with no outerwear), thanks to huge glass windows and lack of heating there. The cold weather held up in Hanoi, where it was apparently the coldest it had been in decades and also drizzling with rain.

However, the south of Vietnam is known for it's year round tropical weather and I was greeted by blue skies and temperatures in the high twenties for the first time in months. It made for a pretty nice change. 

Ho Chi Minh City itself is a pretty hectic city with seemingly few to no traffic laws and a constant hum of scooter engines with the constant sound of honking horns. For a nominally communist country, capitalism was alive and well with hundreds of hawkers on every street trying to sell you travel tours, or offer you a motorbike taxi ride (all at massively inflated prices of course). I stayed in the central district in the backpacker area, which seemed to be exclusively inhabited by tourists (particularly of the South East Asia backpacker type) and the people trying to sell them things. The streets were lined with spas, overpriced restaurants, travel agencies and hostels. This all led to a pretty negative first impression of Ho Chi Minh, which really felt a world away from the Vietnam that most people actually live in.

Fortunately, my second day helped changed this impression a little as I started to explore outside the area by my hostel. It quickly became apparent that once you left the main streets of the centre, local life became alive and thriving, with almost no tourists in sight. After a failed exploration to find a restaurant I'd read in my guide book (this became a recurring theme, thanks in part to the confusing streets of the city and also the impermanent nature of many of the street stalls and restaurants), I ended up settling at a small street stall that sold a thick congee, sprinkled with herbs and free sausage, along with some fried dough sticks (which I know as youtiao, but are apparently called quẩy  in Vietnam) which the owners of the restaurant repeatedly reminded me to dip into the porridge (even though I was doing just that). 

I then headed back toward the more touristy area to the War Remnants Museum (previously known as the Museum of American Atrocities). 

The museum gave details of the build up to and reasons for the war, with frequent references to the American imperialists and the southern 'puppet army'. People frequently talk about how 'history is written by the victors' and the pro-government bias was inevitably pretty unsubtle. However, it was really interesting to see the historical perspective from a country who won against America in a war, and their framing of it. After the background details of the war, the museum mostly focused on the impact of warfare on the country and it quickly became apparent why the museum had previously been called the museum of 'American atrocities'. Along with the expected bombing of cities and towns, the museum also focused heavily on the chemical warfare used on the country. I knew very little about this but it talked about 'Agent Orange' a kind of herbicide used to destroy plants in the jungles where the Viet Cong were able to avoid detection and wreak havoc on American troops. 72 million litres of it were sprayed over the course of the war which resulted in the destruction of 16% of the wildlife in Southern Vietnam. The main focus of the exhibition was the impact of the chemicals on people and the room was essentially filled with photos of people who had severe deformations as a result. These apparently have carried on for generations, with children born to people exposed to agent orange missing limbs and fingers, suffering form severe brain abnormalities or having other serious congenital deformations. The whole experience was really heavy going and upsetting and had me leaving feeling pretty upset about the whole thing.

Outside the museum, there were some recreations of prisons used during the war as well as some large scale model US airplanes and helicopters.

A guillotine left over from the French colonisation of Vietnam.

These are known as 'tiger cages' and were used by the French in the 1940s. They were used to hold prisoners (who would have to lie down and remain absolutely still to avoid the barbed wire). Prisoners were beaten with sticks and sprinkled with quick lime and water which burned their skin and caused blindness. 

Just as my visit was coming to an end, the museum announced they were closing for lunch time and we were ushered out of the compound. I had read a little about a woman known as the 'lunch lady', a local street food celebrity who was made famous to international visitors by Anthony Bourdain. The walk here again took me away from the more heavily touristy areas and gave me a much greater appreciation for the city.

Along the way, I passed hundreds of signs referring either to the communist party or displaying the Roman numerals of the number 12. Apparently the government was in the process of it's election (where new leaders are chosen by party officials behind closed doors) while I was there, and as a result, government posters were on display in full force.

I finally found the lunch lady restaurant which was tucked away in a really pretty boulevard in the backstreets of the city. Like most street food places it consisted of a little vendor stand and a bunch of small plastic chairs and tables. The area was incredibly peaceful and scenic and really contrasted to the busier roads in the centre.

 

When I sat down, I was immediately brought a number of different dishes. Apparently the lunch lady herself only makes the soup, and the other dishes are made by the nearby vendors and given to tourists so we spend more. However, I didn't begrudge this and happily ate everything brought to me as I still hadn't sampled much Vietnamese food and the total price still only added up to about 4 US dollars. My meal consisted of chicken and mushroom noodle soup, fresh spring rolls, prawns fried in batter with sweet chilli sauce and some really deep fried crab spring rolls. Full doesn't quite describe how I felt by the end.

The Lunch Lady (in the dark blue I think?) working away.

After the lunch lady, I headed to the Independence Palace which used to be home to the Southern Vietnamese government during the war.

The museum preserved all the different rooms used by heads of state and government officials during the war and was a nice snapshot of that period of Vietnam.

You could walk through the underground bunkers as well as this room which was used to train soldiers with Viet Cong targets.

My finally stop for the day was the Ho Chi Minh City of Fine Arts. The museum consists of a beautiful colonial style building from 1929 and had multiple floors of contemporary Vietnamese art. The setting of the museum was really relaxing and informal and it was the perfect place to just wander around and take everything in.

Much of the art in the museum was influenced by the Vietnamese war.

The next day, I had a lazy morning where I made my way to a bus station which could take me to the Mekong Delta, my next destination.

The streets of Ho Chi Minh were filled with cafes that had chairs and tables spilling onto the streets and looking out to the roads. I decided to stop for an iced Vietnamese coffee with plenty of condensed milk.

I also passed this caged rooster who was later given more context by a local. Apparently cockfighting is illegal in Vietnam, but the government turns a blind eye to it during the Tet Holiday (Lunar New Year). Accordingly, I saw dozens of roosters in small cages as well as some having practice fights in preparation for Tet.

Soon I'd found the general area of the bus station I was looking for. After asking about five different people (all of whom were incredibly friendly despite my lack of Vietnamese and their lack of English) , I eventually found the bus station who seemed to be familiar with the homestay I was planning to stay at in the Delta and even called my host to let him know my time of arrival.

Within the next hour I was on my bus journey out of the city and headed toward the Delta.