Our local guide and driver
picked us up at 8:00, so we had an early start, which gave us a little bit of a
jump on the heat, but not much. We drove
through heavily treed areas with a couple of beautiful parks; the French
influence persists! In one large park,
there were many school children, most in uniform, despite the fact that it was
Sunday morning. They were there for
phys-ed, a normal part of their Monday to Saturday school week, but our guide
explained that these students' busy weekday schedules didn't allow time for the
required exercises. (School here is
split session; students attend either in the morning or the afternoon.)
Our first stop was the War
Remnants Museum, also full of teenaged students. This was another place where the propaganda
was piled on thick and deep. Captured
tanks, planes, helicopters, and armaments were displayed outdoors like
trophies. One building had been a prison
where the Imperialist Americans and French had killed and tortured (in ways
graphically depicted) the proud Vietnamese patriots. Elsewhere, the exhibits focused on the use
and effects of Agent Orange, the My Lai massacre, and worldwide peace
demonstrations. Not a place meant to make
one feel comfortable, and we were tempted to find and display Canadian flags.
We visited the Cathedral of
Notre Dame and the Post Office, originally built by the French at the end of
the 19th century as the train station.
Then, it was on to the former Presidential Palace, now the Reunification
Palace. Formerly the home of the American-backed
Presidents Diem and Thieu, the breaching of its gates by North Vietnamese tanks
in 1975 signaled the victory of the North.
State rooms, living quarters, and underground bunkers were all part of
the tour.
We did a little shopping at the
Ben Thanh Market. The vendors were as
tightly packed and aggressively marketing their wares as they'd been
yesterday. Cries of, "What are you
looking for?" and "I have your size!" followed us everywhere.
Our guide took us to a
restaurant where we had banh xeo (I think!), a huge crepe-like dish made of
seasoned yellow rice flour fried and folded over vegetables and shrimp. There were other unfamiliar but delicious
courses, with the grand finale a flaming pot of broth in which was stewing
strips of pig stomach, the usual assortment of vegetables, greens, rice noodles
and sauces came with it. Suffice it to
say that, should we ever experience a rubber shortage, I've found a substitute!
We cooled off a bit at the
hotel, then took a cab to Chinatown, where we wandered through the market, a
large part of which is sort of a wholesale distribution center. We've never
seen so many shoes in our lives! The
heat and humidity were beginning to get to us, so we left Chinatown without
really exploring the area and took a cab back up to the large, shady park we'd
seen this morning. We had a nice walk,
encountered a small group of dancers, and stopped to visit a vividly decorated
Hindu temple.
By mid-afternoon, we
surrendered to the heat, grabbed a couple of cold ones at a small market, and
headed back to the hotel to recharge.
When we were ready to face the
heat, we headed in search of dinner to the streets adjacent to the Ben Tranh
Market, where we'd seen the night market and outdoor restaurants set up in the
street last night. That lively scene was
no more, so we figured it must have been just a Saturday night event and chose
one of the many nearby restaurants. By
the time we emerged, the street had been transformed; the market stalls had
been set up and stocked, the hawkers were hawking, the grills at the
restaurants were afire, the tables were filling up and, through it all, the
motorcycles threaded! Evidently, at the
stroke of 7:00 pm, the scramble begins -- every night! We'll be back...
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