Ho Chi Minh City

Matt and I just got back from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam. It was a good weekend. Matt went to Hong Kong, Hannoi and HCMC for work, and I hitched along for the last part.

HCMC is nuts. It is a city of about 8m people, and apparently there are between 3 and 5 million motorcycles. My second day there I had spent hours walking around, and I was exhausted. I could not handle crossing one more street. The crosswalk has no effect on any of the motorcycles, so it is QUITE a fight just to cross the street. There was one intersection where it took ten minutes, and at one point very near the end, I was caught in grid lock, and I was literally pushing people's motorcycles off of my feet and yelling at them to just let me walk across the street.

Apparently the food is supposed to be amazing there. Somehow we didn't really find that food.

I went to see the Cu Chi tunnels, which is where there was a lot of guerrilla fighters fought the US and S. Vietnam and defeated them. They had a whole system of 220 km of tunnels so they could live underground and not get killed. We got in a car accident on the way there, so we were delayed. There must be thousands of accidents each day. The driving was NUTS (no joke).

I also went to a museum called the War Remnants Museum. Basically it just showed how we totally messed up their country - from how we treated civilians to the gases we used and how they made thousands of people bear children with deformities, to how those same gases totally destroyed all of the trees and growth in certain areas. It showed the weapons we used. It was really terrible. We really messed up this country. It reminds me of Iraq a lot.

I went to another anti-American exhibit in another museum too. When someone asked where I was from I was temped to say "Singapore," but I thought they might be suspicious, so instead I whispered "USA."

Matt and I went on a Mee Kong River Delta tour yesterday. It was the most touristy thing I have ever done, but we did get to see the Mee Kong, and it's a big river (third longest in Asia) and has a lot of economy flowing from it. It goes through China, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, and I think even Thailand. One anti-highlight for me was this "row boat" ride that we took from one tourist attraction to a tourist boat. For a second I thought it was cool, and even pretty, but then we started passing the same boats coming back in our direction without passengers. EACH person paddling the boat (there were two on each - and we saw over 20 boats for sure) said, "Give money" or "tip money" letting us know that we should be sure to tip the people taking us on the river. It was SO annoying, though, that it was every few seconds, and it was really impossible to enjoy the ride. We had planned on tipping more when we got in the boat. After all of that we gave less. If you're ever talking to me on the phone (or even in person!), ask me what it sounded like. The voices added to the annoyingness of the experience, and I'm happy to do an impression.

I thought it would look more like Cambodia than it did. In Cambodia, the houses were on stilts, and in Vietnam they were not. The people were way less poor and simple in Vietnam. They actually wear those bamboo rice harvesting hats - really a lot of people wear them!

Overall, HCMC was great. It had quite a vibe and LOTS of energy. People were generally nice, and getting around was easy (other than crossing streets). We would be happy to go explore other parts of Vietnam - in fact I think we will for sure.

The airport was terribly annoying. I don't know if this is the result of it being a new airport or because it's a communist country, but they only had one choice of cafe/restaurant to get food, and a sandwich with a piece of cheese (ONLY!) was $7 US!!! A bao that costs $.50 Sing (about $.33 US) and even less in Vietnam cost $5 US! I couldn't deal with paying that much, so though I was in the airport for most of today, I chose to not eat for nine hours because I'm stubborn (and cheap).

We came back to Singapore (Matt in Singapore Airlines business class, and me on the budget jet), and unfortunately the kitty (who remains nameless to me, but one of the kids in the complex told me is named snowball) has a problem with her mouth. It looks like she has some sort of infection or something. Hopefully she will feel better soon. She's a sweet one (but I don't love her - don't worry).