Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon):

February 22nd, 2005

Good Morning Vietnam - OK, had to get that out of the way! It was actually afternoon by the time we arrived here in Ho Chi Minh City (as it is officially recognized - and noted as HCMC) en route from Phnom Penh. What a relief it was to get out of Cambodia. Instantly, after crossing the border things looked cleaner, more organized, and the people much more friendly.

The people in Cambodia were just too physical for our liking. Not long before we left Phnom Penh, one kid put his hand on Jess's stomach and said, "Baby, you having baby, lady?" He then he tried to shove his hand in her pocket! I gave the little shit the lecture of a lifetime... unfortunately, it still didn't seem to sink that his actions were wrong as he went on to harass another tourist.

The bus ride from Phnom Penh to HCMC was supposed to take about 5 hours, but it ended up being closer to 8 hours. Much of the delay was due to the Soviet-era like customs agents on the Vietnam side of the border crossing. Despite us all having to go through a lengthy process to get our visas some time ago, they took forever to scrutinize each and every passport of the people on our bus.

The best - or worst - part was that we all had to get off the bus. Official looking guys in blue jumpsuits took all the bags off the bus and into the customs hall. We were told not to touch our bags. After finally clearing customs the bags had to go through an x-ray machine. Again, we were told not to touch our bags.

After the x-ray, these same guys grabbed our bags and took them to the bus. There, they demanded $1 US from each passenger for carrying the bags. Jess had gone through a few minutes ahead of me b/c her passport was called first. She doesn't carry any of the money so while these guys were trying to extort me, I was wondering how she had managed to avoid paying. She was looking out the bus window at me and mouthing to me not to pay.

Not wanting to give into these buggars, I told them I was not paying. I asked who they worked for - clearly it was not the government like they had tried to make it appear. So, I picked up my big pack, threw it over my shoulder, and carried it right onto the bus and plunked it in my seat. That drew a small cheer from the rest of the bus as they had all been forced to pay.

Finally, when all the guys had left, I got off the bus and put my bag underneath! A small, but important victory. And also a lesson not to let anyone carry your bag, even if they appear to be working for the government.

We are staying at a great place in HCMC run by a local lady named Madam Cuc. She is a mini-celebrity here as she runs 3 budget hotels that are of high quality and comes highly recommended on the backpacking circuit. The staff is all overly friendly and offer up free drinks and bananas at all hours.

The only issue we had was a little laundry mix-up. We looked in one of the bags sitting there and found some of our clothes. Then the next bag had some other pieces of our clothing. After 10 minutes we finally sorted it all out. Good thing we got there first or we might have been out of underwear!

We spent our only full day exploring the city and the major sights. The first thing to tackle was crossing the street. There are about 1 million motorcycles here and they come whizzing from all directions. Basically, the only way to cross the street is to start walking slowly. Keep an eye on oncoming traffic and they will swerve around you. If you run or make a sudden move, you will surely get hit. It takes a bit of guts to step onto the street the first few times, but then you get used to it.

We visited the Fine Art Museum in the morning. The building was nice but the artwork was lacking. We checked out the main market and it was by far the nicest market we had been to. It was clean and more spacious than the rest. We sat down with the locals and enjoyed a light lunch at once of the food stands.

From there we checked out the main post office which is in a beautiful old French building. Inside hangs a massive photo of Ho Chi Minh (he is pretty much everywhere - they refer to him as 'Uncle Ho'). Across the street was the big Eglise Notre Dame which seems to be designed like every other Notre Dame Church I have seen!

In the afternoon we visited the Reunification Palace - that included a detailed tour of the whole building including the bunkers in the basement levels and the secret war room. There is so much war history here and it is definitely written from a different bias than what we read back home.

From there we continued the war theme at the War Remnants Museum. It was a small concrete building that had a whole bunch of US war machines, planes, bombs, and other artillery in the main courtyard and then gruesome photos from the war displayed throughout the inside rooms. Many of the photos were quite disturbing, especially those depicting the after effects of the use of Agent Orange.

One other part that was interesting is that they had a display showing photos from the "last roll" of film from journalists who died on the front line. It was amazing how close to the action many of these people got and how well produced their photos were.

We capped the day off with a muscle melting massage nearby to our guest house. It is run by the local institute for the blind and they have trained local blind people in the art of Shiatsu massage. It is a well run program and there must have been close to 20 people working when we arrived - of course we left feeling much better.

We are taking a temporary break from HCMC as we are flying off to Phu Quoc Island in the very south of Vietnam for a few days of R&R. From there we fly back to HCMC for one more day and then we start heading north by land.

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