There and back again

 “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

This weekend was just the right length to transition from:

1. frenzied quest for western comfort foods
2. calming down long enough to do some sight seeing and hitting the major sights
3. having time for aimless (or misguided) wandering
4. actually discovering delicious and reasonably priced, non-tourist-oriented eating establishments
5. feeling ready to go home but still looking forward to going back to the city in the future

and now for the details.

Morena and I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) on Friday morning with no plans other than a hotel reservation. After a few hours of lounging around -- which for me meant appreciating having a pliant mattress again -- Kelly arrived as well and we began the search for lunch. We ended up at a place with alternative phở, alternative in this case meaning more expensive, smaller, less flavorful, and with noodles made from pumpkin.

The orange noodles are the pumpkin-based ones

Our next stop was Ben Thanh Market. It was an intense experience that put us on a fast learning curve. When I had gone to the Ben Tre Market, vendors seemed vaguely interested in my presence. Here, as soon as we walked in, wares were being shoved in my face and I was being implored to buy. Once, I asked about the price of some shorts, which cost more than I even had on me, and as I tried to walk away I was seized by the wrist in a death grip and another shopkeeper came to help her friend box me in. As I struggled to free myself, the price dropped lower and lower and lower. It would have been helpful if I were really interested in buying the shorts, but I wasn't. I made a mental note not to express interest in anything unless I was really seriously interested. I also noted just how inflated the prices are that they were willing to lower it so much just to make the sale.

By that time, Andrea had arrived, and we met her at a café. After the requisite hour or more of catching up on the joys and grievances of life in Vietnam, Brittanye had also joined us at the café. We spent the rest of the afternoon roaming until we came back to the tourist area for an indulgently western dinner. And when I say indulgent, I mean indulgent. I had a pizza and a plate of pasta.

After that, Violet finally made it in, and all of us went out to enjoy the city at night from above.

Saturday we gave ourselves the luxury of sleeping in. When we visited Da Nang we awoke to the city symphony of motorcycle horns; here, we awoke to the sounds of chanting, wafting in from who knows where. Once we got rolling we chose our destinations over breakfast and started with a visit to the HCMC museum. It was an interesting collection of artifacts, before and after maps and photos showing how the city has changed over the years, and documentation of revolutionary struggles. After that we roamed around and hit many of the major sights, including the Reunification Palace, the Hotel de Ville, and the Notre Dame Cathedral. With all of the grandiose French architecture, it was almost easy to forget that we were in Vietnam. In the midst of that, of course, I managed to squeeze in some shopping and got a new dress.

Ho Chi Minh City Museum

Reunification Palace

Hotel de Ville, HCMC City Hall

And then I ran into this guy. Check out his shirt!

Our next stop was the botanical gardens. We thought that the zoo and gardens were two separate entities, but it turned out that they were kind of fused together. Animal enclosures were surrounded by trees with taxonomical signs nailed into them. The conditions for the animals looked about how animals were kept 10 or 15 years ago in the US. Not inhumane, but not really optimal. We tried to go to the Jade Emperor's Pagoda, but the walk was longer than we anticipated and it had closed just a few minutes before we arrived.

On Sunday morning, a few people had to head back to their respective provinces. However, Violet, Brittanye, Morena, and I still had time. We went back to the market and did some damage. I got some desperately needed new shoes and continued to hone my bargaining skills. We shopped until we dropped, and then Brittanye and Violet said their goodbyes. Morena and I returned to the Pagoda that we had attempted to see the night before. As with any place of worship, I felt like my attempts at cultural appreciation doubled as intrusion, and I felt somewhat guilty about being there as a tourist while people were obviously practicing their faith.The temple had many chambers honoring different deities and gods, but since it was an active temple and not a museum, I didn't have much guidance regarding the significance or symbolism in each room.

Morena and I let our feet follow our stomachs after visiting the museum, and boy did our stomachs lead us right! We discovered a very curious looking setup with a bunch of clay hemispheres over a fire. Our curiosity was assuaged by a young lady who was fluent in English, and she explained that this was bánh căn, made with rice flour, shrimp, squid, and egg poured into these hemispheres. We decided it was worth a try, and ordered one each. What we didn't realize was that an order of 'one' meant a plate of eight. Luckily they were extraordinarily delicious, especially after being topped with chives and a peanut fish sauce, and only our self-control kept us from ordering even more. It will be a mandatory stop for all of my upcoming visitors.

Sorry for poor photo quality. In the upper left, one woman is adding raw shrimp
to the rice flour mixture that the woman on the right has already poured in.

Scrumptiousness

We spent a good while chatting with An, the young lady who encouraged us to give it a try. We found out that the restaurant is owned by her boyfriend's family, and that she and he help out on weekend evenings. Morena had been jonesing for a massage, but I'd heard so many stories of fellow ETAs stumbling into massages of ill repute, or just plain bad ones, that I had been reluctant. However, I thought An might be able to point us in the right direction, and the next thing you know we were headed to an after-dinner massage. I'm still on the fence about it. Some parts of it were great; some parts were kind of painful; and some parts just made me want to laugh.

I did get a pretty good view of downtown HCMC from the balcony, though.

We had gone through many proposed plans for Monday, everything from going to a beach to going into the Cu Chi Tunnels to just going back. We decided to go to Cholon, also known as Chinatown, instead. We knew what street it was on and we figured it was walkable, but our plan had one major (or minor, depending on how you look at it) logical flaw. We didn't know the cross street. After an hour of walking we had stumbled upon a great open air market, bustling traffic, and some street snacks, but still no discernible Chinatown.

Lots of squirmers at the market

Fried rice cake snacks, xôi chiên, which I though would be plain but then got
stuffed with mystery contents that I suspect included dried pork.

 
We tried asking for directions but only got vague hand gestures that mostly seemed to suggest that we just needed to cross the street. We had barely more than an hour before we had to check out of our hotel, so we decided to bite the bullet and take a taxi. Cholon wasn't a sufficient landmark, but luckily I remembered that it is known for its market, and I remembered the word for market, so we got on our way. Based on the taxi's trajectory, I have no idea if we ever would have found it, had we persevered. Binh Tay Market was interesting, but not particularly notable. It's structure looked Chinese, but from guidebook descriptions I had expected Cholon to be an entire neighborhood dominated by old Chinese architecture. We wandered around for a while before deciding it was time to head back.

Market entrance

Row upon row of dried goods

In the market courtyard

Now comes the story of my awesome street smarts. The last time I came to HCMC I took a xe ôm (motorcycle taxi) to the airport for 40k VND. The airport is pretty far, so I have figured out that if normal taxi fare will come out to more than 40k/person, it is cheaper to take a xe ôm. Given that the taxi for just the last leg of our walk to the market had been a total of about 50k, it was time to start bargaining with the motorcycles. Morena was a little worried about finding trustworthy xe ôm drivers, but the first ones we ran into were wearing uniforms, which was comforting whether or not it was really significant. For 40k each of us had a swift, riverside ride from the market back to our hotel, which was pretty far away. I was proud of myself for being a good traveler, and for now being able to recognize streets and make sure we were going the right way. One of the many good things about xe ôms is that since you agree on the price ahead of time, there is no incentive for them to take a circuitous route. Another good yet adrenaline-releasing thing about them is that traffic rules apply to them least of all, so they are often the fastest mode of transportation, even if they rarely get above 30km/hr. Anyway, we made it to the hotel with 15 minutes to spare before checkout, and after that it was time for our next round of xe ôm-ing, this time to the bus station. The first pair we encountered insisted it couldn't be done for less than 80k VND, but I knew better. I was shooting for 30k, but the next pair offered us a price of 25k, right off the bat. Perfect. I showed them the bus company's business card and address, and we were on our way. But things didn't look quite right. We 'arrived' at a company that was not the one I intended to depart from. After a lot of yelling and passing around of the business card, it was revealed that this bus company didn't even send buses to Ben Tre, so the drivers carried us onward, this time to the right place. When we arrived they tried to charge us more, but I insisted that their failure to take me to the right place the first time around did not earn them a bonus. This was a situation that demonstrates the value of having exact change when taking a xe ôm. We arrived a comfortable 15 minutes before the departure of the next bus home. So, all in all, I was very proud of myself for savvily navigating both the city itself and its transportation options.

Crossing the bridge back into Ben Tre