Mom + Vietnam: HCMC

Thursday
I missed the bus to take me to HCMC to pick up my mom. Twice. In my defense, I had requested that it pick me up at 6:30, I forgot my cell phone when I went out to get a quick dinner, and it had already come and gone twice by the time I got back at 6:24. Luckily, it came back a third time.

I made it to HCMC just fine and right on schedule. I even got to the airport early to pick up my mom. And then I waited. And waited. Had she had some visa issue? Missed her connection? Was she waiting for me somewhere else, out of sight? I had no way of knowing. One hour after I arrived and 45 minutes after the arrival bard said her flight had landed, I got a phone call. She had been waiting for me somewhere else. Reunited at last. The ride back to the hotel put us in the midst of some sort of makeshift motorcycle parade celebrating the results of a recent soccer match. The rest of the night was spent in sharing travel details and all the other random bits of conversation that hadn't made it into our weekly 30-minute phone calls.

Friday
I hadn't really made any plans for our days in HCMC. I didn't know how jet lagged my mom would be, or what she would be interested in. I figured we could go with the flow. This ended up working out quite well for us. We got a western breakfast (by which I mean eggs rather than soup) at a nearby restaurant. A chôm chôm peddler outside noticed that she had caught my mom's eye, and paused. The only way I can imagine how she even saw my mom looking at her is that her livelihood depends on that kind of skills. I went outside to do some haggling. I want 10K VND's worth, I tried to say. Here's a kilo and a half, now you pay me 60K. No, just give me less chôm chôm. How about you just give me more money? No, no, no. Eventually we got things sorted out.

Our next stop was the Bến Thành Market. My dear meticulous mother made sure that we walked down every row of the gridded market. We honed our bargaining skills and got some Christmas presents for her to take home. And a few self-presents, of course. By now it was lunchtime, or at least Vietnamese lunchtime. I had already explained that if we didn't get food by 1130 we would be up a creek, food-wise, for the next several hours. On the way to find food we walked past what we deduced to be a Hindu temple. We weren't sure if we could go in but a kindly young man gestured welcomingly, handed each of us a bundle of incense, and showed us what to do. We thought he was very generous. We walked around, admiring the bright colors and multiple limbs of the many deities. When we left, suddenly this young man came up behind us and started shouting, 'you buy! you buy! money!' and waving incense sticks at us. At first I thought he was trying to sell us incense, but it became clear that what we had perceived as generosity was not so, at all. We wandered on towards lunch.

Outside the temple

Inside

We found a popular-looking place and once the throng dissipated we were able to be served and find a seat. We sat at one end of a long table. At some point, we were joined by a young man and a young woman. Near the end of our meal, the young man leaned over to me and asked me a question in Vietnamese. I gave my standard answer: I am American. I am an English teacher in Ben Tre. I must have done so satisfactorily, because he continued to ask me more questions in Vietnamese. Through the magic of key words, I was able to understand more or less what he was saying. Eventually, though, the conversation exceeded my vocabulary and I discovered that he spoke great English. We asked him for recommendations for places to visit and places to eat. As we all got up to go he offered to take us to a café. Ok! He pointed us in the right direction and he and his friend headed back to work.

Right before we walked under the awning of the outdoor café, we felt a few raindrops. A few minutes later, it was pouring. We had found refuge just in time. We also found the perfect table. We stayed dry while the tables on either side of us got drenched by the horizontal rain. We spent a good while taking shelter and enjoying our beverages.

When things started to clear up, it was time for the next stop: the zoo and botanical gardens. You may remember that I also went there on my last visit to HCMC. This time, though, I saw way more of the animals. However, not long after we arrived, the downpour began once more. The Vietnamese tend to run for cover at the first sign of rain, and suddenly some decorative John Deere trains were full of zoo visitors. But, my mom and I had raincoats, and so we wandered freely. We felt like we were in a private jungle. Most notable among the garden's flora was a creek clotted with Victoria amazonica, water lilies whose pads stretch several feet across. Notable among the zoo's fauna was a pair of white lions, something we had never seen before. Alas, no pictures because of the rain.

Before the rains began

Saturday
Saturday was our walking day. We started things off with a visit to a market a few blocks from our hotel. Still-wriggling fish and hopping frogs caught our eyes, while the smells of meat and produce mingled in the air. Many people at the market on Friday had asked me and my mom where we were from, and whether we were Vietnamese. But today, someone asked me whether I was Vietnamese AFTER I had spoken to him in Vietnamese. This means that my pronunciation was good enough for me to still seem Vietnamese even after I had opened my mouth. As we were leaving, we watched one fish flop itself out of a metal tray and onto the ground. It wriggled futilely towards freedom while the unconcerned saleswoman completed another sale.

You can get anything at the market.

Anything.

Hot enough for you?

We walked through the September 23 Park and admired its lotuses and lilies. We walked to the Cultural Park and admired its many sculptures. We stopped for a drink at a cafe shaded by trained plants, and listened to teens strum guitars and serenade their friends.

We walked over to the Reunification Palace. It was once the home of the (French) governor of Cochinchina, and later the president of South Vietnam. It is considered to be the site where the Vietnam War ended. Now it is a museum. Rooms have been recreated and redecorated as they would have been in the 1960s. It was an unusual combination of diplomatic pomp, Asian influence, and Mod design.

Reunification Palace

On the roof. The actual target was labeled in Vietnamese, to the right.

Hunger struck and we fortuitously happened upon a restaurant that Ms. Trang had recommended. The place had a great atmosphere, even though, in my opinion, nothing 'nice' comes close to beating street food.

We went to the Jade Emperor's Pagoda, a Taoist temple, and met Brittanye, another ETA visiting HCMC, there. After that the three of us went to the bánh căn place I loved so much last time. I had been worried that I wouldn't remember how to get there, but we followed my feet and photographic memory and got there just fine.

Jade Emperor Pagoda

Sunday
Sunday morning we went to English mass at the Cathedral. It had been a while since I'd been to mass, and an even longer while since I'd understood what was being said, so it was nice. After mass we took a peek in the neighboring post office, which is now home to souvenir shops and travel agencies. After some casual roaming we stopped for our first meal. Then, a statue piqued my curiosity, and when we got to the statue we saw that we were right by the Saigon River. Conveniently, there was a lovely, breezy, shaded, riverside café where we waited out the heat of the day. After a couple of hours, we set out once more, and this time I directed our wanderings into downtown. As it was our last night in town I fed my cravings and we had dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Unusual setup where we had lunch: all the ingredients were in the drawers

Trần Hưng Đạo and a good view of some of downtown

Saigon River

The café was next to the ferry

Monday
We woke bright and early to catch our bus back into Ben Tre. Right as we got to the taxi we would take to the bus station, I saw a 50K VND bill fluttering down the sidewalk. My mom picked it up and we got in the cab. Then he proceeded to drive us in a direction I have never gone to get to the bus station. I have always taken a motorcycle to get there, so I thought that maybe since we were in a car we were taking a more car-friendly route. Or maybe it was that since the driver gets paid according to the meter rather than by a pre-agreed-upon price, he was taking us for a ride. Or maybe he just didn't know where he was going. But I didn't know how to get there to insist that he follow my route; I just knew this route was not a route I'd ever taken. Some time ago someone told me that it is bad luck to pick up money that someone else has lost. Had we been jinxed by our 50K? But two right turns later we arrived at the bus station, and not for an unreasonable price.