Monday September 14, 2009 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Day 17 of 36

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC)

We slept until 7 with the curtains blocking the light. A good night's sleep and not as many weird dreams. Showered, dressed and headed to the Concierge Lounge for the breakfast that is included with our room. It was a filling and yummy breakfast. Strong coffee too.

We picked out several sites to check out first as we began our explorations of HCMC. We left the hotel and went directly across the street to the HCMC Opera House first. Directly behind that is the Park Hyatt Hotel, another recommended place to stay. We walked a bit further to the Central Post Office across the street from the HCMC Notre Dame Cathedral. Then up the large Le Duan Street directly to the Reunification Palace, formerly the Norodom Palace built in 1873. This was a large complex that was the head of government for the President of South Vietnam. It was here that tanks broke through the gates in 1975 forcing the President to surrender. It was then that Vietnam was finally unified.

We saw the state dining room, large conference rooms, communications rooms in the basement and the President's Mercedes Benz that he used to be driven in. We watched a 35 minute video in English that gave us a lot of the history. When we emerged from the Reunification Palace, it was starting to rain, and shortly a down-pour ensued. As Yveline would say, "It was raining frogs!". So we headed back to the hotel for a while. The museums are closed at midday until 1:30 anyway. Neither of us were hungry so we rested and headed back out a little after 1 - this time with umbrellas. It is monsoon season and the hotel staff told us to expect rain every day. It doesn't seem to phase the locals at all and the minibikes continue to run everywhere.

We headed back out and went past the large Peoples' Committee Headquarters - named after Ho Chi Minh of course. We went across the large Street Le Duan to the War Remnants Museum. We spent a good bit of time here and looked at the pictures and commentary. It was disturbing to say the least. Even though it was written from the perspective of our enemy, the Vietnam War (or the American Way from their perspective) was an awful thing that escalated unnecessarily and so many lives were lost. Lots of war memorabilia.

After the museum, we headed to the Ben Thanh Market - a large indoor market with everything - jewelry, clothes, toys, linens, fabric, food, etc. I bargained with a woman and bought a stack of linen napkins that I really liked. I paid $21 and I'm sure that I overpaid for them. She wanted $2 each and she was a hard bargainer.

Right at the market is a large traffic circle. It was incredible with traffic zooming everywhere. This is supposed to be the busiest circle in HCMC. We then headed back to Le Duan and walked to the consulate area. We passed the French consulate and reached the US consulate. After the evacuation of Saigon by the US when relations were reestablished, the US torn down the old consulate. "Too many bad memories!". I took a picture from across the street and the soldiers about had a hissy-fit. They whistled and waved at me. Whoops! But I got the picture, but it wasn't impressive. There was lots of locals standing across the street from the consulate but we don't know why.

We headed through some side streets back to the Caravelle and entered a large hospital complex. It was huge with lots of buildings - mostly open air. Out through the other side of the hospital and back to the hotel to shower and dress for "cocktail time". We are both "getting kind of nervous!".

The wine and extensive hors d'oeuvres are all complementary with our room so this was a good deal for us.

Tim wants to go to a Pho restaurant and there is one just down the street from our hotel but tonight we are going to do French Vietnamese food at Au Manoir de Khai, a highly rated French restaurant that is supposed to have a beautiful garden and good ambience. It is owned by the same corporation (Khai Silk) that owns the restaurant where we ate last night so we are sure it will be good. It ends up that Tim needs to work tonight so we stayed in - heavy hors d'oeuvres and red wine for dinner - he worked and I read "My Life in France" by Julia Child - wonderful.

Then to bed early. Off to the tunnels tomorrow.