Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

[Feb 27-Mar 2]

As the largest city in Vietnam, we had heard that this place would be overwhelming with people and heat. However, it was actually pretty pleasant and we had a fun view days to end our Vietnam tour.

Sadly, we have left our pictures of Saigon back in Seattle, so you'll have to bear with the plain text for now...

First priority was SHOPPING!! We knew that we would be heading back to the States soon so we could actually buy things to carry home. Because we have a lot of friends who are getting married in the future, we decided to buy these couples some nice gifts. We had seen some nice chopstick sets in Hanoi at the beginning of our trip. Some were inlaid with mother of pearl and came with laquered boses and decorated chopstick holders. Quite a nice gift for those starting a new home. Now it was time to find these sets in Ho Chi Minh. Wrong!

No one would even come close to our asking price and the nice stuff was just was too marked upas compared to Hanoi. So we went from market to market, shop to shop, in hopes of finding the right deal. No one at the wholesale market even wanted to pay attention to us as we were buying single items, and it the other markets the older tourists paid any asking price.

We noticed that the hinged box sets seemed a bit flimsy and asked a storekeeper if she had boxes with fitted lids without the hinges. She looked around but decided to just try to immediately snap the hinges off the box despite our protests. That was not what we had asked for and she could only remove the glued hinge from half the box. Oops. We didn't buy it and she didn't seem to care. In the end, we were so sick of seeing the same thing everywhere, we decided we weren't going to buy any chopsticks at all.

Instead, we found a designer laquerware shop and found lots of goodies. It felt a bit weird to shell out all that cash knowing that the shopgirl probably didn't make that much in 2 months of working. The average wage in the city is $50 per month.

To counteract the shopping, we decided on a bit of culture at the War Remants Museum. It used to be called the "War Crimes Museum of American and Chinese Imperialists" but was changed to welcome tourists like us. The first part of the exhibit showcased a lot of graphic photos, taken mostly by American and other foreign journalists. Another section described the destruction of Agent Orange and show pictures of children born just 20 years ago with horrible defects. Two jars of perserved miscarried fetuses also showed some horrific deformities. The last section of the exhibit showed all the worldwide protests that took place near the end of the war and a big sign said "The World Unites in Support of Vietnam" or something like that. Hmmm... they made it sound like the world was rooting for the North Vietnamese's aggression the whole time, not just protesting the war. So while this exhibit was more than a bit biased, it was still very fascinating and quite sobering.

Outside, they had old American fighter jets, tanks, and various bomb launching devices. It was hard to stand out there though as the heat in the mid-day was becoming unbearable. It was time for another break, usually to have a snack and drink my favorite drink - fresh lemon juice for 33 cents. Sometimes I had three glasses a day!

We headed off to the airport on our last day- destination Bangkok. (Cambodia will have to wait for another time.) Our last remaining Dong were spent on some duty free chocolates from Holland. Quite excellent.