I knew that November was going to be tough. I started the month by working a 6-day week, and then was working seven days a week for the next 3 weeks, right until the end of the month. This was voluntary; I wanted the extra hours, I more-or-less liked the extra class I was covering, the teacher who had left abruptly had left this class after they'd already had several other teachers and I thought they were a good bunch who deserved some consistency at the end of their course. The thing about teaching is that even though most of those days I was only actually in the classroom for 2 hours (and not even that, considering we have a 15 minute break halfway through the class), I was preparing materials for much longer than that. And because of who I am as a person, I find it very hard to relax and go off and do leisure kind of activities when I know I have a class that evening I need to prepare for. So it was a very strange month of working a ton and yet not actually working that much more than usual. Hard to describe, very difficult to get through. In any case, I knew as soon as I agreed to finish this class I was going to need some R&R when I finished, so I put in my request for leave the week after I finished, the first week of December, leading up to.... my 28th birthday.
Your 28th birthday is just not that monumental of a milestone. You're already in your 20's, already able to drink/smoke/serve in the army/rent a car/reserve a hotel room, hell, you're already in your LATE 20's, you're closer to 30 but not so much more than 27 that it's time to start getting down to the real existential questions yet. It's just... one year older than 27. But it was the first (and perhaps only) birthday that I've had in Vietnam and I decided that was as good a cause for celebration as any. So I booked my plane tickets to head down south, to Ho Chi Minh City AKA Saigon to get some warmth and sun, with only a few definite plans: A. getting a tattoo to remember my time in Hungary by B. going out to Vũng Tàu to see fellow TLG alumnus Brigid and C. see the Củ Chi tunnels.
Two outta three ain't bad, right?
The trip started on a rough note, as I had one more gloriously full day of teaching on Sunday (7 contact hours, in the building for 12+ hours, woo hoo!) and then my flight was leaving first thing Monday morning. What was originally just supposed to be metaphorical first thing, a 9 AM flight, turned into literal first thing, 6 AM, when the carrier JetStar called me up about a week before to inform me that they had bumped me to a later flight because mine had been cancelled and I was now scheduled to leave around 11. This didn't work for me as my tattoo appointment with Saigon Ink was in the early afternoon and I wanted to give myself plenty of time to get out of the airport, get to my hostel, and get oriented before going in. So, my alternative option was to go earlier.... thus the 6 AM flight. Which meant leaving my house at 4 AM.
I had called a taxi company on Sunday to arrange a pick-up from my house, or as near the house as I could as cars can't really get to my alley. At 4 I was waiting on the corner for my taxi, by 4:20 my non-English speaking driver had called twice to yell at me but had still not arrived and I began walking towards a busier street where hopefully I could pick up another. I did eventually, and the driver of the arranged taxi then proceeded to call me about 20 times in the span of the half hour it took to get to the airport (the highways are pretty clear at 5 in the morning). I put his number on auto-reject after the first 3 or 4 calls but it still took him a long, long time to give up. The way I see it, though, he was 20 minutes late on an early, early pick-up that he knew was going to the airport and therefore was time-sensitive. He had no one to blame but himself.
ANYWAY. After all that early-morning excitement I sat down in my tinier-than-a-bus-seat-airplane-seat and immediately passed out so hard that I was next jarred awake by the plane landing, about 2 hours later, in HCMC. I was groggy for most of the morning but I managed to get myself into a taxi and to my hostel, Eco Backpackers Hostel, which is right in the heart of the backpackers area. Normally not ideal but fine considering the shortness of my stay and how accessible most of the things I wanted to see were from there, and also, it's a pretty great place that I'd recommend. More on that later.
The shot above, of my VERY fancy Trung Nguyen setup, is where I spent the next couple hours since I could not check into my hostel yet and Saigon Ink was not yet open. I suppose I could have walked around but remember I had been out the door at 4 AM, and probably slept a grand total of about two hours. This was also my first day off in 3+ weeks. What I needed was to park my ass somewhere with wifi, an outlet for my computer, and a really good cup of coffee. So that's what I did. If Highlands Coffee is like the Vietnamese hoi polloi's Dunkin' Donuts, Trung Nguyen is its snobbier relative, akin to Starbucks and yet the one I visited felt even fancier than that. I'm not even sure there is a totally accurate American parallel, to be honest. As you can see from above, the spread you get for one cup of coffee (which you pick from a menu of about a dozen different cups with varying 'notes' and strengths) is impressive and perhaps gratuitous. The place was filled almost entirely with business-people and other tourists during the few hours I spent there, a time in which the staff was very gracious (more more so than they might be at a busy Starbucks) about my taking up an entire table/set of chairs.
Anyway. I sat, I regrouped, I planned, I caffeinated, and then I was ready to go get inked. I'd done research online to find a reputable tattoo place in Vietnam (no disrespect but there are far too many shops that look like a hobbyist's den around Hanoi, places that advertise "manicure + tattoo" which I have never taken as a strong indicator of craft or dedication...). Saigon Ink kept popping up. I emailed them and set up the appointment and they set me up with an artist named Bon Bon, who does the kind of thing I was requesting. You'll understand when I thought this was a female artist.
And how embarrassed I was when I got to the shop and asked for Bon Bon and used the female pronoun only to find out that Bon Bon is actually a very nice Vietnamese man who does not speak a lot of English. But we still made it work, with the help of a fluent English-speaking shop girl.
This was the result. It comes from this, which reminded me of walking around my small Hungarian town late at night when I couldn't sleep. The cat reminded me of the cats that my coworker, Elizabeth, took care of and who we used to go visit after dinner when I would eat with her family. I chose this image because of the Art Nouveau imagery which is very prominent in Budapest and fondly reminded me of visiting that beautiful city.
After, I relaxed at the hostel before meeting my friend Nicole, who had spent the summer grinding it out in summer school with me up in Hanoi. She normally works in HCMC though and it was nice to let her guide me around to some of the more local spots, away from the backpacker row. She took me to a fantastic vegetarian/Buddhist restaurant (we saw actual monks passing through to whatever the second floor housed!).
Vegetarian banana and papaya salads.
Veggie bánh xèo, filled with sprouts and carrots and delicious greens, and served with mint and other herbs. So, so good.
Afterwards she took me up to Chill SkyBar, which had a vibe I would not normally go in for (very expensive drinks, people in club gear) had an undeniably awesome view and somewhat more affordable half-priced happy hour cocktails.
Afterwards we stopped by a leaving party for one of her co-workers at HCMC 1, the big ILA Death Star down south. It was interesting to hear a different perspective of what is turning into quite the big corporation that employs me. Then we went around the corner from my hostel for an experience Nicole called "the plastic chairs", which is apparently about as close as HCMC gets to Hanoi's bia hoi scene. There's no fresh beer but there is pretty cheep bottled Saigon, plastic cheers crammed almost on top of another, all facing out into the street for optimum people-watching. It was a decent bia hoi alternative. The dried squid as a drinking snack was new, it seems to me that in Hanoi mostly they come around with carts of bò bía, banh my, bags of peanuts/popcorn, and maybe some fruit like lychee or rambutan. Maybe some other things, but never dried squid. Have I just not been paying close enough attention this whole time?
All in all a great first evening! The next morning I relaxed, had a leisurely start in my little hostel cubicle:
This may look claustrophobic but it was actually quite nice. Despite being farthest from the balcony/natural light my bed was still pretty well lit and the cubby-like build of these gave them much more privacy and soundproofing than what you normally get at a hostel. That, along with its convenient location, good price, very easy-to-book tours, free beer during happy hour, and fantastic rooftop view, are probably the main reasons I'd recommend staying here. Good spot.
Once I had my life together I headed out, my first destination being Bến Thành Market, sometimes called the China market, that being the source of most of the wares sold within.
From the front.
From the back. (I might have done a little wandering around afterwards when I was trying to orient myself, and may have used taking pictures as a way to blend in on the street corner while trying to figure out where the hell I was.)
Inside. Anything you could possibly want all housed in one lofty, drafty, concrete building, as is so often the way with marketplaces in Vietnam (and Eastern Europe, in my experience!). I hadn't intended to buy anything but I needed a bag to haul my camera/wallet/sunscreen around in and ended up haggling a woman down to 200k for the bag seen on the my hostel bed in the picture above, which happens to be one of my favorite Vietnamese textile patterns. There is a small chance that I own...multiple.... things with that pattern on it.
Walking past the oddly European opulence of City Hall (Ủy ban nhân dân Thành phố)...
...and an opera house (Nhà hát thành phố) that looks awfully familiar. Wikipedia claims it's based on the Opéra Garnier in Paris, which makes sense considering the French influence in Vietnam's architectural history.
Walking over to the Saigon River when I stumbled upon this guy, who only has a street named after him in, oh, I don't know, every single city I've been to in Vietnam.
Saigon River.
Times Square Station! Hello New York homesickness!
Some very cool re-purposed soda/beer cans I saw while walking around. I strongly considered buying some of these and if I had had more than a school bag's worth of space to fly back with I probably would have. Regrets.
Notre Dame (no, not that one but in the same vein), whose official name is Basilica of Our Lady of The Immaculate Conception or Vương cung thánh đường Chính tòa Đức Mẹ Vô nhiễm Nguyên tội. I did not go inside because a church is a church is a church, and Vietnam was never famed for its churches, you know?
It was pretty but still.
Ho Chi Minh City Postal Office (Bưu điện thành phố), an office worthy of a city of 8 million people.
Uncle Ho serenely looking out over the proceedings.
Really a very grand and beautiful interior. Reminded me of the Farley post office in midtown, where parts of A Miracle of 34th Street was filmed although I think it's much prettier.
Inside were not one, but TWO souvenir shops. They were filled with a nice mix of interesting, tacky, touristy, and very expensive/nice toys/clothes/snacks/trinkets/doo-dads/tchotchkes.
I STRONGLY CONSIDERED IT.
This shop was not designed to easily hold a heavy stream of tourists, as I was standing at the end and the only way back was whence I came, down this same one aisle.
Moving on, I walked around to the back of the church.
That... is not a Vietnamese name. Louis Pasteur seems to have some significance in Vietnam but this so far has been my favorite answer offered up by the internet. It always comes back to phở.
An interesting tree on the grounds of Independence/Reunification Palace (Dinh Thống Nhất), whose grounds I did not enter because I was getting really hot and also because it was covered in scaffolding and tarp due to renovations.
War Remnants Museum (Bảo tàng chứng tích chiến tranh). A harrowing visit but much like seeing Auschwitz or the 9/11 memorial, an important witnessing of history.
Hey, remnants of Hungary! The placard says: Badges of the frontier guard force in Miskolc (Hungary) awarded to teh South Vietnam National Liberation front Delegation, August 23, 1973.
Fire in Vietnam? I think?
Piece of a shot down B52 bomber plane.
Well, that ideology sounds awfully familiar from the most recent American conflicts....
Nail bomb. The horror.
More ingenuity and energy devoted towards the killing of other humans.
Some places/experiences fall under of the category of "not fun, but still important". This museum is probably one of those.
I'm pretty sure that was not licensed by MTV....
Walking through a statue park on the way back to the hostel....
I... Huh. I see. I guess time heals all wound
After a long afternoon walking around, it was nice to sit down for a while out on the balcony outside my room.
Found down in the common room. I wonder what happened to Elle and Laurence?
Later I partook of the hostel's free beer up on the roof, and the green lights strewn around the perimeter of the patio made the view of Saigon's skyline that much more futuristic and otherworldly.
The next day I headed out fairly early on a tour to see the Mekong Delta, which is about a three hour car ride from HCMC. I arranged it through the hostel and it was amazingly affordable considering we rode there in the relative comfort of a mini-bus (I still have to resist the urge to call them marshrutkas- it's not Georgia and that's nor their name but that's what they'll always be to me!), visited three islands, ate an edible lunch, and had a very gimmicky canal ride, all for about $20. It was fine. Touristy and kind of rote-feeling, but fine. This was an interesting map in the lobby of the port where we caught our junker out to the islands. I'm not certain but I think our first stop was Tortoise Island (Đảo rùa)?
Aboard our little luxury raft... looking out at the other boats on the river.
Our tour guide explaining something to us. He was... not particularly loquacious. The first stop was the coconut farm/candy factory.
Attempting to crack open the coconut.
The old and new ways of shredding the coconut meat.
The women sitting at the large, central table seem to spend the day sorting and wrapping the pieces that one woman is perpetually cutting from the long strips of processed, cooked and sweetened coconut taffy.
Coconut vodka/moonshine (rượu dừa). It was surprisingly nice, not quite as good as the honey rượu we had in Mai Chau but still pretty smooth and went down way easier than any "good" palinka/tchatcha I ever had in Hungary or Georgia. One of the lessons I have learned from my time traveling abroad, if nothing else: you can basically make vodka out of almost anything. Whether it will be good or not....
The counter at the back offered many varieties of coconut candies.
There was also a huge jug of snake wine, of which we were not offered any (oh well too bad).
So many tchotchkes made from coconut shells....
Oh, just some tiny crocodile corpses for your collection. You know.
Next it was back onto the boat and off to the shrine of the Coconut Monk (Ông Đạo Dừa), Nguyễn Thành Nam, on Phoenix Island (Con phượng hoàng, I think, according to Google Trasnlate). This was perhaps one of my favorite parts of the day due almost entirely to the surreal nature of his shrine, which seemed to just kind of gather itself into existence from pre-existing materials scattered around the Delta. I don't know. It was cool.
The man, the myth, the legend.
Then... lunch time! Hurray!
Our tour guide either showing off this modern masterpiece of kitsch or trying to upsell us on the fancier fish meal. I was not entirely sure. His English was... sufficient, but not great.
The actual meal. White rice, chewy pork, super-greasy spring rolls, but decently cooked green beans, all of it totally edible with enough Chin-Su Chili Sauce (one of my favorite Vietnamese condiments).
The fish that he was maybe trying to convince us to spring for and eat for lunch? Still not sure. Afterwards we headed over to the crocodile pit. For the first two or three minutes we stood watching them I was sure they were just a lifelife simulacrum of the animals because they were so still. Then someone started throwing bread to them.
Also after lunch: bike rentals and a ride around the island to take in the "town", such as it is. This was actually really peaceful and another one of my favorite parts of the afternoon.
There was a cement path that ended about a third of the way through the island and turned to this rutted, dirt path. Made things a little more exciting, I suppose.
My steed for the afternoon, or: what 10k VND gets you in the Mekong Delta. Not bad. Not good, really, but not bad either. It served its purpose well enough!
Then we were off to our final stop, Unicorn Island, home of bee farms, large snakes whose sole purpose seemed to be photo-ops, and many, many vendors hoping to sell us either something honey-related or something that looked like it was probably made in China.
Gas station. Clever.
Terrified.
A piece of the hive that was passed around, again, for photo purposes.
Crispy pieces of banana/honey chips. These were crazy delicious.
Honey that they then poured hot green tea over. Also very, very delicious and I strongly considered buying some but it was kind of steep and ultimately, I worried it might get taken from me at the airport.
Laundry list of supposed health benefits of honey/royal jelly. I'm so sure.
Said photo-op snake and the fools who wanted to play with it. Not I.
We then got a fruit smorgasbord and serenading (replete with tip wrangling).
Then onto the canal ride! If if it sounds like we were actually just being shuffled around like a school group from attraction to attraction, with groups behind and in front of you, well then I've done my job well, because that was basically the experience. There was very clearly a time limit to each part of our experience.
Looking up at the dock/stairs leading down to our little rowboats.
As we passed other boats in the canals, the other rowers kept shouting "Money!" at us and pointing to our own rower. Our tour guide had already informed us we should tip this woman so the shouts were not only kind of aggressive and jarring, they were unnecessary.
Still, it was pretty cool. As we rowed along I could hear a man drunkenly warbling to karaoke in the distance. But I could also hear the rush of the water, the whispering of the trees around us, the quiet trickle of tiny runoffs from the island emptying into the stream. It was interesting, if not exactly a beautiful spiritual moment.
Then the tour was over, and we headed back to the main port and our waiting van, and made our way back into HCMC. That night I met up with Nicole for a fantastic craft beer at Pasteur Street Brewing Company. Probably one of the only real stouts I have had in Asia, and definitely the only one I've had in Vietnam, which is the land of the lager. The closest I can get in Hanoi is black lager.
A pagoda seen on the way back into HCMC.
The next day was relaxed and uneventful. Initially, I had planned to take another tour, this time for half the day, to the Củ Chi tunnels, an interesting remnant from the American War, but after the all-day extravaganza in the Delta and some negative impressions from fellow tourists/locals (the tunnels you explore have actually been widened/modified to accommodate tourists, lots of people hawking things, people paying extra to shoot old guns at the site) I decided to just chill out and take in Saigon for a while before I headed out to Vung Tau for the other purpose of my trip, to visit my old friend Brigid. I ended up back at Trung Nguyen where I enjoyed a very strong coffee and a few hours of writing before I made my way over to Ben Thanh market and the Mai Linh offices. It's pretty easy to find if you know what you're looking for (I still managed to get turned around but that's because I am a getting-lost PROFESSIONAL) and tickets in the Mai Linh Limousine, which is an exceptionally comfortable way to travel seeing as it's basically an 8-person luxury mini-bus, were only 100k VND.
There's not much more to write about my experiences in HCMC. When I returned from visiting Brigid I had an afternoon to kill, so I ended up walking over to Orange, a very cool clothing/souvenir shop in the backpacker area recommended to me by Brigid, and getting my American on at a McDonalds, before getting on my flight back to Hanoi.
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