We stayed in the heart of Ho Chi Minh city, formerly known as Saigon, near the French Quarter. We were immediately struck by the change in pace of our surroundings. We were yanked from spending days that felt quiet and leisurely (despite being very active) to a place filled with motorcycles going at breakneck speed, noise, the odd smells of Asia, and more crazy motorcycles carting around everything from families of five to cases of Heineken:
The whole scene was a bit of shock to the senses! It didn't take long to learn three things:
1) If you don't have the courage to just walk out in the street in front of the motorcycles, you will never get across the street.
2) No traffic rules are observed.
3) The key to survival is to make no sudden movements.
Yet, we were told this wasn't as bad as usual - the city was in the midst of its Lunar New Year celebration (called Tet in Vietnam) and many shops and businesses were closed.
There were lots of decorations up for the holiday:
We spent most of our time walking around the French Quarter. There were a few well preserved buildings with architecture that stood in stark contrast to the more modern buildings:
The overhead wires were something of a spectacle - I'm guessing that their approach to an outage is to simple hang a new wire!
The first night we had dinner at a place that was highly recommended by Frommer's - it said the style of food was like the best of what you could get off of street hawkers (what they call people who sell food from carts in Asia), but with a nice setting. The setting was nice - lovely trees with lights hanging down. The place was packed, which we thought was a good sign.
Our large group got its own private room that was much quieter that the open eating areas. Kenny G's saxophone music was playing in the background. It was nice at first. Then we realized that there was only ONE Kenny G song playing over and over and over and over again.
Then, there was the food. The menu was HUGE, but we had a hard time making selections. There weren't many recognizable dishes and some were quite strange. After about six loops of the Kenny G song, we were finally ready to order. When the food came out it looked okay. Dave had ordered a somewhat exotic dish of pounded prawns on grilled on sugar cane that came with fresh vegetables and rice paper. The waiter asked Dave if he could show how to assemble the dish. Dave assented. Then to our collective horror, the waiter put down the tray he was carrying (with his bare hands...and he'd just cleared some plates from another table) and started touching everything on Dave's plate. Dave immediately said "Okay, thanks, I've got it" and repeated it many times, but the waiter was bent on going through the whole process. That, along with Kenny G, set the tone for the meal. I'll just say we survived it. And, we much prefer Saigon 39 in Kansas City!
The next day we did more walking around and people watching. We didn't take many pictures, but here are folks eating breakfast and one of the many coconut drink salesmen:
The final evening we had our best meal in Vietnam:
With that, were a happy group:
At last, that FINALLY concludes the epic tale of our Chinese New Year vacation!
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