SAS Travelogue-Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

SAS Travelogue-Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

by Rebecca Smith

Good Morning, from Vietnam!!!!!!!!!! This is my favorite port so far. I love Vietnam. Ho-oh Chi Minh City!! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!! Anywho, besides being a fabulous place where I could survive on $20 USD if I so chose, but instead went crazy shopping, it is an insanely hot and humid place. For all those of you who have lived through a D.C. summer, you ain't seen nothing yet. I drank like 2 gallons of water a day, and proceeded to sweat it all back out in a matter of seconds in Saigon. There are sooooo many children begging you for money or to buy their postcards. Its so hard to deal with, I tried giving out little toys and boxes of cereal, but quickly discovered that bigger people beat up the kids for the goodies I would hand out. So, needless to say, I stopped doing that. Coconut milk is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted. We took a cab around the corner and the driver tried to charge us $5 USD, insane. Sorry, couldn't finish this earlier or I would have gotten dock time. Anyways, So about Saigon. The first day all we did was walk up and down this one street called Dong Khoi St., which is basically a strip of fabric shops and tailors where you go to get clothing made for you, really cheap. That's nice and all, but after 8 hrs of 5 girls trying to find or explain excatly what they want in English to people who speak primarily Vietnamese, and then getting measured, and then haggling the cost, I was tired and annoyed and sweaty (oh I'll explain this bit) and just sick of 5 girls. That was all we did that day. JUST freaking shopped for tailors. ACKKKKK!!!!!! I wanted to throttle someone. I love shopping as much as the next girl, but this was just too much. And they happened to be slightly obnoxious girls. When the Vietnamese shopkeepers or tailors didn't understand them, they did that really annoying American habit of speaking louder and slower as though that will alter the words into a form that Vietnamese speakers will understand despite the use of English words. That is one of the most irksome things in the world to me. I really hate it when people do that. Foreign language speakers are not deaf, they just don't necessarily speak English, nor should they be expected to when they live in Vietnam. Geez!!!! And...and...get this!!! They ate lunch in a place called Chicken Town!!! For Pete's sake!!! Chicken Town?!?!? I ask you. One, it is not very vegetarian sensitive of them. Two, we are in Viet-freakin-NAM, and you want to eat fried chicken and french fries. That's almost as bad as going to McDonald's, which thankfully, I didn't see any the whole time in Vietnam. Oh well, there's my rant for that day. More pent up frustration on the way. I must add, Vietnam is disgustingly humid. I'm talking, walk outside and two minutes later you look like you fell in a lake. Beads of sweat are just streaming down your face, you look like hell and feel like it too. Its so gross. But it is so worth it. The country is beautiful. The people are lovely and so happy to talk to you and practice their English and teach you some Vietnamese too. What's wierd is how many of the words in Vietnamese are of Italian origin, not in meaning but in spelling and pronunciation. How strange. I tried to explain this to someone and instead she taught me how to say "I want to kill you" in Vietnamese. I can't remember now. I will try. OK, so I also went to the Mekong Delta, which was beautiful, we went to a tropical fruit orchard and sampled Dragon Fruit and Hairy Cherries (which have the texture of eyeballs and are yucky) and Monkey Bananas which are yummy, but they are bananas, so no big food adventure on my part. We rode in sampan boats on the canals, one girl's digital camera fell into the water and her rower dove in and got it for her, how nice is that?!?! There were monkeys everywhere. We had some sticky rice wine, which is more powerful than Sake, coconut candies, and jasmine tea. It was a fabu day. Next day, Cu Chi tunnels. These are the network of tunnels the Viet Cong used to undermine American troop movements during the war. Our guide was a South Vietnamese navy veteran. He worked in conjunction with the Americans, but remained behind after the US pulled out and Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. He told us lots of information about the war, and how it lasted 100 years for the Vietnamese, starting as a guerrilla revolutionary movement against imperialist powers and lasting until the Vietnamese-Chinese war in 1988. We went through the tunnels. It was the scariest thing, it was very dark, and very hot and very tight. We had to crawl through them in pitch black, and there were bats and other creatures running rampant through them. YICK!!! But it was interesting to see how they lived and worked and fought to survive. He showed us some of the booby traps and how they made weapons out of bamboo and unexploded American bombs. He showed us how they sent the smoke from their cooking fires through a system to hide the actual location of their kitchen and then used the smoke to covr the ground abouve their tunnel system so it just looked foggy to helicopters. Very interesting all in all. Last day, we picked up all our tailored clothing. It was one of my friend's 21st, so we all went to the spa, they all got massages and I got a manicure/pedicure and facial for $10 USD. How awesome is that. And I had such a kink in my shoulder, and she got it out in no time. Amazing!!! Then we went out for a nice dinner in the Rex Hotel. Gorgeous. If I go back to Vietnam I will stay there. Anywho, Sam I got us the cutest purses. Allyson, I got you something in Vietnam. Mrs. LaVecchia, tell the boys I got them their pointy hats. Suz, I got you a Louis V. YAY!!! OK y'all!!! Han Gup Lai!!! Next stop, Penang Island, Malaysia. Byeee!!!!