Sarah & Alan Holiday Blog: Day 5 – Ten million crazy people

The blog today is being written by Alan. Yay, right? Sarah may make a few observations in red.

We woke this morning to a view of trees outside as we cruised up the Saigon River toward our destination of Ho Chi Minh City. This was our first view of land since we left Singapore months ago.

We hit The Colonnade for breakfast as usual. The staff on this ship are all so good. When the guy saw Sarah and I sitting there, he immediately asked if we’d be having the strawberry pancakes for Sarah and Swedish pancakes without lingonberries for me once again. You forgot to mention that he brought you a double stack of the Swedish pancakes and then, you got another double stack.

After breakfast, we went up to the Observation Bar on deck 10 at the front of the ship to get a good view as we cruised closer to port. By about 11am we were being pushed into place by a tugboat and tied to the wharf. We obtained our shore passes so that we could leave the boat.

We had lunch before leaving the boat. No point in paying for food out there somewhere when it’s all inclusive on the boat. It was Mexican day in The Colonnade for lunch today, so I was very happy with that. I also had 2 jumbo shrimp cocktails. So good!

Back to our room and we prepared ourselves for an afternoon of sightseeing. Cameras and mosquito spray at the ready, we passed through immigration and were soon standing on Vietnamese soil. Or concrete, as the case may be.

Sarah had prebooked a car and tour guide to take us around to the popular tourist spots of the city. She was waiting there for us as we left the boat, with Sarah’s name on a placard. Her name was Han and she was very friendly. I didn’t catch the driver dudes name. Driver dude didn’t speak English so it really didn’t matter.

We drove out into the traffic. In no time it became abundantly clear that there are quite simply NO road rules in this city. There are about 10 million people living here, and around 7 million of them ride motorcycles. There is no such thing as staying in your own lane. There are very, very few sets of traffic lights, so at most intersections it’s just a free for all. On numerous occasions we simply pushed our way through the heavy oncoming traffic when we needed to make a turn. It was ridiculously scary! We thought Penang and Kuala Lumpur were bad last year. This made them look like a walk in the park. Oh, and pedestrian crossing mean nothing. People who are walking on them have to wait for the cars and motorcycles to pass, because there’s no way they’ll stop for you. The rule is, if you are a pedestrian, close your eyes and keep going. If you stop, that’s when the problems occur.

Han was very informative, telling us things that we would have no way of knowing without a tour guide. Our first stop was at the Presidential Palace, now known as the Reunification Palace. This was the famous palace which was where the Vietnam War ended back in 1975. It’s no longer used by government, so luckily we were able to go in and look all through it. It was destroyed by a bomb in 1962, but rebuilt as it is today, although much reinforced.

We were shown through several impressive Presidential rooms where foreign dignitaries would meet and talk. Finally, Han took us down to the basement. After the Palace was destroyed and rebuilt, they built a series of war room bunkers underneath from where the President and Generals fought the war. It was extremely interesting to see. There were still old communication rooms full of gear used in the war, map rooms, The President’s hideout, and a 7 kilometre long tunnel to the airport. We decided not to walk down that tunnel.

Back out the front of the Palace we took photos of the two tanks there. These tanks are the ones which actually broke through the Palace gates on April 30th 1975, bringing the 17 year Vietnam war to an end. We took a photo of Nev and Trev climbing on one of the tanks and some young Vietnamese girls wanted their photo with the boys too.

Our next stop was at the War Museum. There were 3 American warplanes, plus a number of tanks and armored vehicles in the grounds outside the museum. Inside the museum were hundreds of photographs from the war, blown up to large sizes and with explanatory text telling us what they were. The ground floor contained mostly propaganda articles and anti-war protest photos.

The first and second floors were full of graphic and, at times, quite distressing photos. Naturally, it was a rather sombre place. There was a lot of pictures and literature about the atrocities by the American army, much of which never came to light until well after the war had ended.

After we left the war museum, we briefly stopped by Notre Dame Catholic Cathedral. It’s very big and impressive looking, and based on the design of Notre Dame in France. Across the road from there was the old post office, which is still in use but much more of a tourist attraction these days. We had to take our life in our hands to cross the road to get there. The old phone booths in the Post Office have now been turned into little individual ATMs.

Next up was a visit to a factory type place which make beautiful varnished and painted stuff. It was obviously a blatant attempt to get us to but some merchandise, which we didn’t, but it was still nice to see.

Our last stop was at the Saigon marketplace. It was similar to Parklea Markets in Sydney, for those who know what that’s like. As soon as we walked in there, the smell was just atrocious and it was extremely hot. I wanted to buy a couple of new shirts since I hadn’t brought enough with me on the trip, so we found a stall and I picked out 2 that I liked the look of. I managed to bargain the lady down 250,000 dong (about $11.17). Sarah wanted a magnet, so we found one of those and I bargained that down 5,000 dong as well. It only cost us just over $1.

We came back to the ship and were thankful to get in from the heat and humidity. Sarah and I hit the pool for another swim. The pool was even more freezing than yesterday, so we didn’t stay in there long before getting into the spa. You won’t know cold until I make you hit the pool in Shanghai.

After our swim, we showered and got ourselves ready for dinner. It was another decadent feast, as usual. Potato ravioli with truffles for entree. They were absolutely delicious. Our main course was specially ordered Nigerian tempura king prawns. A friend of Sarah’s dad, who is also on this cruise, had spoken to the staff about obtaining them for us for our dinner tonight. They’ll get anything for you on this boat! That includes getting a second entree after the main meal. Alan is turning into a very round shape.

Now we’ve just been down around the pool area, where we’ve been enjoying a Vietnamese cultural show featuring traditional musical instruments and dancing. It lasted about an hour and was very entertaining.