Saigon Unseen

     As you can imagine, trying to experience as much of a country as possible while also enjoying a vacation can be a difficult thing to balance.  We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (formally known as Saigon), Vietnam Friday night late and didn't make it to our hotel bed until around 1am.  Our morning began at 8:30 am with a tour that Bri had found online called Saigon Unseen.  Normally when we travel we tend to steer away from tours but we had decided that a tour would be the best way to see as much of the city as possible in a short amount of time.  Of course this wasn't your run of the mill air-conditioned van or a double-decker bus tour.  In a town of 10 million people and 5 million motor bikes how could you pass up the chance for a tour on the back of a motor bike!

Matt on the bike with our lead guide Saul. He spoke more than enough English for our tour purposes.

     The weather was beautiful and sunny.  Bri and I were basking in the warm weather compared to the cloudy, clammy cold we were experiencing in Shanghai.  Bri took this picture at the beginning of the day and then spent the rest of the day trying to find a caption for what I looked like on the bike with Saul.  My favorite two descriptions were that he was a ninja turtle and I was his shell and that I'm a kangaroo and I just let Saul out of my pouch for a bit of sunshine.  Feel free to make your own captions and have a laugh at my expense.

     Besides the allure of the motor bike the second draw of this tour was that they took us to parts of Ho Chi Minh a tourist might not stumble onto in their first couple days.  We drove through the main park which was packed with people preparing for the Lunar New Year celebrations.  Then it was off to a couple of interesting markets packed with Vietnamese shopping for the holiday.  Saul said it was only slightly busier than normal but I couldn't see how the first market could have held anymore people.  The interesting/disturbing thing about both markets but especially the first larger market was that nobody bothered to get off their bike.  You just motored through at a snails pace and pulled off when you needed to buy something.  There was a parking area that was packed with scooters so I assume some customers or stall keeper got off their bike but it sure didn't seem like it when we were driving through the chaos.

Most of the people in the crowded middle of the street are moving along slowly on motor bikes.

     After the market we drove around the alleys and side streets.  Bri and I immediately felt that generally speaking the people of Ho Chi Minh were more friendly than the people of Shanghai.  Next Saul wanted to show some of the developing parts of Ho Chi Minh.  We saw some tall condo/apartment buildings but nothing you wouldn't see in KC or Denver.  Then he took us to a section of town that had been a poor and crumbling part of town.  It had been cleared of tenants and most of the "buildings" had been demolished in order to prepare the land for development.  I was surprised at how optimistically he spoke about what the developers would build and how he wanted me to continue looking at the billboard that had illustrations of what was coming.  On the other hand Bri and I were asking, "What happened to all of the people who lived here?" and "Who is living here now?".  There were make shift homes which were nothing more than campsites all around the area and it didn't look like any development had started at all.  Saul said the money for the development had stalled but it was still coming.  The people camping were homeless and looking for jobs or people working temporary jobs in the city that did not want to find or pay for housing of higher standards.  It was bizarre when he even took us to the Fire God Temple which was in the same neighborhood but had been saved for spiritual reasons for now. It was surrounded by similar sights to the picture below.

One of the nicer shanties.

Bri had to use the toilet at the Fire God's Temple.  Yea, that's the toilet...the whole in the corner.  At least there was a partial wall for privacy.

     From the temple we saw another market and a cool river market where the boats just pull up and sell their goods along the river.  After stopping for Vietnamese coffee (very strong but usually mixed with sweetened and condensed milk and served on ice) which both Bri and I enjoyed all week we were taken see a mall and a more developed neighborhood.  Again Saul wanted to know my opinion on the "developed" part of town asking whether the mall looked like one in America.  I told him it looked similar from the outside but quipped that the parking lots were way too small because we all drive cars not motor bikes.

     There were other stops but the main highlights were lunch (surprised?), the Cao Dai Temple and the War Remnants Museum.  We'll talk about the War Remnants Museum and our thoughts regarding that when we share pictures from the Cu Chi Tunnels which we visited on our return to Ho Chi Minh later in the week.  Here are some pictures of the other two.

Stopped for some pho for lunch.

The alter at the Cao Dai Temple.  Each of the bright colors represents one of the major religions that were combined to form the Cao Dai religion.

     School starts tomorrow so its back to reality for us.  There will be more pictures soon.  In the meantime you're welcome to send us your favorite caption to the first photo with Matt and Saul on the motor bike.  We'll post any that make us laugh especially hard.

Matt