On the Town

Our last full day in Vietnam and in Ho Chi Minh City, we elected not to accompany the group but to spend the day on the town by ourselves.

The group went to the Cu Chi tunnels, an exhibit of a part of the extensive tunnel network that Vietnamese resistance fighters used to fight the Japanese and the French, and which were continually expanded by the Viet Cong in the American War. It's fascinating, but we had seen it three years ago.

After breakfast, we set out from the hotel. Immediately we noted that traffic was much more calm on a Sunday morning. We'd only gone a couple blocks when we happened upon a free concert being given with traditional instruments on the front steps of the Opera. We were almost the only tourists, it was primarily locals in the audience. We stayed only a short time.

Communist propaganda posters can still be seen occasionally around the city, but they are no longer common.

It was a very pleasant morning for a walk -- not yet hot and not as humid as the day before (however, given the weather back home, we are resolved not to complain in the least about the heat). Walking also helped us realize how compact the city center actually is. Riding on a bus that is crawling through traffic distorts one's sense of distance.

Our destination was the "Independence Palace." According to the literature provided, this structure occupies the site of the French colonial governor's mansion, which had been built in 1868. When the French left in 1954, it became the presidential mansion and was renamed as Independence Palace.

The beautiful French structure was bombed in 1962, and then-president Diem ordered the damaged building torn down and replaced. Diem was assassinated in 1963, which delayed construction, but his successor, President Thieu finally had the project completed in 1967.

The result is the present building, which has a definite '60s look. It was the center for much of the decision-making in the final years of the Republic. Photos of visitors include Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, among others.

As we entered, we noted a bus with the OAT logo in the window, and realized that one of the several other OAT groups must be here. The "Ancient Kingdoms" trip we took three years ago now has an adjusted itinerary with an extra day in Saigon.

 We happened to run into the OAT group inside, along with Mr. Vu, the OAT office manager for Saigon. Vu has been hanging around our hotel and tagged along with our group one day in Dalat, observing the guides and generally keeping tabs on things. When he spotted us, he went out of his way speak and to give us some helpful pointers on what to see.

The lower floors are primarily large meeting rooms for receptions and banquets. The second floor contained formal reception rooms, offices, and rooms for smaller meetings, as well as the private apartments for the presidential family. The third floor featured a theater, game room, and a reception room for the first lady.

A fourth floor had been designed as an expansive meditation room for the president, with a great deal of glass. However, President Thieu apparently had little use for meditation, and turned it into a party room with a bar and dance floor. There's also a helipad with a Huey helicopter parked on it.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the mansion was the Bunker. This is essentially the basement, but it was a concrete-reinforced command center, including a presidential office and bedroom, war room, security, and communication center.

I was probably the only tourist nerdy enough to take photos of the communication center, but some of the old radio gear was familiar from my earliest years as an amateur radio operator.

I owned a "cousin" to this shortwave radio receiver when I was in high school!

From the Independence Palace it was a very short walk to the Ben Thanh Market. This crowded building contains hundreds of stalls selling almost anything imaginable, if one is not terribly particular about quality. We are not great bargainers, and frankly don't enjoy shopping very much, but we made a few purchases and probably didn't pay too much more than we should have.

A longer walk took us from the Market to the financial district, where our guide had suggested we might find some places to eat. We were not interested in a large meal, however, and most places were expensive. We finally landed at a "biergarten" (though no Germans were in sight) where the beer was reasonable but the soup was horribly overpriced.

Everywhere we went, the preparations for the Tet new year celebration were in full swing. The year of the rooster begins in a few days, and every business is decked out.

We had pretty much done everything we'd planned for the day by noon, so we had some down time at the hotel to pack and get ready for our homeward journey tomorrow.

In the evening, we reunited with the group for our "farewell banquet." Most of the group is going on to Cambodia to see Ankgor Wat. However, since I am the only member of this group still gainfully employed, and since we visited that site three years ago, we will not be joining them.

The banquet meal was held at a restaurant whose clientele consisted entirely of Western tourist groups. It did involve some foods we hadn't encountered before, and was very good. However the room was noisy and it was difficult to converse. Our guide reviewed the entire trip and went around the table, asking each person for their reflections. I could have done without that.

We were back early to pack, and hoping for a good night's sleep before beginning the long flights home tomorrow. 

Mekong

Setting out into morning traffic at 8 a.m., we were glad that it was a Saturday because we can’t imagine how much worse the chaos and congestion might have been on a weekday! If I lived in central Saigon, I would surely walk everywhere I went, as I’m certain the pedestrians (few as they are and as cluttered as the sidewalks may be) can move faster than the bus.

After about an hour and a half we arrived at our rest stop. We immediately recognized it as the exact same place we had stopped for coffee three years ago, and told the rest of the group to get ready for the hat salesman to show up.

Right on cue, three hat sellers descended on our group. The fellow we bought hats from three years ago was older. This may have been his daughter and two sons. Same hats exactly, and still $3 each.

We enjoyed a cup of the mocha coffee with our individual cup coffeemakers. These, however, were some sort of dull tin or galvanized metal rather than the shiny stainless steel we had near Dalat. There were fighting roosters on display, but unlike our last visit, no demonstration.

Driving a bit farther, and using a huge new suspension bridge, we crossed one of the “nine heads of the dragon.” The Mekong River, at its delta, fans out into nine major streams. Thus, the river is known as the “nine headed dragon” of Vietnam.

Eventually we reached a village and walked a nice concrete sidewalk (shared with the occasional motorbike). Along the way we saw houses with the tombs of the ancestors literally in the front yard. The dead are always close to the living in this culture, but some tombs were the patio adjacent to the house.

Because Tet is approaching next week, we also observed several families using this Saturday morning to scrub the tombs in their yards. Buckets, brushes, and garden hoses at hand, this task appeared to be taken on in much the same way we might wash the family car in the driveway.

The sidewalk came to an end at a break in the bamboo and coconut trees that revealed a creek or stream. Waiting for us were several “sampan” boats. We divided up, three or four to a boat, with our drivers standing at the back with a single oar, lashed to a post on the port side, pushing and steering in a well-practiced, smooth motion.

After a peaceful cruise, during which the thick vegetation on both sides of the stream made us almost unaware of the many homes along the banks, we arrived at a place where habitation was unmistakable, and our boatman dropped us off.

An extended family processed coconuts here. A woman demonstrated handily how the outer husk of the coconut can be removed using a stake fixed in the ground. With equal skill she split the inner shell with a large machete and drained the milk, then used a curved knife to separate the meat from the shell.

The meat was pitched into an electric grinder, and the ground coconut meat was scooped into mesh bags that were pressed to obtain still more liquid. It was a bit unclear just how the liquids were differentiated, but some would become coconut oil, some would be boiled down to make coconut molasses, and the rest would be cooked into a chewy coconut candy, which was quite good. Nothing was wasted -- even the husks were burned as fuel for the fires.

After getting a full demonstration and tasting of the various products, we were invited to board a larger motorized boat that easily accommodated our entire group. This boat continued down the small stream a very short distance before breaking out onto a wide river — the same dragon’s head we had crossed on the bridge by bus before.

The cruise on the Mekong was very pleasant, and a personable young deck hand served us coconuts with straws for sipping the milk.

After some time on the water, our boat pulled in at a dock that was swarming with similar boats, and we arrived at a large outdoor restaurant teaming with tourist groups of all sorts: Russians, Chinese, Indians, etc.

It was a nice place, and the food was some of the most unique we have experienced on this trip. An “elephant ear fish” was brought to our table, and a young girl prepared large fish spring rolls from it before our eyes.

Similarly, she shelled giant prawns for us, dished up stir-fried pork and vegetables into rice shells, and cut up and served to us pieces of a very unique ball of sticky rice. There were also a couple other dishes, primarily vegetables and seafood. It was all wonderful.

Back on the boat, we learned that one woman in our group had a birthday today, and she was surprised with a beautifully decorated (and delicious) cake we all shared, along with fruit and tea or coffee.

We docked on the other side of the river, where our bus awaited to haul us back through traffic once again into the heart of the city. Sights along the way included another Cao Dai temple (we did not stop), a couple buses with bunk beds instead of seats that were filled with reclining Vietnamese presumably on long trips home for the holiday, and a motorbike with a cage on the back containing two rather large pigs. There’s always plenty to see out the bus windows.

The evening was free. We were so stuffed from lunch that we had little desire for anything more than a snack for dinner  We had some bananas, and I bought a beer and some nuts and the convenience store down the street. We know how to party!

We also walked around the neighborhood a bit by night. Because Tet is drawing near, many streets and individual businesses are decked out with holiday lights. Nguyen Hue Street, just a block or two from our hotel, is a boulevard. The center strip has been closed as dozens of workers bring in flowers, lights and other decorations for the big celebration.

Finally, we exercised our “white privilege” as Westerners to walk into the Hyatt, the Continental, the Rex, and a couple other fancy hotels in this neighborhood and just look around. Even though, in our travel clothes, we don’t look like we belong, the doorkeepers smile and open for us as if we were dressed like some of the folks sipping their $14 cocktails in the piano bars.

It’s apparently another “auspicious day” for weddings, as every hotel had at least one, if not two or three, big receptions going on. (It seems convenient that so many “auspicious days” happen to fall on weekends.) So many gowns, party dresses, tuxes, and musicians actually getting paid!

Saigon is a lively place on a Saturday night, but we were back to the hotel early.

Saigon

This morning's wake-up call came at 5 a.m., but we were already awake. Our suitcases had to be out by 5:15 and we had to get to breakfast by 5:30 for a 6 a.m. departure to Dalat airport. This airport makes the Waterloo, Iowa airport look like O'Hare, so it didn't take long to get through security.

The flight from Dalat to Tan Son Nhut Airport is short -- just a little over a half hour in the air. But we are told that the trip by bus would take nearly 12 hours. Of course, since the bus only move 30 mph on terrible roads, that extends the trip.

A 30 mph bus trip would have been speedy, though, coming into Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) from the airport. Traffic in the city center was a swarm of motorbikes when we were here three years ago. Now there are more cars and trucks to add to the congestion. Gridlock is common in this city of 10 million people and nearly as many vehicles.

Notre Dame interior

Eventually we reached the area of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Central Post Office -- two classic buildings left by the French. Nearby, one can still see the old CIA building, famous as the final point of evacuation for Americans in 1975 as Saigon fell. Surprisingly, our guide pointed out very little about these sites. He merely dropped us here for half an hour.

Central Post Office

We were also dropped for an hour at the War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the Museum of the War of Criminal American Aggression). We had also visited this place three years ago, but didn't mind seeing it again. The third floor exhibit on the work of war correspondents and photojournalists is especially impressive.

War Remnants Museum

Next stop was lunch, at the very same Pho restaurant OAT brought us to three years ago. The place was still as crowded and the soup equally good. Just a half a block down the street is a "lacquerware" factory. It seems that each country has a very different technique and product claiming that name. The Vietnamese version involves a wood base and the use of materials such as mother of pearl and egg shell.

Lacquerware

The bus took us just a few blocks out of the way, to the Saigon River and back, and in HCM City traffic, that killed enough time so that we could check into the hotel when we arrived. This is not the same hotel we had in 2014, but we did pass that one on the way. The location of the hotel we are in now is significantly better.

City Hall

After some down time, our guide offered an optional neighborhood orientation walk. It quickly turned into a walk in the rain. Afternoon showers are common here. Our neighborhood includes the Opera House and City Hall (both French colonial structures), as well as the Hotel Rex -- meeting place of journalists, military officers, and spies during the war.

Opera

Dinner was at a place called KOTO (know one teach one), a non-profit restaurant dedicated to training disadvantaged youth in various trades -- in this case, of course, food service trades. The food was very good.

It's Friday night in Saigon, a week before Tet, the lunar new year! The city is alive, and everyone is on the move to get home from work or to get to the office party. Traffic was at an absolute standstill. Our bus could not get to the restaurant to pick us up -- so we walked. It wasn't that far, and it felt good to us. We passed a lot of interesting, bustling places. But after such an early morning, we walked on by and called it a night.

K’Ho Village

This morning’s activity was an “optional excursion” at a small extra price per person. However, all 15 members of our tour group opted in, so it seemed like a normal morning. The bus left the hotel at 8, and we were joined by a local guide named Liem.

First stop was a greenhouse just outside of Dalat. It was not quite as advanced as the one we had visited the night before, which had steel or aluminum framework, a lighting system, and complete irrigation. This one was part steel and part bamboo, some portions had irrigation, but there was no lighting.

We learned more about the Dutch flower company that gained a government contract for land here in the 1990s. They introduced the greenhouse system, and the local farmers quickly copied it. Prior to this, flower growers got only one crop a year, often had crop failures, and grew a limited range of flowers and vegetables.

There are now more than 6000 acres of land in the region around Dalat that are under greenhouse cover. The flowers and vegetables grown are more usually hybrids now, with many more varieties, and production is nearly continuous, year round.

In the greenhouses we visited were Gerber daisies, Easter lilies (important flowers for the upcoming new year celebration), bell peppers, and red roses. Roses are picked every other day, and we arrived just in time to see a picking in progress. Red roses are frequently used for weddings in this part of the world. Most flowers grown here are exported to Japan.

As we moved lower in altitude, greenhouses gave way to large groves of coffee trees. Vietnam is the world’s second largest coffee producing nation after Brazil. The time for picking beans is nearing completion, so there were beans spread out to dry in the front yards of almost every home we passed.

Beans are picked and brought from the fields to the homes of the growers in the villages. They are spread out to dry each day, and turned frequently, either by raking or simply by walking over them with bare feet. Because humidity rises in the cool of the evening, the beans are scooped up and taken into the houses each evening, then spread out again the next day. The entire process is very labor intensive.

Once dry, the beans are run through a machine to remove the husk. We saw many of these machines, but not nearly enough for every family. Most pay someone else to husk their dried beans.

We stopped at a rather large and well-developed roadside shop to enjoy the view and to taste some of the coffee. Each cup is brewed in its own little coffeemaker and filter that fits neatly over the cup. The coffee is quite strong, but many Vietnamese mix in sweetened condensed milk (not mere cream) to smooth the taste.

We continued lower in altitude, then drove off the main road onto back roads that were barely wide enough for a single vehicle. At first these were paved, but as we wound farther into the back country, the pavement gave way to gravel. Fortunately, the only traffic sharing the road with us were motorbikes and bicycles.

At one point we did encounter a large truck coming the opposite direction, and both the truck driver and our bus driver earned their pay for the day in an elaborate ballet of getting around each other without exchanging paint.

At last we arrived at a farm that specializes in making “Weasel Coffee.” This delicacy is created by hand picking only the best and most ripe coffee beans, then feeding them to a particular species of weasel that lives in this part of the world. The weasels are difficult to breed, and cost the farmers about US$700 each.

The weasels are only able to digest the outer husk of the bean, and the rest passes through them. So the farmers have to get under the weasel cages and collect weasel dung. The dung is washed, first with water then with Dalat wine. (We’ve tasted the local wine and declare it better fit for washing dung than for drinking).

The resulting beans are then sent for processing, where they are removed from the inner husk and roasted. This coffee sells for roughly US$80 per pound locally, and when exported to coffee snobs around the world, goes for even higher prices.

We were invited to taste a tiny little shot of Weasel Coffee. The process was wasted on us, since it simply tasted to us about the same as that we had enjoyed up the road, which had been processed in a traditional method not involving the digestive track of an animal. But a number of people in our group took advantage of the opportunity to buy a four ounce pack for $20.

After the coffee tasting, we left the bus behind and got on board a farm wagon pulled by a tractor that suffered from serious rust problems. The road from this point on was dirt, and full of ruts and wash outs from the rains. We probably went a little over a mile, down one very steep hill and up another, until we arrived at a small village of K’Ho people.

The K’Ho are dark-skinned hill people of a tribe that lived in this area long before the Viets expanded their empire this far south. They are farmers with a distinct language and culture. Most of them are Roman Catholic, which means there were lots of children around — our guide called them “free range children.”

Indeed, as our tractor approached, several came and jumped onto the moving trailer. We saw others as young as 10 years old driving motorbikes (the legal driving age in Vietnam is 18). School vacation for the Tet holiday has already begun, so these children were, indeed, ranging freely!

We were able to see the school, even though it was closed for the holiday. OAT’s foundation has helped fund facilities here. We also saw the Roman Catholic church, which the villagers have recently completed.

Then we walked a short distance to the home of the village chief and his wife. This very elderly couple live in simple, two room home where she sat weaving as he served us green tea. He proudly showed off a photo of himself as a young man, together with a French missionary. There were many other religious pictures and objects decorating the room.

Catholics tended to sympathize with the South during the partition of Vietnam, so they tend not to be trusted by the Communist government. It is unclear how they were relocated to this rich farming area after the war, but it is clear that they are not benefiting from the agricultural wealth of the region in the same way as their Viet neighbors.

After a brief Q&A with our guide interpreting, we got back on the tractor for our bumpy trip back to the bus. We drove back to Dalat for a fairly good lunch in town.

Some down time in the afternoon was intended for rest and relaxation, but Mary and I have been feeling sedentary on this trip, and we used the time to get in a good walk. We walked a few blocks from the hotel to the Roman Catholic "cathedral" of Dalat. When we found it closed, we kept walking down toward the artificial lake and surrounding park that dominates the city center.

We walked in a park area below the dam, first of all, because there were almost no people there. But that path was finished quickly, so we walked part way around the lake, looking across to the shopping center on the opposite side. At that point, time demanded that we turn and retrace our steps back to the hotel.

The group met in the hotel lobby and boarded the bus for a short trip to Dalat railway station. There is an antique, narrow-guage train that runs just a few miles across town. We had one car all to ourselves, while the car ahead of us was filled with young Japanese tourists -- all cameras, all the time.

The train ride didn't really offer any new insights, but it was a slightly different perspective on the local scenery. It was a one way trip for most passengers. We got off and walked to a rather odd pagoda, which may have been inspired by the same spirit as the "Crazy House" we saw yesterday.

Most of the pagoda is constructed from broken glass and bottles. It began as an effort to collect garbage and provide a safer environment for children who often go barefoot in this area. One fascinating element is a dragon created from nearly 50,000 beer bottles. The dragon's mouth is open to reveal a near life-sized Buddha inside.

Our guide invited us to taste another street food experience in the pagoda. A woman was making "Vietnamese Pizza," made of egg, chopped peppers, and other vegetables on a rice paper "crust" sort of like a taco. After it is cooked, it is rolled up like a giant spring roll and cut into bite-sized chunks.

 

Another unusual feature is a basement area in which visitors are invited to visit "hell." We first entered a souvenir shop on the way down, so I thought that was the joke. I wasn't aware of any Buddhist concept of hell. But apparently there is a place where souls are tortured by demons for their misdeeds, and some of the torture scenes were pretty graphic. It would be a great Halloween attraction. It also was quite large -- we joked that hell seemed to last an eternity.

After going to hell and back, we returned to the bus and were taken a short distance to a large Cao Dai temple complex. We encountered Cao Dai, a uniquely Vietnamese syncretistic religion, on our last trip to Vietnam three years ago. This temple was larger than the one we saw then.

Cao Dai blends Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and a few other philosophies into a single quest for God and peace. There are about three million adherents, all here in Vietnam.

Following the afternoon's railroad theme, we had dinner in a retired rail car, not unlike the one in which we had ridden earlier. This one, however, was stationary. The meal was better than we were expecting, but was nothing great. After eating, we returned to the hotel to pack for a very early flight to Ho Chi Minh City in the morning.