An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
We enjoyed another international smorgasboard for breakfast, then checked out and loaded the lovely Mercedes for our morning city tour. First stop was the former National Palace of the President of South Vietnam, complete with the famous tank that drove through (and over) the entrance gates in 1975 now sitting right on the front grounds. The building is architecturally quite interesting, (it served as both residence and official office) making liberal use of outside ventilation. We saw the residences (nothing special) and the official rooms - reception, conference, party - which were furnished with beautiful Vietnamese furniture, carpets and paintings. We also saw the basement, which functioned as a combat bunker complete with sleeping quarters, a large room filled with clunky, obsolete radio equipment, innumerable maps with military markings, and escape tunnels (though a bit larger than yesterday’s!). Then we saw a seemingly endless (though it was only about 35 minutes) video on the history of Vietnam. It was even worse quality than a bad Chinese pirated one, and we had trouble watching or understanding it all. The gist of it being basically that all those big bad superpowers should have just left these poor people alone. We were a bit shell-shocked ourselves after sitting through it, but we had a few more stops before lunch.
Next was the National History Museum, which went back a bit longer than the video — to the Bronze age, in fact. We saw artifacts from over 2500 years ago, Chinese vases, tools of the various minority peoples of Vietnam (there are 54 different tribes in this country), and some assorted Buddhas. Cong seemed to sense how little interest we had, but he seemed genuinely proud to be showing it all off. We didn’t tarry too long there before heading into Chinatown.
Saigon’s Chinatown is home to over 450,000 Vietnamese Chinese and is even more crowded and frenetic than New York’s. We stopped at the oldest Chinese temple in Saigon, which was pretty funky, and had dozens of hanging conical incense, each of which burns for a month and are lit (after making a donation) by people coming to pray for health, business success, academic achievements, etc. Just like back home, there were placques on the wall detailing the donations of various individuals, though of course in Chinese.
It was then lunch time, and we were taken to a pretty good place. It was another set menu, but mostly stuff we liked — grilled fish, vegetable soup, spring rolls, pork, chicken with rice — so we enjoyed the tasting menu concept. The really entertaining thing here, though, was the clever and artistic presentations of the dishes. Zucchini, small red peppers, olive parts were all used to create full-featured figures accompanying the dishes. As an example, the fish came with a small upright zucchini that had a face made from the aforementioned parts, and which was peeled in a way to look like two arms, one of which held a toothpick with a string attached going to a small carrot that had been carved in the shape of some small animal as bait, which was half in the fish’s mouth. Every dish was accompanied by something like that.
We headed off to the airport, as it was time to bid a weary farewell to this sweltering, chaotic megalopolis. We sat in the departure lounge listening to departure announcements in Vietnamese (which always sounds like they’re just making it up) then flew the 45 minutes to Nha Trang where we were met by the effusive guide Victor and our driver, Mr. Number 3. This is a relatively quiet town with mountains set on tree sides and the ocean on the fourth. Our hotel is a nice tropical resort, set on a beautiful beach. Went for a short walk along the beach, sticking our feet in the 79 degree water of the South China Sea.
We reveled in the quiet of our room (with a pounding surf outside) and by an amazing stroke of luck, got to watch a replay of last night’s basketball final on StarTV, though in Japanese. We enjoyed not eating dinner, though we did get a mango dacquiri, and just relaxed.