Tour of Duty
Chao! ("tiao" = "hello" in Vietnamese)I arrived from my first visit to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in Vietnam last night. My company sent me to do some work there for a week, then I extended my stay to explore. I stayed outside the city, in the house of Jessica, the Managing Director of our partner office in Vietnam.
The extent of my Vietnamese is "hello", ao dyai (traditional Vietnamese dress with trousers), "thank you", "cigarette", "lighter", "match", "ashtray" (do you see a pattern here?), and "highway to Hanoi" (which I need to take to go home. Home being Jessica's house). I didn't learn any "bad words".
The locals thought that I was either Vietnamese or Thai. Only one person knew I was Filipino (he said it was in my accent when I talk). Some of the Vietnamese guys are cute =) But I didn't meet any =( When some of the locals found out I was Filipino, the first thing they said was "San Miguel Beer!" Now that's marketing. This guy I met in the hotel next door (Duxton Hotel?) said that the Philippines is "popular" for 3 reasons - San Miguel Beer, the Mayon Volcano, and "the president who used to be an action star".
CUISINE. Vietnamese food is fantastic! The consultants in our parnter office, Dung (pronounced "Yoong") and Anh, took me to a different restaurant for lunch everyday to try all kinds of Vietnamese food. My favorite local restaurant is Pho24, across the street from Sun Wah Tower (where the office is). There were times when I would just eat everything they put infront of me and I had no idea what I was eating. I developed a rash last Thursday because I had an allergic reaction to something. Lord knows what it was (I don't think they were trying to kill me the way I think our associate in Bangkok did). I really enjoy pho (Vietnamese noodles. Apparently, it's pronounced "fuh") and this prawn wrapped around sugar cane (Jessica's maid bought some for me to take home). They have all kinds of spring rolls, too (so many choices!). The other day, Dung was wondering why I was having a hard time eating this fish dish with chopsticks. She thought that Filipinos also ate with chopsticks everyday.
I had dinner at Jessica's every night and I wanted to kidnap her maid, Thuy, because she's such a great cook. Thuy was always very proud to let me try something "traditional" or "uniquely Vietamese". But one time she prepared coconut, rambutan and mangosteen for dessert because she thought we didn't have those in the Philippines. I didn't have the heart to tell her that we had six coconut trees right outside our house.
On Saturday, we had dinner in Le Bordeaux, a classy French restaurant outside the city where everything is from France. Even the fresh oysters were from Provence. I can't find the words to tell you how wonderful our meal was (mini baguettes, oysters, foie gras 3 ways, baby seabass, scallops, tuna steak, beef tenderloin, chocolate suffle). And the wine...mmmmm....
Oh, and the coffee! Wow! If Vietnamese coffee can't keep you awake, I don't know what will. And it's really good! Jessica gave me a bag of Vietnamese coffee beans to take home. I just need to find a grinder. I brought some to the office today. It will help Miggy and I save up on our morning trips to Starbucks. I hope that Starbucks never opens in Vietnam. The local coffee is far better (similar to our kape barako). Highlands Coffee is a local cafe chain that should not be missed.
PLACES TO GO. I had been in the city for week and was not able to explore as much as I wanted to because of all the work that had to be done. Although I walked or had taken cabs past the People's Committee Building (formerly Hotel de Ville and converted to a government building) and the old Opera House, I didn't get to walk in or take pictures. Then Jessica suggested that I check out Sinh Cafe in the backpackers' area of HCMC (their version of Bangkok's Khao San Road). Sinh Cafe is a local tour operator that offers cheap tours for budget travellers (highly recommended for the adventurous). All the city tours (US$6 per person for a full-day tour) were booked, so I opted for a half day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels (US$5 plus the US$6 entrance fee). Our guide was nothing great, but I admire his enthusiasm and his love for his country. I have never seen such pride in a local tour guide, even in Thailand.
Cu Chi is village 35 kilometers outside HCMC (it's kind of like going to Tagaytay from Alabang) and the tunnels are the "underground system" where the Viet Cong (or was it the Bac Viet?) hid from the US troops during the war 29 years ago. I saw a picture of exactly how small the entrance/exit holes were and heard that going through the tunnels could induce claustrophobia (I can't even stay in a sauna room for two minutes). So on the afternoon before my trip, I decided not to go in the tunnels, and just wait for some gorgeous guy to climb out.
Here comes Saturday morning and I get on the bus with people from France, Japan, India, the UK and the US (I don't know where the others were from), mostly young (or young-at-heart) backpackers. It took us almost two hours to get to Cu Chi with the traffic and the train crossing (like the Don Bosco area on the South Expressway). We stopped somewhere to get out, stretch, and look at the rubber trees. When we got to the "Cu Chi office" (as our guide, Quiy, called it), we were ushered into a small room to watch a 30 minute documentary about the Vietnam war and how the Cu Chi people survived. It's similar to the video that visitors to Pearl Harbor are shown before boarding the boat to visit the Arizona Memorial. I distinctly remember Tito Mike and my cousins in Hawai'i asking what I thought of that documentary, and they said that the curators spent a lot of time trying not to make it sound anti-Japanese. Where the Americans tried to be politically correct, the Vietnamese were terse. To me, the Cu Chi Tunnels documentary was very anti-American, and the part of the narration that struck me went something like "...like crazy people, they shot at our women, our children,....They even bombed our schools,....Why would they want to destroy a peaceful village like Cu Chi?" After hearing this, I noticed that some of the Americans in our tour group just cover their faces. The Europeans nodded their heads.
We then walked to the "park" to look at the tunnels. The documentary showed the different traps that the Vietnamese set up around the forest (I had seen a similar documentary on the The Discovery Channel last month), and there was a shooting range near the park, so one couldn't help but walk carefully behind the guide and somehow feel like you were in the killing fields. I'll post some pictures soon (they're still being processed in Island Photo downstairs), but the traps and holes are so well hidden and so small. And I must say, the traps and the tunnels themselves are ingenious! Most tunnels had three floors - some were 6 meters deep, then 8 meters deep, and 10 meters deep. They had armories, mess halls, classrooms, hospitals and sleeping quarters down there. Best to look them up in a history encyclopedia or ask a war historian, but to see is to believe. Amazing!
A special section of the tunnels were enlarged for foreign visitors to go through (what the locals call "fake tunnels"). We had the option of crawling through a 30 meter tunnel, 50 meter tunnel, or a 100 meter tunnel. I decided to try the 30 meter tunnel. If you are/were a swimmer and have done hypoxic (breaststroke underwater), I'm telling you that it's easier to do a 25 meter hypoxic than to crawl through 5 meters of the Cu Chi Tunnels. A couple of visitors climbed back out while a couple of others cried inside. It was the dark that freaked me out...but I made it through!
There are other places of interest in and around HCMC, but after the Cu Chi Tunnels, I only had time for shopping (hahaha) and walking around the city. The traffic in HCMC is something else. Motorbikes everywhere! There are more bikes than cars. And some areas are so surreal - they're distincly Parisian, then you have these people biking with their leaf hats and traditional dresses. The corner of the Hotel Continental and the Opera House in particuar doesn't make you think you're in Asia at all. I really wish I had more time to explore and to learn more about the city. But it was already 3PM, there were things that my Mom specifically asked me to buy, the market closes at 5PM, and my return flight was on the following day.
SHOPPING. Bangkok is like my second home, so nothing can beat the Chatuchak weekend market. But there are a lot of good buys in HCMC's Benh Thanh Market. All those beautifully embroidered silk bags you see in bazaars for Php800 tp Php2,000? If you're a diligent shopper and like to bargain, you can get them for under Php300 to as much as Php1,000 in Benh Thanh. I heard that the Vietnamese know that the Thais shop in Benh Thanh, buy in bulk, and re-sell them in Chatuchak. So I pretended to be Thai and told some of the shopowners that I can buy so-and-so for less back in Bangkok. I even started counting and giving directions in Thai and saying as many Thai words as I could remember (they had no idea what I was saying, but seemed to recognize the accent), so they got flustered and started lowering their prices. Carrying my bags home, I felt like a viajera. Most of my Christmas shopping is done =)
The art galleries along Dong Khoi Street, Nguyen Hue Street, and Le Loi Street are quite interesting, and I was able to buy really good but cheap postcard-sized water-color paintings and oil paintings (both on rice paper). My Bangkok buddies were right - Vietnam is a good place to go for art! If you're staying in a hotel near Dong Khoi Street (like the Sheraton or the Caravelle Hotel), it's best to walk around and see what you like (do some pre-shopping) and then buy everything in Benh Thanh at a much lower price.
SUNDAY MASS. I attended the 9AM mass in the Notre Dame Cathedral across the Reunification Palace. The service is an hour and half long because almost everything is said twice - once in Vietnamese, then again in English. The choir was fantastic! I thought I had died and...well, gone somewhere. Haha. It was like a Latin chant, but in Vietnamese. I don't know how to explain it, but really, it sounded heavenly. Absolutely beautiful. If you ever visit HCMC and have to stay until Sunday, the 9AM mass is supposedly the only one celebrated in English. And if you're taking Philippine Airlines back to Manila, you have plenty time for some last minute shopping and sightseeing (I was able to visit the Reunification Palace after mass, and walk around District 1 before going back to Benh Thanh one last time).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I would like to thank the Thais for teaching me patience, everyone in my company who allowed me to take on this short assignment, everyone who helped fill in for me at work last week, everyone at (and who I have met through) work who taught me all I know to get the job done, my Bangkok Wednesday Group for teaching me how to balance partying and praying and how to be more understanding of different cultures, Lynette for telling me that US$200 was too much money for shopping (I felt that US$100 was already too much) and for suggesting that I start my Christmas shopping in HCMC, Ria for telling me that fabric is a good buy in HCMC (and you were right! It's so cheap!), and my parents for never allowing me to use a spoon and fork when eating in a Chinese or Japanese restaurant. Oh, and L'Oreal for my hair and make-up.
posted by Calai @ 6:00 AM
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