Ho Chi Minh City – Jan 1-10, 2018

We officially retired on Dec 1^st with a plan for the month that included a relaxing week in New Orleans, spending lots of time with the grand kids and a leisurely move out of our apartment and into my mother’s upstairs.  None of that happened.

First Mom got very sick and spent most of the month in the Hospital, then the planned renovations at her house ran into several problems turning 2 days into 6.  I agreed to keep working to help my replacement come up to speed and the day we finally completed our move into Mom’s was the day that her Doctor definitively said she could no longer live on her own.  Between Christmas and New Year’s, we found her an assisted living facility and got her settled in.  As much as he hates long flights, Bill said he was looking forward to it just to get some rest.  The worst part of all of it was that I only had 1 day to pack and only have 1 suitcase for our 3-month trip.  How will I survive?

Binh Tay Market

Our flight to Vietnam (via Seoul) left around noon on New Year’s Day.  Our first hiccup was confusion over our seating assignment, we remembered (wrongly) paying additional for “extra leg room” for Bill.  When we discovered we were in the center row for our 16-hour flight we were not happy.  They had 1 seat available in an exit row and I graciously agreed Bill should take it (while I appreciated the extra space, not sitting together made the flight feel more like a work trip).  At least I had an aisle seat so I didn’t have to make my seat mates let me out for my frequent trips to the bathroom. Our 3-hour layover in Seoul turned out to be less than 1 hour given our flight out of Dallas left very late.  We had to clear security again so it was quite the rush only to get to the gate and see that our next flight was also delayed.  After our final 5-hour flight (with the guy in seat directly behind us coughing and sneezing on us constantly), we finally arrived in HCMC and got to our AirBnB apartment at around 1:30 am.

We must have had jet lag brain, because we decided to go to the 24-hour convenience store at 2 am to get some food for breakfast.  The security guard and our host both indicated it was just around the corner.  It was super dark with no street lights at all.  We must have taken a wrong turn because we walked at least 20 minutes, along dirty, dark streets, with large

Pagoda decorations in disrepair

RATS darting around and scurrying about in the trash.  We (Dessa) counted more than 2 dozen on our ill-advised walk (I think Dessa had visions of the horror films Ben and Willard).  I was worried about getting mugged, but Bill (being hard to intimidate) wasn’t, so on we trudged.  There were people out, just sitting around, probably thinking we were crazy tourists.  They were right!  Luckily, we made it back without injury, not mugged or bitten by rats.

After sleeping till noon, we ventured out to discover that in the light of day there were no rats, but everything actually looked worse.  The streets and buildings and many of the so called “restaurants” were all filthy, with trash everywhere, very poorly maintained, and just generally unsightly.  I really shouldn’t have been surprised, we spent a month in Thailand two years ago, and it was much the same.  Unlike Thailand however, even the top tourist destinations were in really bad shape.

In addition to seeing the world, one the reasons for our Winter travels is to avoid the cold weather.  Seeing what was happening with the storms in the US we were pretty happy with our 90 degree, high humidity weather.  Sure, we were often drenched in sweat but the humidity was great for my chapped lips, dry eyes, skin, hair and after three years of fighting peeling nails, they immediately started to heal.

Scooters, Scooters everywhere

HCMC was previously known as Saigon.  I’m not sure the name change really took, since it is still referred to by its old name by many.  It is home to about 10 million people (expected to increase 40% by 2025), and according to Google 7.43 million scooters.  I believe it, they were swarming or parked everywhere.  There are very few traffic lights (and many of those only apply to cars and not Scooters), and the vehicles all flow together with lots of mostly polite honking that seems to mean “look out I’m coming through”.  Driving the wrong way and on the side walk is also acceptable.  It is hard to fault their system, we saw no traffic jams or accidents and none of the vehicles had any damage to indicate bumping into each other.  Compare that to daily accidents on Hwy 75.

There are few gaps in the traffic, so crossing the street takes pure courage, you just have to go for it, hoping the scooters go around (the cars and buses are much less likely to give way).  The people are very nice and friendly, even the market peddlers, and the honkers.  Surprisingly, we saw very few homeless or beggars.  The people are very industrious and seem to find a way to make a buck.

Victory – Reunification Palace

Vietnam is a communist country, and several of the top tourist attractions celebrate the defeat of the American’s and their “Puppet Regime” during the civil war. As far as we could tell, no funds are spent on maintaining anything historical.  We visited many of the top tourist attractions and they were all in disrepair.  In the temples, we saw lots of what we can only assume were ancient carvings that were being allowed to go to ruin.  I guess we both had expected something more like Bangkok where the temples were maintained and beautiful.  After the first couple of days of being disappointed, Bill challenged us both to look more creatively at everything and find interesting photos within the grime and decay.  It was a great idea, and we had lots more fun taking pictures.  As a result, you will see more “artsy” pics.

Sunset from our balcony

Both of us started to get sick and with the built-in fatigue from December we decided not to push too hard dropping several sites from our plan.  Instead, we went to the gym for the first time in weeks and spent time reading at the roof top infinity pool.  The AirBnB apartment was very nice and our host was quick to provide anything we requested.  Uber cost $1 – $3 per ride, about $1 per 10 minutes so Bill was happy to minimize the walking in the heat. An awesome 90-minute hot rock massage was $20 bucks.

The enticing entrance to the Secret Garden Restaurant

Finding food for me was challenging, Asian is not my favorite genre, but Bill is patient with my picky eating. Food was crazy cheap, and we found the malls where the good bakeries and sweet shops were located (She makes that sound like a happy accident as opposed to a constant search until we found them).  Bakery treats were about $1 each, so we had them every day (Let’s be honest here.  We would have had them every day regardless of how much they cost).  Our host suggested a roof top restaurant called the Secret Garden that had excellent Vietnamese food.  I suppose it got its name from the fact that you had to go down an alley, then up 5 flights of stairs through an apartment building to reach it. This place was considered “upscale” at $20 for dinner.  We had breakfast Bhan Mi from a food cart, which was two perfectly fried eggs and some cucumber on a large soft roll for $.75 each, delish and Vegetable Pho (noodle soup) from a little hole in the wall.

Next stop Singapore which looks very promising – orchids, gardens, aviary…all my favorites.

You can find all of our Ho Chi Minh city photos HERE

Post Author: Dessa   (with editorial comments by Bill in Italics)