Saigon is Ho Chi Minh City is Saigon is a Nice Place to Visit

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is the official name of the city most know as Saigon.  No matter what you call it, the city has a reputation for being chaotic and hard to handle.  We would have lost it at least once had we flown directly into Saigon from home, but perhaps because of our time in China, KL, and other pandamonious cities, we weren't as overwhelmed by Saigon as we thought we might be.  We were thrilled by Saigon.  We were disturbed by Saigon.  And one of us was even hit in the back of the legs by Saigon (via a dude riding his motorbike on the sidewalk).  But Saigon, unlike China, never made us cry or want to purse-slap the next person who honked their horn to notify other drivers that he was turning left.  We were never truly overwhelmed by Saigon - despite finding glass in our breakfast the first morning and the narrow alley outside our hotel being more of an experiment in putting far too many people, meats, fish, motorbikes, dogs, and other items in too small a space, than any alley we'd ever seen.

Saigon brought us closer to Vietnam's tumultuous history with two good museums, the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum.  The closest either one of us came to being overwhelmed was at the War Remnants Museum, which Jeff could only describe as "exhausting" when he returned from his visit there.  But the Royal Palace was the opposite of it's more popular, darker cousin - a fun, light-hearted monument to the end of the war and an unmatched snapshot of a certain moment in time.  The Palace's interior design has gone untouched since it was taken by the North at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.  It's decor is straight 60's through and through, and we found the fact that everything looked as it did in the 60s and 70s alternately bizarre, fascinating, and hilarious.  It was like being on a set for Mad Men.  There wasn't very much in the way of information in the Palace for those without a tour guide (us) or the ability to read Vietnamese (us again), but we were perfectly content in wandering the halls and rooms, inspecting the outdated fashion of the place - especially it's James Bond villains-lair basement, still decorated with computers, radios, and presidential war stations from times long since past.  We couldn't remember the last time we visited a museum that wasn't just restored to look as it did the last time it was in use.  This place doesn't just look like it looked when the Viet Cong took it in 1975, it is exactly how it was when the famous photo of the North's tank breaking through the front gate was taken, with the same fixtures, carpets, and furniture.

The War Remnants Museum was a unique museum in an entirely different way.  Unafraid to tell a completely biased story of the war crimes committed during the Vietnam War (called, appropriately, the American War in Vietnam), this museum was still moving, and was especially interesting for someone (anyone) who is more familiar with the American perspective of the war.  The museum undermines its own mission to preserve and promote peace by harboring so many grudges, depicting so many biases, and for not giving a completely accurate account of the war (predictably, none of the North's crimes or transgressions against the South are mentioned at this museum at all).  Sadly, the biases and demonization present at the War Remnants Museum are examples of the kinds of bitterness and hatred that lead to war, which is the opposite of what the museum is trying to accomplish.  The bias of the museum is its biggest weakness, though it still has some excellent exhibits that will make visitors think long and hard (and get sick) about war and its ramifications.  Jeff went alone to this one, and left feeling emotionally drained and shaken.  The exhibits about Agent Orange and it's continuing impacts on residents in sprayed areas was as unsettling and upsetting as anything he could remember seeing in a museum.  Where the War Remnants Museum succeeds is in it's unapologetic portrayal of the unnecessary and tragic brutalities of war.

When things got too heavy in Saigon, either too many horns, too much walking in the heat, or too much museum time, we did what we do best - stop for a meal.  Hoi An spoiled us by providing cheap, delicious food in hideous quantities.  There is no way to feel like you are getting an authentic eating experience in Hoi An because there are tourists everywhere.  Which is a good excuse to not even try.  But we knew our time in Saigon would be wasted if we played it safe and skipped the street-side plastic-stool eateries and sidewalk carts.  One of our favorite meals in Saigon was at a small, local market not far from our hotel.  In the daytime the market is alive with locals buying everything from coffee to toys to clothes.  One lesson we've learned on this trip is that where there is commerce there are people selling food, so we ordered items from three different carts at the front of the market, sat down, and enjoyed a

The best pho we had in Vietna

blue and delicious meal (it was made blue by the tarps above our heads that protected us from the sun, and delicious by the ladies that work magic with a gas burner and a frying pan, or a grill and a skewer).  Coffee in Vietnam is a true delight, and the iced-coffee at the market was one of the best we had in our three weeks there.  Vietnamese coffee is strong, but becomes something new and wonderful when stirred with some sweetened condensed milk and ice. The inexpensive and tasty nature of the meal (the coffees, for instance, were less than half of what you pay at a tourist-oriented restaurant) reminded us why we like to rub elbows with the locals when we eat (and the fact that two other customers of meat-skewer lady stopped by our table to help us get the right ingredients on our tables for the sauce for the noodles and skewers, and helped us prepare it correctly).

One other meal is worth mentioning here: lunch at a French bistro called Le Jardin, which is in a peaceful little garden in the middle of the city.  The location provided excellent atmosphere for lunch on a bright, sunny day, but the food stole the show.  We ordered mussels and fries, a salad, pumpkin soup, and parma-ham and melon.  We really weren't sure what to expect, because so often in Asia, the Western food delivered is not the Western food expected.  But we had secret high hopes since Vietnam has a history with French food.  Each dish was exactly what we'd hoped for when ordering it, the melon and the mussels even more so (the bowl of mussels we were served seemed destined to make us sick one way or another - either from food poisoning or from over-eating, though we ended up unscathed).  We left Le Jardin (a popular spot for nearby workers and expats, apparently as it filled up by the time we finished) just as it started to rain.  We didn't make it one block before it was raining so hard we had to stop under a tree.  The rain still wasn't all that hard, but it picked up again and we made for a makeshift tent made by a street vendor using a motorbike, a tarp, and a fence.  She beckoned us over a few times but we didn't want to cramp her already full quarters.  Then it started to REALLY pour, and we had no qualms about darting over to her dry haven to wait it out.  We exchanged smiles with the other shelter-seekers while we waited for the rain to let up enough for us to run to an awning and wait for a cab.

We ended up liking Saigon because it brought us closer to Vietnam's complex and troubled history.  We went back to our hotel in the evenings with numerous names, dates, and events to look up on the internet.  We found fuel to research the things that were omitted or skimmed over, to delve beyond our rough introduction to Vietnam's full history in the museums, buildings, and monuments of Saigon.  We left the city feeling closer to Vietnam's past than we had when we arrived, which is not something we'd really expected.

We had, however, planned on Saigon taking the wind out of us.  And even though it didn't overwhelm us like we thought it would, we were happy to hop on a small turbo-prop airplane and head to the island of Phu Quoc, just an hour's flight from the big city. We'd planned the relaxing island as a small recovery from Saigon, and fast-paced Vietnam as a whole.  But it ended up being the perfect place to unwind and contemplate the horrors, the wonders, and the beauty we'd seen and learned about over our previous 20 days in exciting, surprising Vietnam.