We only spent 5 days in Ho Chi Minh City but we loved every minute and packed tons of activities into our short amount of time. Our first day there we met some locals at a small restaurant/bar facing the street. We sat in little plastic chairs facing the street where the people watching is some of the best ever.
Two Vietnamese college students sitting next to us, a different restaurant, but still right next to us struck up a conversation (apparently, this is quite common as many of them want to practice their english and visiting the touristy areas is the best place to meet English speakers). They were very nice and we enjoyed chatting with them. They taught us a few key phrases in Vietnamese- thank you and cheers. They also gave us some ideas about what we should visit while in the city. After chatting with them for almost an hour we finally worked up the courage to ask what the Vietnamese view on Americans is. They told us that at least the young people in the south did not view us in a negative light. Next, they asked us about guns. This is not new. We have had plenty of people including older adults from England, lots of people from Germany and now several people from Vietnam ask us about Americas gun laws. They all seem to be under the impression that it is still the Wild West and we all walk around with our shotguns. We always try to explain that, no, we don’t all have guns. You could come to America for a year and never see a gun, people don’t just run around flashing their guns and shooting. While we have not run into any antagonism against Americans, we have run into a lot of people who think our country is still pretty wild- we had no idea that was our image to the world.
The next day we got up and wandered around the city. The architecture is absolutely fantastic, it is such an eclectic mix of French and Vietnamese. We visited the (still operational) central post office, a building designed by Gustave Eiffel (you may have heard of him, he built a little monument called the Eiffel Tower).
Right across from the post office was the Notre Dame church, also built in the French style. There were also tons of pagodas and more traditional Vietnamese architecture. We enjoyed looking at the contrast the city itself is very beautiful, it has tons of park space and lots of big shady trees.
We stopped for lunch at a little food stand where we had our first banh mi, complete with mystery meat, mayo that had been sitting out for an indeterminate amount of time and something that may have been pate. Oh man, was it ever good!
Our immune systems have been in training for moments like this and we both loved the flavor and neither of us got sick! Our lunch set us back about $1.50 total, but don’t worry Nick managed to find a job so we could recoup our costs and keep traveling.
Nick in his new role as a coconut salesman
Our next stop was the War Remnants Museum. The Vietnam war is not one that either of us were really familiar with, other than peripherally. We both knew it was an unbelievably messy war and that it was very controversial and it just got messier and more controversial as it went on longer.
We were surprised in Cambodia when we learned from one of our tour guides that the US had bombed Cambodia; wanting to be more informed and not wanting to be caught off guard again we have spent many hours watching documentaries on the war. However, even though we were somewhat prepared the War Remnants Museum was still a very emotional visit. Though the museum is very one sided, it was still an incredibly powerful experience and many of the artifacts and documents on display came from the US government.
The most difficult part of the museum was the hall dedicated to the aftermath of agent orange and the consequences that soldiers and their families on both sides and civilians of Vietnam are still seeing. I think the part that was the most well done was the photography collection called requiem. It was a series of pictures of soldiers and civilians on both sides and the images were very powerful, some heartbreaking and many thought provoking. It was a very sobering experience for sure. Exhausted, both mentally and physically, a little dehydrated and hot we headed back to our guest house where we got some puppy therapy and played with the four super spunky puppies that live at the guesthouse.
The next day we got up super early to head out to a small 15 acre farm outside of the city for cooking school!! The school was more than a school, it was an organic farm as well.
Picking vegetables
Everything we ate came from the farm- from the mushrooms to the prawns. The owner, Chef Tan, even grew his own rice and made his own rice wine and beer. When he asked where we were from and I said Colorado, he got all excited and said a chef who came to study with him had opened a restaurant in Colorado. He said it was in Denver but a quick google search revealed it is actually Gunnison- not quite the same thing. We started our day with a tour of the farm.
He even thanked the Americans for bombing Vietnam because he had a nice crater that filled up with water and fish during the rainy season. He taught us all about the various health benefits of the herbs that we picked fresh for our dishes. I was just in heaven. Basil is good for anti aging and stopping diarrhea, garlic chive helps stop bleeding, lemongrass is good for a hangover, mint is cooling.
We then cooked several dishes- spring rolls (the best we have had), papaya salad, stewed chicken with oyster mushrooms in clay pots and Chef Tans famous banana spring rolls. It was a long day, but tons of fun and once again, Nick got full.
However, he was not too full for dinner. We met up with our Vietnamese friends again and they gave us quite the education on Vietnamese street food. We were sitting in our tiny chairs at our tiny tables when a lady on a bicycle came by. One of our friends asked us if we had ever tried pork rice; when we said no, we proceeded to call her over where she sold us pork rice out of a basket on the back of her bike. It pretty much went against everything I have ever learned about food safety, but it sure was tasty! The pork was wrapped up inside sticky rice and topped with spices and a splash of soy sauce (I think). We ate it out of a bag!
Next up were hard-boiled quail eggs. We had seen several vendors walking up and down the street with bags full of tiny eggs. We had no idea what they were or how to eat them, plus there was the whole “how long have those been sitting out” issue so we had never tried them. We ordered some and discovered they were really good as well. They came with a piece of newspaper folded around salt and pepper for dipping our eggs.
Our dessert course was sliced pineapple which came with a wildly addictive chili and salt dip. It was so much fun to try these foods and they were all so good! While we were sitting there a couple of guys from Germany came and sat down next to us. We sat chatting with them as well for a while. They also asked about guns and one of them told us he thought of America as an even wilder place than Asia. We were shocked! We had a great night trying new foods and chatting with our new Vietnamese and German friends- talk about all coming from different cultures!
Our final day was pretty low key. We booked plane tickets to Hanoi, which should have been simple but instead was quite complicated. After trying and failing on multiple occasions to book online like normal people we had to give up. Sometimes we couldn’t get past the first page, sometimes we did and then couldn’t get our credit card info to go through. Finally, we made it to the confirmation page but instead of seeing a confirmation all we saw was an error page telling us our seats had already been booked. Grr. So Nick set off to the ticket office (I stayed in the room getting caught up on posts and a few other things). We were both shocked such things even still exist- ticket offices to buy plane tickets. Although we have not been able to use our credit cards anywhere here, so maybe it is just the way business is done still. I take that back, he did use a credit card to book our plane tickets. However, it was still not a simple process. He went down to the office, booked our tickets but the lady didn’t want to plugin her credit card machine. So she called someone who came to pick Nick up on his scooter and scooted him to another branch where he used his card. On the plus side, the guy driving the moto stopped for lunch at a roadside stand and Nick, with that wonderful, big brain of his thought “ah, if a local is eating here, it must be good!” So he got some pork chops, rice, pickled vegetables and a fried egg for each of us and brought it back to our guesthouse. He was right on, it was so good- the pork was a little sweet and the vinegary pickled vegetables were an awesome complement.
We lazed around most of the afternoon. We went for a short walk, but it was just so hot that it didn’t last long. We didn’t venture out again until dinner where we found a great little stand selling kabobs and grilled meats. We picked a few and got a plate of grilled okra. Another excellent meal! Seriously, the food here is so good, expect a lot of posts and gratuitous details about the food we eat.
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