Saigon: It's all About the Motorbikes

We have officially completed our first real day in Saigon and I have to say, I'm kind of impressed. I wasn't thinking that Ho Chi Minh would provide much in the way of interest for me. I don't know a lot about the war, I'm not really familiar with the food, and I feel like I randomly picked this location based on an episode of Top Gear (Thanks, Thomas and Josh!) and what location was cheapest to fly into in Southeast Asia. Frank was the driving factor to hit up Vietnam, really, so I suppose the thanks should go to him.

The flight was long. Like. . .ridiculously, painfully long. That said, if I happen to make the trek to Southeast Asia again, I think Cathay Air has made a customer for life. They had entertainment units on all of the seats and a whole array of newly released movies. I found joy in the TV show Community and marathoned 11 episodes until I felt like my eyes were going to fall out. Sadly, it's only a 20 minute show so it didn't really last as long as it sounds. They also fed us 500 times. That is an exaggeration, but not by much.

We got into our hostel around 7:30 pm on Thursday night. We exited the airport and after being told the buses had stopped running, we opted for a sketchy cab driver that crammed us into an unmarked taxi with 4 other travellers going in a similar direction. Getting our bags in was like playing a game of Jenga. The guy charged us a high price but he was friendly and showed us exactly how to get to our hostel, Diep Anh. There is some kind of accent on there that I don't really feel like taking the time to attempt to duplicate.

The driving scene here is absolutely insane. On first glance, it looks like chaos. There are massive buses, a few cars, and thousands of motorbikes. I don't think I can correctly describe the amount of bikes on the road here, so I'll post up some pictures and you can see for yourself. When I say driving is chaotic, I mean it. There are lanes, but the lanes are merely suggestions. At any given point, bikes are zooming past cars going the opposite direction. People are crossing the road and buses and bikes are swerving around them. There aren't real cross walks and you're not necessarily safer as a pedestrian if you decide to use them. The strategy for walking around here is to either cross in a group (safety in numbers. . .you hope) or to walk across the street slowly and consistently so that you don't throw the 86876876 drivers off their driving rhythm.

Our hostel is pretty laid back and isn't sketchy. I feel like I chose well to break Frank into the hostelling scene. When we go to Cambodia, I feel like he will be slightly unprepared. We're located in the middle of the downtown area with tons of shops, close to all the monuments, and near the Ben Thahn market which hosts hundreds of vendors selling everything from art to jewellery to really gaudy, sparkly Vietnamese dresses. I've already scoped out the two shirts I want. I'm totally going to have to mail stuff home. We're staying in the Pham Ngu Lao area, if that means anything to anyone. It doesn't to me. Or it didn't. I mean, I'm here now so I guess it does. Whatever! Moving on. . .

When we got in, the man who owns our hostel sat down with us and gave us a map, marking out places to go and how to give ourselves our own walking tour of the city. He also showed us a pamphlet with a few tours and after reviewing it, we decided to stay in Vietnam for an extra day so we could do an extra day tour to a pagoda and the Cu Chi tunnels. Our next stop is Cambodia and one of the tours takes us from a small Vietnamese town on the Mekong River to a border town and then via speed boat (ON A BOAT)the next day to Phenom Penh, which is Cambodia's capital. It was $48 USD but it's a tour, lodging for one night, and gets us to our destination without having to ride a bus and do a really sketchtastic border crossing. I'll take that any day!

Food here is amazing. Frank and I woke up yesterday and had Pho for breakfast. Apparently the place on the corner is one of the best Pho shops in Saigon and the guy who owns the hostel apparently knows what he's talking about.

Yesterday was filled with the War Remnants museum, Reunification Palace, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and dinner on a floating restaurant on the Saigon River. Most unique, however, was the massage school for the blind. You roll in, give them $3 USD, and a blind person massages you for an hour. It's not a fancy spa with a bunch of candles or scented lotions. It's just a relaxing, wonderful massage. I was all about it, although it was kind of weird since they don't know any English. The woman tugged on my shirt a few times and accidentally groped my ass. I took this to mean 'get naked'. I'm relived that I wasn't wrong.

Off the breakfast and a day of tunnels and history. Hooray!