HCMC and Kamalaya, Ko Samui

Happy 2012 everyone!  My New Year's resolution is to keep up-to-date with my blogs!  (I promise to do that once I catch up on last year's adventures)

I had a flurry of trips at the end of 2011.  On very short notice, Jeff had to go to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) for a business meeting.  We decided to make a weekend out of it (one of the perks of living in HK!).

After checking into our hotel (yes Evelyn and Joan - it was 5 star this time) on Friday evening, we took a taxi to the Ben Thanh market.  The indoor market had closed by the time we arrived, but we were able to wander through the outdoor souvenir stalls and small shops.  Vietnam is famous for its lacquerware, and most of the stores were jam-packed with wall-hangings, bowls, plates, and other decorative items.  We
bought a set of three red lacquer bowls at the little shop in the photo.  My well-honed bargaining skills got the total price down to $25US, less than half the original asking price!  Shopping always gives me an appetite, but when we tried to order spring rolls or vegetable rolls at the outdoor food stalls, we were told that there weren't any left.  So we settled for our first bottle of Saigon beer.

We certainly packed in a long day of touring and walking on Saturday.  We began with the Notre Dame Cathedral, situated right around the corner from our hotel.  The church is new (1959) and non-descript.  There was a mass being celebrated inside, and, because of the heat, all the doors were open.  The church was filled to capacity, so we were unable to even peek inside.  The most interesting sight was just outside the main door : a tiny old lady wearing a traditional ao dai with her cigarette dangling from her mouth!

My favourite building in HCMC, the Central Post Office, is right next to the ND Cathedral.  This French colonial building (late 19th century) was designed by Gustave Eiffel.  The exterior resembles many French government buildings built during the 3rd Republic (stone, symmetrical, lots of columns and arches), but it's the interior that causes a "wow" reaction.  The long vaulted hall still retains all of its original beautiful woodwork.  There are old maps and clocks along the walls, and even old red phone booths that have now been converted for ATM machines.  Uncle Ho's portrait on the far wall dominates the room.  Stamps were very inexpensive - perhaps that's why our postcards to America took three to four weeks!

Dodging thousands of motorbikes and cars, we made our way to the Reunification Palace.  Traffic in HCMC is something crazy to behold, especially at rush hour.   Most of our Canadian rules of the road do not apply here - motorbikes turn left from the right hand lane, drive on bicycle lanes, climb sidewalks, and run red lights.  It's not as scary as it seems, though, to cross the road, since the traffic generally moves rather slowly.  The trick is to wait for a slight opening and to walk purposefully across in a straight line, while staring down the oncoming cars.  It also helps to hold your breath as you step off the curb.

On April 30, 1975, the first communist tanks to arrive in Saigon crashed through the wrought-iron gates of Reunification Palace (then known as Independence Palace or the Presidential Palace).  In melodramatic fashion, a soldier then ran into the building and up the stairs to unfurl a VC flag from the 4th floor balcony.  As we toured  the Palace, we began to learn the history of the "American War" as told by the victors.  It's a rather eerie experience being on the other side.  I'm sure the truth exists somewhere in the middle ...

The building is modern, spacious, and full of light.  It even boasts a very small library (the ubiquitous photo of Dale in yet another library somewhere in the world)!  The strangest sight was a display of severed elephants' feet - collected by the former president of South Vietnam.

The basement of the Palace housed the South Vietnamese military operations centre: tunnels, war rooms, and a telecommunications centre.  It reminded us of the Churchill War Rooms in London.  There were also terrific maps of Vietnam on the walls.
Fashion alert:  old man in blue pyjamas!  He reminded me of my dad who is famous for wearing the same uniform (but just for sleeping!).

After ogling the exquisite French colonial architecture of the Opera House and the People's Committee Building (with a statue of Uncle Ho across the road), we took a taxi to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, a Cantonese temple built in 1909.  Heavy incense engulfed us as we entered.  The temple is filled with very bizarre and grotesque papier-mache characters.  Stuff that nightmares are made of!

With no taxis in sight we decided to walk to the History Museum, about 1 kilometre away.  We passed lots of small shops, but the most interesting sight was the business being carried out along the sidewalk.
By the time we reached our destination, I was too pooped to tour the exhibits, so I sat in the cafe and read (Graham Greene's The Quiet American) while Jeff meandered through the museum.

We saved the War Remnants Museum for our last stop of the day.  This museum used to be called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, but its name was changed to avoid offending Chinese and American tourists.  Jeff and I had not seen many American tourists on our other Asian travels, but we did see hundreds of them in Saigon, many of whom had probably been soldiers during the Vietnam War.  This museum pulls no punches.  The exhibits document the atrocities inflicted on the Vietnamese and they tell the story from the victims' side.  Many of the photos are not for the faint of heart, including pictures of deformed babies (agent orange), children mangled by napalm, and scenes of torture.  Ironically, the War Remnants Museum is housed in the former U.S. Information Service building!

Coincidentally, our close friend from Montreal, Hershie, and his cousin, Jack, happened to be in Saigon that same day!  We had had dinner with them in Hong Kong a few days earlier, and discovered that we would be in Vietnam at the same time, so we made plans to meet.  It was wonderful to share our experiences first-hand with them.  After our meal, we had a drink at the bar on top of the Majestic Hotel, where we had a view of the river and the lights of downtown Saigon.

The next day, Sunday, we opted for a tour of the Caodai Holy See and the Cu Chi Tunnels.  There were only six of us on the tour, along with a very up-beat guide and a driver.  These two sights are not to be missed!  After driving for a couple of hours through the countryside which reminded me of Cambodia (poor and undeveloped), we arrived at one of the strangest places I've ever seen, the Great Cathedral in the Caodai Holy See.   Caodaism was officially founded as a religion in 1926.  It was an attempt to create the ideal religion through the fusion of beliefs and symbols from Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam.  It is certainly a mish-mash of religious philosophies.  Graham Greene (way more articulate and talented than I!) offers the following descriptions of the Cao Dai Holy See in The Quiet American (1955): "The Holy See was at Tanyin.  A Pope and female cardinals.  Prophecy by planchette.  Saint Victor Hugo.  Christ and Buddha looking down from the roof of the Cathedral on a Walt Disney fantasia of the East, dragons and snakes in technicolour."  Jeff put it all more succinctly:  "It looks like a vision from someone's LSD hallucinations."

We (and hundreds of other tourists) arrived about 11:30, in time to walk around the Cathedral and then make our way to the upper gallery so that we could watch the noon mass.  It was quite the extravaganza!  Oddly enough, the communist government of Vietnam leaves the Caodaists alone.  There are two reasons for this.  First, the Caodaists supported the Viet Cong against the Republican (U.S.-supported) government of South Vietnam.  And second, the Caodaists are self-sufficient.

Our guide promised us a vegetarian lunch before visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels.  It turned out to be vegetables with fried shrimp, vegetables with fried pork, vegetables with fried chicken, and more fried food.  TIV!  The woman in charge of the restaurant began to sing to the diners half way through the meal.  Posters on the wall attested to her celebrity as a soldier and entertainer many years ago.  The other "entertainment" in the restaurant was a loud crash when the glass door to the stairway broke and shattered all over the room.  This was not "fine dining"!

And on to the Cu Chi Tunnels ...

This is how the Viet Cong won the War:  the VC soldiers were small; they built a network of tunnels (250km in this district alone!) that only they could fit into; they mounted surprise attacks by popping up all over the place - even within the perimeters of the U.S. military base; they then disappeared back into the tunnels through trap doors.  Svelt Dale was able to fit into the tunnels, but alas, Jeff's large size and bad knees didn't allow him the creepy experience of duck-walking underground for 100 metres.  There was so much propaganda ... captured American tanks, mock-ups of VC booby traps, and even an old movie showing the atrocities perpetrated by the enemy.  Enough said!

Jeff and I spent a wonderful Sunday evening in Saigon.  We bought a beautiful lacquered painting  at one of the numerous art galleries, depicting three women in ethnic clothing, and then had a delicious meal at a French bistro.  While we were dining (fine dining this time!), the art gallery packaged our painting and delivered it to our hotel.  It proved easy to transport back to HK.

On Monday morning, Jeff left early for his business meeting.  I sat by the window in the restaurant at the Intercontinental Hotel, sipping my cappuccino and watching life on the street.  A woman set up her pho shop under a large, leafy tree, directly across the road from the entrance to the hotel.  Business was thriving!  She doled out portions of food from a large stainless steel pot, and her husband placed 4" stools in a circle for the diners.  He also collected money and cleaned up as each person finished his food.  When I read Camilla Gibb's novel, The Beauty of Humanity Movement, I thought she had a great imagination when she described the protagonist and his travelling pho shop on the sidewalks of Saigon.  It was so very interesting to see her book come to life!

Exactly 24 hours after I returned to HK, I left for Kamalaya in Koh Samui, Thailand, with ten other members of the AWA.  Yoga, massage, beach, good food, quiet time.  What a delight!  My favourite dessert (which I had several times) was mango sticky rice with coconut sauce.  When I poured the sauce on the rice it reminded me of Murray's steamed fruit pudding.  I felt sorry for the two women in our group who had opted for the detox program at Kamalaya.  Although their plates were colourful, they basically ate only fruit and vegetables for the entire visit.

One evening, a few of us ventured out to what we thought was the night market downtown.  There is no night market in Koh Samui.  It is a two kilometre street filled with the tackiest, overpriced souvenir and handbag shops, tattoo parlours, bars, lady boys (photo on the right), and the most obscene-looking tourists I've laid eyes on in Asia.  NQOCD (not quite our class dear).  I can't even begin to describe the smell!

We all returned home feeling rested, refreshed, and ready to tackle the hardships of daily life in HK.
Kamalaya marked the end of our Asian travels for 2011.  Stay tuned for 2012 beginning with Taiwan and Thailand later this month.