Day 4 Motorbikes in HCMC

May 22nd 2013, 3:11:00 pm

On the third day I finally took first motorbike taxi, which was a fun, cheap and fast way of getting the War Remnants Museum (Previously knows as the American War Crimes museum), plus the breeze from zooming around is nice and cooling. Why was I walking everywhere like a schmuck!? And yes Mum, I wore a helmet, although they're all so small in Vietnam I half think it might actually make things worse if there was actually an accident, concentrating the force in a ring around the top of my head.

The war museum was interesting, but not catered to someone who knows next to nothing about the history of the war. There was lots of stuff about the specifics that happened, but very little about the motives of either side. There was a load of stuff about the after effects of agent orange on people of both sides of the war, but I needed to look up it up online to find it was a herbicide being sprayed to kill off all the vegetation so the Viet Cong couldn't hide among it.

Not long after I arrived, so did a huge group of screaming primary school aged children. Just as annoying in any language. The children kept walking up to me and saying hello and then running off giggling, which felt a bit like being famous but got annoying very quickly. As a contrast, Later a group of boys that looked like they might be going to a military high school or something came through and they were silent and respectful. It must be a big job transforming the out of control kids into such upstanding citizens.

Next I went to the reunification palace, where the president of the south used to live.

It's a pretty kitch old place with an underground bunker under it that's full of neat old equipment.

I got a cyclo from there to the Notre Dame cathedral, which was fun for a bit, but then it got pretty hot being in the sun and not moving fast enough to get a breeze. The old guy pedalling was pretty stubborn that he'd take me to the next place I went to and I ended up having to slip the money into his shirt pocket and walking off to find a motorbike driver.

I went from there to the Bitexco building, the tallest building in HCMC with an observation deck near the top. It gave a great view of the city, the most intersting part being a patch of land right near the city that was almost all flattened and growing vegetation, while the photos of the area showed houses that used to be there. I asked about it and apparently it's the site of the new business district that they're expecting to be completed in 15 years. It would be pretty eye opening to come back when it's done and see that area that's currently mostly grass and debris being a bustling mess of skyscrapers.

I went back to the hostel to rest for a bit, and than at 3 I went and met up with a nice HCMC local, Trinh, that I met through OK Cupid. She took me for a ride on her motorbike, went to a park where we sat and had iced Vietnamese coffee and talked for a while, answering a lot of the questions I'd wondered about things in Vietnam. Then went to a pho bo bar, and had some pho, this time with more instruction as to how to eat it. It was much better this time around, but I still think I'm a bigger fan of non-soup Vietnamese dishes.

I chilled out at the hostel for a bit and the rain started bucketing down again, stranding me there for most of the evening. I sat in the common area and drank beers with an American dude who'd just come from Cambodia and I got some tips from him where to stay in Phnom Penh. Eventually the rain eased up so I quickly ducked out and got some pork buns and some other buns that I thought the woman said were beef, but instead has a yummy sweet paste in them.