Ho Chi Minh CIty Vietnam - Saturday, February 27 and Sunday, February 28

Vietnam Day 2


Today I got up leisurely and headed out around 10:30 to get coffee with Cindy and one of the students from her extended family. Now I am pretty sure I have had Vietnamese coffee at home when I went for Vietnamese food but this was A-mazing!!! WE started to call it crack coffee because it was so good that it was addictive. It was a shot of Espresso over ice with sweetened condensed milk. I encourage you to stop what you are doing right now and head out to your closest Vietnamese restaurant and get some crack coffee. Here is a picture of me with crack:

After coffee we headed to the Bhan Tam market, this is where you can pretty much buy any sort of knock off you wanted to purchase. I avoided most of these but I did get some clothes that will help me keep cool in the heat that we are in and will continue to experience. Linen pants – claiming to be Tommy Hilfiger, a Linen shirt claiming to be Skeetchers and a nice flowing skirt.

Lunch time and it was time for Pho and for those of you who have eaten this before you are thinking hey isn’t that soup and isn’t it like 90 degrees there and yes to both, but it sure is tasty and instead of a McDonald’s and Burger King on every corner they had a Pho 24 and a Pho 2000!

After coffee we went to the War Remnants Museum and when we were dropped off we realized that it was closed for lunch and would reopen at 2pm so we hoped in a taxi and headed to the Emperor of Jade (Ngoc Hoang) Pagoda making arrangements to be picked up by 2 so that we could go back the museum. This Pagoda blends Taoism and Buddhism and the Emperor of Jade is the supreme god of the Taoists. We walked around for a bit and saw that people were buying incense lighting it, praying to the different statues and placing the incense in the sand in front of the statues. Thinking that we all had ‘prayers’ to offer we bought a bunch of incense lit it and went through offering up our own prayers.

After the Pagoda we went back to the War Remnants Museum and I thought this was a much more tasteful representation of the Vietnam (American) War that the Cu Chi Tunnels (in my opinion anyway). I did not take many pictures of this either but did really appreciate what I saw even though it was difficult to see some of the images of destruction that had been caused by our soldiers.

After this museum we headed to the Notre Dame Cathedral- Saigon and old Post Office to see some architecture which was very contrary to the rest of what we were seeing in Vietnam it showed the French influence that was present in Vietnam.

When we were going into the Post Office we came upon a handful of people trying to sell us souvenir type things and there was a man who did not bother us at all painting. We approached him to see what he was creating and found out that he was selling his paintings for only $10. Cindy and I both decided to buy one and then we recommended him to others on the ship and half a dozen or so more of his paintings were purchased the next few days. I found there were many opportunities to buy different pieces of art or replicas of famous works of arts for a low price but to be able to buy art from the artist was a great opportunity.

We left that area and headed back to the market and also a supermarket where Hershey’s chocolates were under lock and key:

Cindy and I met other folks at the top of the Rex Hotel for cocktails and then it was off to another delicious meal at the other Lemongrass restaurant. After dinner Becca and I met up with Janelle and some friends of hers. The church that Janelle belongs to is an International Church which means that she has related churches all around the world and so she has been able to connect with people from these churches where ever we have gone. We met up with some of them for ice cream and got to talk about our program and here about their lives in Vietnam. It was really a great time just interacting with some Vietnamese women.

Vietnam Day 3

This was a great low key day that was mostly filled with some more crack coffee, shopping and Pho eating. Cindy and I decided before we went back to the ship we wanted to get a cold beverage so we stopped at a loungey bar and struck up a conversation with Anh, our waiter.

Cindy and I:

He was so excited that we were engaging in a conversation, in his broken English he told us that he was Hindu and asked if we knew that there were Hindu’s in Vietnam and then he invited us to come to his Hindu temple in the evening because they were having some celebration (we think it had something to do with end of New Year’s). We agreed and he said he would pick us up on his Motorbike…we said we would take a taxi! Cindy, I and Midhun met up with our new friend and he took us to his temple. Once there he gave us incense and took us through and told us we should not take photos so we did not. We are also pretty sure that the all of the people were looking at Midhun in amazement because Midhun is Indian what they did not know was that he is Catholic and not actually Hindu…the irony!!!
Anh and Midhun:

There must have been a thousand people either inside or out of the temple all there to pray on this important evening. Anh introduced us to his ‘friend’ who we deduced must have been his mentor and I am pretty sure that he was some sort of high priest in this temple. Before we left this man gave us an offering of an orange and a piece of candy as he was handing us this offering many people approached him with their hands out hoping to receive an offering as well so we felt pretty special to be the ones receiving this. After the temple we wanted to treat Anh to a drink as a thank you for showing us this very important part of his life. But on the way to have a drink Anh suggested that we rest and we found a bench to sit on where he proceeded to pull out a photo album from which he showed us pictures of his family; including great grandparents and relatives who live in the states. He then said he had a present for us which were these banana leaf wrapped rice and meat patties which he told us to save for the morning and eat for breakfast to bring us some sort of luck.
Cindy with present:

We graciously accepted these gifts though we knew we would not be able to bring them on to the ship. After our rest we headed to a small bar and drank our Saigon Beer and chatted with our new friend. He told us about how he was training to be in the tourism industry and wanted to give tours to people and how he wanted to open up his own restaurant one day and we would all come back to his opening in 10 years. While we were all chatting we also befriended the women who were working in the restaurant and their tiny little puppy that was running around.

After drinks we headed back to the ship with Anh to show him the view of the ship and Midhun and Cindy made plans to have breakfast at the restaurant he works at and I would not be able to go because I had a trip planned the next day.
Ahn and I with the ship:

This day reinforced the importance of connecting with the people we encounter in the countries we are visiting. Because we engaged this man in a conversation he let us in on a very important part of his life. When we got back to the ship we shared the rice patties and oranges with people who were at the gangway because we could not bring them on: