Ho Chi Minh City blends history and modern,
youthful energy. Here, pagodas and French colonial grandeur mingle with
old-world marketplaces and Parisian-style boulevards, against a buzz of motor scooters
and trill of bicycle bells.
As I mentioned at the end of the last post, we
had a fabulous tour for this full day tour of Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City. It
goes by both names. The tour starts out with a 1.5 hour drive into the city,
abuzz with scooters and bicycles. It is the biggest city in Vietnam, though not
the capital. He described it as a young city as the young people come here to
study and then stay to work. A lot of the people are local vendors or
handicrafts and food.
About 70% of the people are Buddhist, with 15%
being Catholic. The rest of divided between Muslim, Protestant and local
religions that are a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.
He gave us a very good overview of what is
happening today in Vietnam. Our guide yesterday told us it was not a communist
country, but a democracy. Our today said it is a communist country, and they do
have free elections. He said, there is one party with one candidate, so you can
vote for this candidate, not exactly free, according to him.
He also gave us a great history of what led up
to our conflict in Vietnam and the war. Since we are all of the age of Vietnam
he did not want to bring up things that made bring back bad memories. He was
excellent.
First, we visited the Reunification Palace,
home of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was built by
the French and was the Palace of Indo China from 2868-1954, when South Vietnam
took it over. From 1962 – 1975 it had many residents.
We started with the meeting rooms and formal
rooms, went through the sleeping area where they had a beautiful open area.
Lastly we went to the basement where they had the bunker with the maps and all
the equipment to manage the war.
Next, we stopped at the Notre Dame Cathedral
with its twin bell towers; it was built solely from materials imported from
France. It is being renovated, so we could not go inside.
Right across the street from the Cathedral, was
the Central Post Office, which is a masterwork of Gothic, Renaissance and
French styles. Probably one of the most beautiful buildings we saw. It is a
functioning post office, so I mailed Oliver his card from there.
Our next stop to take pictures was of the opera
house. Around the corner was the city hall.
We then visited the Binh Tay Market, which has
pretty much anything you could think of.
Before stopping for lunch, we visited a lacquer workshop. Here, we saw the skilled artisans at work. Obviously, they wanted you to buy.
By now it was almost 1 PM and we were ready for
lunch. We stopped at a restaurant called Mandarin. It was fabulous! They had
even made a cake to look like the Viking Sun to celebrate us being there. We sat
at the very top level and had a wonderful lunch with some of the people on our
tour.
The last stop was in Chinatown, where we stopped
at the richly ornamented Thien Hau Pagoda, the most important temple in the
city, to honor Buddha and a Chinese sea goddess, Thien Hau Thanh Mau.
Lastly, before our drive back he took us by
where the helicopter left Vietnam in April of 1975 when we last left Vietnam.
We had always thought it was from the top of the embassy, but it was from a
building the CIA had that was near the embassy. Today it is an apartment
building and office building.
Then we had our drive back to the port. When we
got there, we were greeted with singing and champagne, and some antics by one
of the officers.
We now have a day at sea and then some back to back ports,
so it may be a while between posts. Tomorrow is Cambodia, the next two days are
Bangkok, Thailand. There we are doing a tour overnight. The next day we have an
elephant ride in another port in Thailand.
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