Saigon...not so fun...

Saturday, 29 December, 2007

With apologies to our friend Jena...and all the friendly Vietnamese-Americans we have met over the years (and apologies to the readers -- it is after 10 PM and I'm trying to write all this quickly so please pardon any grammar and spelling errors)

It's been a few days since we blogged because we've been trying to pack in everything like mad. There wasn't one city I was looking forward to more than Saigon, and, as things usually happen in that way when you are totally looking forward to something it is bound to disappoint. Maybe it was the spot we stayed in (the backpacker area) ...maybe it was something more like Uncle Ho's socialist policies in the south having gone completely down the toilet as the wave of evil capitalism has rotted the populace from within...WHATEVER. First things first. We go to the busstop after the misery of the van ride from Chau Doc (although we did meet a few curious and friendly passengers who tried to help us out a bit). Miss Loi's Guest House was recommended by the Lonely Planet guidebook as a "wonderful place, full of charm"with a lovely, friendly" Miss Loi...give me a break! Never was any place more inaccurately described. We were given a taxi ride from the busstop (after having to bargain to get a correct rate -- more on Saigon taxi and moto drivers later). The guest house was in a strange, dark alley filled with bums and odd fellows lurking about (not thugs, just people who had been selling food and other items earlier and had nothing better to do but sit around and yack about god knows what), and some armless dude helped us find the place since the taxi driver had no clue. After seeing that he wasn't able to rip us off the driver didn't help us with the bags and I gave him a nice 8,000 dong tip (which is all he deserved, about .50 US). The guest house was kind of weird, looked like nothing we had stayed in on this trip -- we've stayed in a mixture of very nice to moderate places but all of them had charm, character and interesting folk. This was dark, dreary, and filled with workers who slept on the floor or sat on a couch, staring at the TV like zombies. Very strange! Luckily they had our reservation and one of the zombie-girl workers managed to pull herself up and helped Laura with her bag up -- get this -- FIVE FLIGHTS of stairs! Didn't count on this and wasn't in the mood, especially after the bus ride from hell, but what can you expect for $15 USD a night?


Once we got settled we began to explore the town. A total culture shock compared to Kampot, Cambodia. Like no city I've ever seen. Saigon has been called the "Paris of the East" or some such nonsense but that was either way in the past or whoever wrote it was on crack, baby! (or more likely we just happened to pick a bad area to be in!) There are tiny sidewalks and motorbikes covering every square inch. On either side of the street, restaurant workers try to get you to try their food. At least the restaurants are legit...we were starving and went for Italian at a place called "Good Morning, Vietnam" (there are a lot of different restaurants and t-shirts with this logo; I can only assume the characters here think people give a crap about a movie that was made 20 years ago or so). It was pretty good, in an ok setting with a few other Westerners lurking about.


The next morning we got up early and signed up on the same busy street the restaurant was on for a tour of Saigon. The company that sponsored the tour was recommended by Lonely Planet -- you'd think we'd learn by now, woundn'tcha? Anyway, it was a huge cattle call with a million other tours going on at the exact same time with frantic tourists all trying to find their correct bus and annoying peddlers trying to sell Wrigley's gum and other useless items. Go away! Finally we got on our bus...one thing the Vietnamese do right is busses and airplanes -- really comfortable with great AC! But, alas, the tour itself was just ok -- the guide took us to a a couple of semi-interesting pagodas and temples (unlike the ones in Laos and Cambodia we were able to observe and film the ceremonies which was extremely cool), then a large lacquer factory. There was a brief overview on how these plates and items were made before they herded us to the show room for the real point of the bus stop -- obviously the tour company got a commission for sending the tourists over here. The stuff wasn't that interesting and was mostly . Went to the main market after that and got ripped off on a couple of t-shirts (paid $6.00 and found the same ones on the street for $2.00 an hour later -we should have known better!)...got so sick of this tour that we ditched it after our lunch break and decided to head out to the places we really wanted to see on our own. After a quick and tasty Vietnamese lunch we asked our nice waitress how much a taxi ride to the "War Remnants" museum should cost. "100,000 dong," she replied. This is about $6.00 USD. But the first taxi driver we approached wanted $500,000! We started walking to the museum and ran into two moto drivers, a man and his brother who tried to be friendly (one of the tricks these guys do to take you for as much dough as possible, something we never really saw in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia). After dropping us off and realizing that they weren't going to be able to give us a tour all day the driver shouted, "NO-- I said, $100,000 for each person"and he repeated it over and over again as if I was going to comply to shut him up. He waved off the $100,000 dong bill tried to give him so finally I just shoved it in his brother's pocket and we walked into the museum. Unreal.

The War Remnants museum was basically a history museum showing the French and American wars (they always refer to it as "the American war") in photos and physical displays. Some American tanks and aircraft (in surprisingly good condition) were out in the front, a large photo exhibition showing anti-American/anti-war demonstrations (including Jane Fonda stuff I've never seen before) and some videos, etc. Unfortunately it was very hot and they had no AC! Tons of Western tourists were there and we all sweated our asses off together. Whew...

Avoided the strange moto drivers and made our way to the Reunification Palace (link will take you to some other blog which has many photos). This was the former South Vietnam President's large compound which was turned into a museum afer the North took over in April, 1975. It was turned into a musuem and they pretty much kept everything exactly as it was. Lots of cool 60s furniture (for meetings and parties), a communications bunkers filled with ancient yet very cool analog electronic gear, etc. At the end of the sweltering tour was a short movie showing some stuff about the fall of this place...to tell you the truth it was so hot in there we were falling asleep!

Now, here is the most unpleasant aspect of our stay in this bizarre city. As the humidity was hot (imagine the worst of the tropics times ten) we were in the mood for a relaxing taxi ride back to our neighborhood. We had been warned to only accept taxis with meters and took one. The guy seemed cool enough but when he came to drop us off he insisted on $500,000 dong! He kept insisting on this and yelling that this was the correct amount. Laura asked, "how can it be that much when it was only $160,000 dong for a ride from the busstop?" He yelled some nonsense back about how close the busstop was but Laura insisted that it was the one "far away." The driver was being a dick so Charles gave him the helpful suggestion to "phuc off." So annoying. We gave him a little over $100,000 dong which was probably way to much.

We quickly realize that guidebooks like Lonely Planet, Frommers and Fodors are there to sell you on an experience...and to sell their books. The more poetic their writers sound the more you are likely to buy their book. As Laura and I have only met incredibly nice and decent Vietnamese-Americans in the U.S. the attitude we experienced from many of the Saigonese was both surprising and unforunate. One of our non-Asian) friends implied that as Americans we have to accept the "collective blame" for how we screwed up the country with the war and such but I don't think that is really the issue here. Many of the people we encountered in Saigon seemed to look at tourists - all tourists, regardless of nationality - not as people but as dollar signs. Who you are as a person is not important -- how much they can rip you off for is. Maybe this is one city we should have planned for better but who knew?

We are very happy with our decision to leave a day early for Hoi An...