Quick exploration of Saigon

Friday, October 8, 2010

This morning, after breakfast and icing my finger, I took the 9am bus from Mui Ne to Saigon.  Of 20 people on the tourist bus I was somehow the only Westerner, everyone else was Chinese.  So much for meeting people on the bus ride; I couldn’t even communicate with them.  I sat looking out the window listening to my music.  We had a 40 minute break at 11:50am for lunch before continuing the last two hours to Saigon.  One reason travel takes so long in this country is the fact that it is impossible to get any speed on the road.  I’m not very good when it comes to car speed, but I don’t think the bus went over 40mph the entire trip.  The main roads just don’t move like they should.

The bus arrived in Saigon at 2:30pm, dropping me a few minutes walk from the hotel I’d pre-booked.  The hotel is down a small alley (with lots of other guesthouses), so I have a quiet room just off a main street.

With only today to explore the city, I applied some sunscreen and headed out into the heat.  I walked to the reunification palace (which was closer than I thought it would be) and rushed through it in less than an hour (no one offered to show me around and I got very confused with where I was supposed to go after the video).  The other necessary stop was the War Remnants Museum where I also only had an hour to explore.  I read through some of the history section (a Vietnamese perspective on the war) and was thoroughly intrigued by the photography exhibit (showing human cruelty) when the museum closed.  There was no warning.  An alarm sounded at 5pm and the woman started locking up the gallery.  Guess that’s it.  While I was at the museum I ran into a couple guys, Kieran and Niall, who I’d met in Halong Bay (they were on the boat for the one-night trip when we got on from the island) and saw again in Hue.  They invited me to join them for dinner at 7pm, which made me feel a lot better about not having met anyone on the bus.

Reunification Palace

I wandered to the Notre Dame Cathedral and French style post office (almost bought some stamps but I’m not big on postcards) before strolling back to Pham Ngu Lao road to book a tour for tomorrow to the Mekong Delta.  Met up with Kieran and Niall; our group at Crazy Buffalo turned into ten while we sat for a drink.  I spoke a lot with two of the girls (Lucinda and Rachael from England) and Dan (New York), before we all decided to look for a restaurant for dinner.  We ended up at local place a few blocks away where I tried rice noodles.  We went to another place for a drink after dinner, but I didn’t feel like having alcohol so I sat and chatted for a while before coming back to the hotel.  Tomorrow I’m off to the Mekong, for my last day in Vietnam.