13 May - Day 2 - A Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City

Since I had to leave for church at 7.30 am I had arranged with Ms. Yang to have breakfast at 7 am. There is a table, a few chairs and a garden bench in the small courtyard of the homestay. Tropical shrubs and leafy plants stud the periphery of the courtyard. Golden, the pet Labrador, is a permanent occupant of a part of the courtyard in the morning. Ms. Yang served me a fantastic glass of hot Vietnamese coffee to start the day’s proceedings. Soon came a large portion of cheese filled omelette and cut fruits. All served with smiles and small talk.

When Tung and his wife came down to go in their scooter to church Ms. Yang helped me install the Grab Bike App and she made the first booking for me. The green jacketed and helmeted biker soon arrived at the homestay and he handed over a Grab bike helmet for my use. This is one thing that struck me in HCMC. Helmets are worn by all – driver and pillion alike – and there are never more than two to a bike. The helmets were of different shapes and sizes, but they were always used. I even saw a dog being ferried on a bike and a helmet like equipment had been strapped on its head! had some difficulty wearing the helmet and the driver smilingly helped me with it. He got me to the church soon and I paid the fare mentioned by the App at the time of booking, VND 14000. There was no haggling or talk about the fare at all. This impression of mine would be dented somewhat soon, I didn’t know then.

The Huyen Si Catholic Church was built in 1859 and ranks as the oldest catholic church in the city and the second biggest after the Notre Dame Cathedral. The church built in Gothic style with Romanesque elements has a tall spire with four bells and an impressive nave. The site for the church as well as substantial funds for its building came from one of the richest sons of the city, Huyen Si, in whose name the church is now known. The mausoleum of the benefactor and his wife is within the church. Right in front of the main entrance of the church is a statue of St Mattheu Le Van Gam, a martyred Vietnamese priest beatified in 1900. To the side of the church is a large grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes where devotees come in large numbers to light incense and votives and pray. The large number of testimonial plaques that adorn the wall inside the grotto and beside it speaks volumes for the blessings the faithful have received from Our Lady. There are numerous other statues and shrines in the church complex. Recently added is a Chapel of Rest, where people go to pray for their dear departed. The Sunday service was in Vietnamese, but faith is sans language. I was amazed by the large gathering for the service and the fervor among those who had filled the church that morning. It was a truly elevating experience and brought home the fact that Christianity was still alive. Later Tung surprised me even more by saying that Vietnam has the fifth largest population of Catholics in Asia. It is apparent that family as a unit is very strong in Vietnamese society.

Once service was over people spent a lot of time wishing each other and exchanging pleasantries with priests. When I was worshipping near the grotto Tung came up in his scooter and said that he would like to buy me a Pho breakfast in a restaurant reputed for the traditional Vietnamese dish. Pho, pronounced ‘fur’, is a rice noodle soup with broth, chopped scallions, green herbs, with segments of lime, chili and garlic and plenty of meat, usually either chicken or beef. I took a Grab bike and reached Pho Hoa Pasteur, the casual chain that reportedly serves the best Pho in HCMC. Pho, along with Bahn Mi, occupies a central position in the diet of the Vietnamese. At a table which we got with some difficulty because it was full, Tung helped me choose my Pho. I decided to have well done flanks of beef in the Pho. Besides the ordered dish the table had servings of Banh Cam, which is a sweet rice flour ball covered with white sesame seeds filled with sweetened mung bean paste, Cha Hue which is Vietnamese version of ham made of lean pork, tapioca flour, garlic, black pepper and fish sauce steamed in pandan leaf and Banh Xu Xe which is made of rice and mung bean stuffing wrapped in a box of pandan leaf. Traditionally, the last named was given by the suitor, but is now a widespread dessert.

Over a huge bowl of Pho and sampling of the dishes mentioned above I became privy to a most amazing story of Tung and his family. He said that he belonged to the more privileged section of Vietnamese society when the war was raging in Saigon. Privileged in the sense that he had good education, clothes to wear, food to eat and a home that he could call his own. After his studies he volunteered to join the US Air Force in Saigon, somewhat against the wishes of his family. He was trained by capable hands and served the Air Force till he was taken prisoner and remained thus till 1977. He joined a group of people on a boat to Penang, where he sought political asylum. As part of a worldwide resettlement program for political refugees from Vietnam he reached the shores of USA and started life anew in Virginia. His brother went off to France and his two sisters are nuns. After reskilling himself for four years in the USA he joined the software industry and recently retired from active professional life. He visits Saigon annually with his wife, who is from Dong Nai. This time he has planned a road trip to Angkor Wat with his friends after a brief halt in his wife’s ancestral home. Tung had a different version of the Vietnam War and told me that much of what was seen in the museums around Vietnam should be taken with large sacks of salt!

It was now time to move away from the breakfast table. I had a glass of sugarcane juice to polish off the huge breakfast. The versatility of Pho is that it could be had at any time of the day, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. In my case I was sure that my stomach will not ask for another meal till its dinner time! From the Pho Hoa Pasteur I took a Grab bike to the Thien Hau Pagoda, which is an 18th century Chinese style temple. Incense coils hung on steel rods below the ceiling is a specialty of the temple. The deity of the temple is Goddess Mazu, the deified form of a Fujianese girl who is reported to have saved some of her family members from a typhoon with her spiritual powers. The golden image of the goddess dominates the main altar in the temple. From the temple the Binh Tay market in Chinatown wasn’t very far away. The Binh Tay market reminded me of the Crawford Market in Mumbai. Narrow lanes and stuffed wholesale and retail shops selling everything from textiles to condiments and motorized bikes ferrying large parcels of goods was a different flavor of the city. Most of the shopkeepers were indifferent, possibly because they sensed that I was only there to check out prices!

I booked a Grab bike to go to the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Garden and promptly a biker turned up. I didn’t think it amiss at the time that the driver was neither wearing a grab jacket or the trademark helmet. When I was wearing the helmet, I told him my destination and he said that he knew where to go. The App showed that I would have to pay a fare of VND 34000. He took off and seemed to have gone a very long distance when I reiterated the destination a couple of times. After what felt way beyond the rote he stopped to check the route and found that he was way off. He started cursing his luck and got back to the right path after many detours and U-turns. Finally, after nearly 45 minutes on the road I was at the entrance to the botanical gardens. When I gave him the fare mentioned by the App he refused and demanded three times that amount. I stood my ground and argued that it was his fault that he had lost the way. He started threatening me and I also became slightly aggressive. He collected a few people around him, but I did not budge. I told him that I would offer him no more than VND 40,000 and that he could take it if he wanted. After fuming some more he left with what I gave him. It was a grim reminder that there were bad eggs among the vast numbers of Grab bikers. However, I suspect that he was not an accredited one in the group, because I did not get the usual message to rate the drive after the trip was concluded.

A walk in the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Garden can tax your stamina in the hot and humid climate but is well worth a visit. The premises were established in 1865 and is home now to a large variety of mammals, reptiles, birds, ornamental plants and orchids. It is the largest Zoo and Botanic Garden in Vietnam. Highlights of the walk in the zoo were a friendly sparring match between two baboons, the show put on by a vain bear, a nonchalant white tiger, a ‘train’ of busy otters and a curious Javanese mongoose! It rained during the walk in the Zoo and the temperature dipped a bit. At the exit of the Botanical Garden was the Museum of Vietnamese History. When I peeped in I found that all the artifacts and displays were explained in the local language. Therefore, I decided to give the museum a skip because I knew I would not have gained any new information by just ‘looking’ at the exhibits. Moreover. I was dead beat after the Zoo trip. I headed back to the comfortable confines of the homestay, once again booking a Grab bike.

After proper rest I walked to the Turtle Lake, which is a popular place for local food and the fountains attract a lot of youngsters in the evening. I spent some time there in the hope that I can try out some local favorite. However, my hopes were dashed because all the vendors had stuff written in Vietnamese and I could not make head or tail of them. I walked back to the homestay. On the way I picked up a cup of raw mangoes spiced with chili and salt from a roadside vendor. It tasted so good that I decided to skip dinner. En route I also marked the water puppetry show as a must visit in the next two days. The corner shop that vended the banana delicacy was still open and I bought a helping to have in the room.

12 May 2018 - Day 1 - Chennai to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The trip to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City – HCMC) was planned in early January as a New Year gift to self! I had flown Malindo Air from Chennai to Bali and back last December. They had been sending promos ever since and I fell for one; the round-trip fare from Chennai to HCMC via Kuala Lumpur (KL) was just about $250. The enticements, besides the low airfare, were the extremely attractive homestay I sourced through booking.com and visa on arrival. I found a website Vietnam-Evisa.org, which I presumed would process the visa electronically prior to my arrival in HCMC and made the requisite online application. The visa approval letter was received within 72 hours. Technically, I was ready in all respects for the travel to HCMC within 5 days of taking the decision to travel to HCMC to ‘celebrate’ my 60^th birthday in an iconic city that had been ‘in the news’ when I was in school, for the wrong reasons – the Vietnam War.

I returned to Chennai, after a highly successful and rewarding experience of driving in Australia and New Zealand, on 27^th April. Within two weeks of completing that two-month expedition I was on my way to the Chennai International airport for another holiday! The flight to KL, operated by Batik Air as code share with Malindo Air, had been rescheduled by 70 minutes, which meant that my layover in KL would be that much less. At the check-in counter the young man told me that my luggage was well within the hand carry allowance and asked if I would like to avoid the baggage check-in. I went ahead with checking the bag in, nevertheless. The immigration and Customs proceedings were done without much ado – while in the queue for immigration a serious altercation broke out between two groups and the leader of one had to be severely reprimanded by officials for being abusive under the influence of liquor. It was good to see INR rates in the Duty-Free shops; I was told that rupee denomination had been introduced since 1 March of the year, which is a great help for returning Indian tourists. I was tempted by the store boy in the liquor store with discounts to ‘book for delivery on return’. Moreover, if one uses Citibank credit card an additional 15% cashback offer was also promised. The deals were indeed tempting; resisting them took all the will power I had in me.

The Chennai international departure lounge is quite bare and uninteresting. However, the lounge has a few interesting pieces of art, which rivetted my attention for a while. Before boarding was announced I ‘feasted’ on the leftover wedges of pizza I had packed from home. Once boarding was announced everything happened quite fast and the flight was ready to push back earlier than scheduled. It was a full flight and as I boarded my eyes were filled with the unforgettable photo of the young girl caught in a napalm bomb fire during the Vietnam War. I was going to ‘experience’, albeit in a small way, the barbaric war that killed and maimed thousands and laid waste a fertile land and a couple of generations.

The arrival at Tan Son Nhat airport in HCMC was a half hour ahead of schedule. That it is the busiest airport in Vietnam was amply clear as I walked to the immigration area. Trusting that I had already obtained the visa online I joined a queue and soon reached the head of it. When I produced the print out and the passport I was told that I had to join another queue to obtain the visa; what I had was merely an invitation letter. The process in the new queue took less than thirty minutes even though many people were waiting. I had to shell out another $25 for the visa to be stamped on the passport. What I realized later is that I would not have had to do the online invitation letter, spending $19, if I had reservation in a hotel in HCMC. Anyway, that was a learning experience. Armed with the stamped visa I reached a counter and, in a trice, the immigration formalities were done. The next thing I did was to exchange USD to Vietnamese Dong (VND) – the going exchange rate was 22720 Dong to a USD. I became a millionaire at the currency exchange counter and the feeling of being overwhelmingly rich soon made my feet light. At the adjacent counter I bought a Viettel Sim card for 350,000 Dong (INR 1000) with a package of 100 minutes of local call, 60 minutes of international calls and 3.5 GB of data. Armed with these two essentials I went to the baggage carousel and found that my bag had been offloaded from it.

I hired a taxi at one of the pre-paid counters and paid VND 190,000 to Ms Yang’s Homestay on Vo Van Tan road. The driver cursed the traffic but safely deposited me in the accommodation after a brief search, as it was in a small by-lane. I was warmly received at the homestay by Ms Yang and her sister, who ran two homestays on the same road from their ancestral properties. They quietly told me that the room would be cleaned and ready only by 2 pm. It was hot and humid, and I was sweating from all pores of my body. I sat for a while and discussed with them the places I intended to visit during the five-day stay in the city and the food, snacks and drinks that I wished to have. The elder of the sisters, Ms Yang, showed me the attractions I could visit in the immediate neighborhood and suggested eateries where I could sample some of the items on the wish list. 

The route map I was handed over by Ms. Yang showed that the closest attraction to the homestay is the War Remnants Museum. On the way to the museum I spotted a shop that vended cool drinks. I was drained with all the sweat that I was shedding. I bought a huge plastic cup of what looked like the specialty of the shop – ‘Fresh milk in Brown Sugar’. Half of the large portion of the drink was made up of ice. And what was strange was that the ice did not melt quickly despite the heat. Sipping the drink slowly I made my way to the museum. After paying the nominal entrance fee I spent nearly two hours at the museum. To say the least, the War Remnants Museum visit was a heartrending experience. I very nearly broke down inside going through the exhibits. The photo journey along with reconstruction of means of confinement, torture and destruction showcases the misery visited upon South Vietnam by the Americans during the war. The Dioxin spray, massacres, land mines, torture camps, napalm bombs, cruelty of persecution are as powerful an indictment of the aggressor as it was at the Auschwitz. Some photographs, attached to the later part of this piece, hopefully will illustrate what I have said. Most visitors, I found, were foreigners and their reactions ranged from tears to incredulity. What comes out of the visit is the unimaginable cruelty that man is capable of inflicting upon man.

As I emerged from the museum into the searing heat of HCMC streets I was ‘confronted’ by an old man with his cycle rickshaw. He offered to take me to the remaining sights I wished to go to in three hours for a fee of VND 500,000. I bargained a lot and finally gave in, unable to bear the heat any longer. The old man was my companion for the next few hours. The first sight he took me to was the Independence Palace, or the Reunification Palace, which was the residence and administrative center of the President of South Vietnam till 1975. The Palace was the site of the ‘Fall of Saigon’ on 30 April 1975 when a North Vietnamese tank crashed through its gates. It is now a well-preserved museum that gives an insight into the life that preceded the 'unification' of North and South Vietnam.

  

We went to the Notre Dame Cathedral next. The glorious cathedral with a huge statue of Our Lady in the foreground is under major restoration, and hence not open to tourists. The cathedral was built by the French colonialists between 1863 and 1880. The statue of Our Lady is magnificent, in the least, which was reported to have shed tears in October 2005. I was told by a few vendors that the only way to get inside the cathedral is during service hours and I noted the timings to visit there later. The cathedral is one of the many beautiful remnants of French colonial architecture. To the side of the cathedral is another, the stately Central Post Office of Saigon, designed by Gustav Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame. The post office is busy with tourists jostling to have postcards send to their near and dear ones from this iconic landmark of the city. Besides a functional post office, the flanks of the building are bustling touristy shops vending all sorts of stuff from chappals to art pieces.

The Municipal Theatre of Ho Chi Minh City, popularly known as Opera House, is yet another superb colonial building in the city. The 800 seat Opera House was built in 1897 was restored in 1995. It now has daily shows lasting about an hour. Near the Opera House is the proud Continental Hotel which featured in Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American, and its screen adaptations. Notable guests at the Hotel included our own Rabindranath Tagore. The hotel was popular with journalists during the Vietnam War and the ground floor bar was nicknamed the ‘Continental Shelf’ by journalists. All these attractions are on the Dong Khoi street that has upscale shopping malls and eateries too. A stone’s throw away is the majestic Town Hall and the square that contains a huge statue of Ho Chi Minh. The cyclist refused to stop near the Town Hall, saying that it is a no stop area and showed me some sign in local language. From there he took me to a shop from where I picked up the traditional Banh Mi, a crisp bread sandwich which contained a lot of meat and some vegetables. With that done, I decided to head back to the homestay. It was a funny sight to many as I munched on the Banh Mi while being cycled around by an old man. I was exhausted and had completed the sights for the day I had set out to see. It was already past 4.30 pm when the cycle rickshaw parked near the homestay.

My room was on the second floor and Ms. Yang’s sister showed me to the large air-conditioned room with an attached bathroom. I did not wait to freshen up or unpack before collapsing in a heap on the bed out of sheer exhaustion. By the time I woke up it had become dark and I quickly had a wash and got ready to go out for dinner. At the reception of the homestay I found a middle-aged man and his wife talking to Ms. Yang.  The gentleman, Tung Tran, asked me if I wanted to go to church with them the next day, as they would be going to a Roman Catholic church for the Sunday morning service. They were truly a godsend and I quickly agreed to their offer. Then the couple asked if I wanted to go with them for dinner as they were going to a nearby eatery. I acquiesced with the hope that I would be able to savor local dishes and drinks. In a short walk we reached the small family-run restaurant, as are most small eateries in this part of the world. I plumbed for Com Tam (sticky broken rice and prawn curry) and Ca Phe Sua Da (cold coffee). Over amiable discussion with the US based Vietnamese couple I devoured the tasty main course. Later I ordered Nuoc Sam (ginseng drink) and continued the conversation. It was a fascinating tale that Tung had to tell; of his life in Vietnam, being a ‘boat people’ refugee and finally settling in Virginia, USA. The conversation gave a different dimension to the Vietnam War and its fallout.

When we were on the walk back I spotted a corner shop near the homestay which was dishing out yummy grilled banana covered with sticky rice and soaked in thick coconut milk. I bought one to taste in the room and to say that I fell in love with the sweet dish would be the understatement of the year. I swore that I would have it every day I was in the city. It had been a great beginning to a short holiday in HCMC.