Today Kyle woke up feeling very down. We didn’t know how long we should stay in HCMC or how we should travel to our next destination. We didn’t want to travel by bus or train the day after our hell day of travel yesterday. So our next option would be to fly to Natrang, but we later decided to book a flight to Da Nang, there seemed to be more to see and do in that area. So we got up and booked our flight, only $76 per person. And it is an hour flight as opposed to 12 miserable hours in a bus or on a train. After booking our flight we walked a ways down the street to a large indoor market. They had a bit of everything there. Lots of clothes and trinkets, and women trying to get Kyle to buy stuff by touching his arm to get his attention. This makes Kyle very uncomfortable, he really doesn’t like it when they touch him!
We didn’t buy any merchandise but we did eat and have some coffee. Kyle said it was the best coffee he had had in a very long time. We got wrangled into buying this noodle dish, which came with pieces of fatty pork on top with leafy vegetables and a whole shrimp, head tail and innards. I could manage to eat much of this; I was too worried about getting sick. The woman who ran the shop was watching us, and at one point she came by and cut Kyle’s shrimp with scissors and put it in his bowl. Kyle looked at me, and said, “Well I usually don’t eat this part of the shrimp, but ok.” So he ate part of it, but I just drank my iced coffee. The woman noticed that I didn’t really eat my noodles and I felt bad, but I didn’t want to feel icky later.
So after our mini-market adventure I was still hungry so we headed towards the Independence/Reunification Palace in search of some Pho along the way. We found the palace very easily, and we found a little Vietnamese restaurant that looked nice. I ordered Pho with chicken, which is a noodle soup that you add fresh basil and other greens, bean sprouts and chilies to it. I also ordered a dried beef and papaya salad, it was ok. The soup was good though. On to the Palace.
When we first got to the palace a woman came up to us and asked if we spoke English. I thought this was fun, being mistaken for someone other than an American! She asked us to take her and her husbands picture in front of the Palace. Then they reciprocated. The Palace was not very ornate, inside or out. It looked like a large office building. We walked in and almost did a free guided tour with the couple who asked us to take their picture. But Kyle and I decided to check it out on our own. The palace was decorated in a very 70’s style, which I kind of like. I like to visit places like this but I would never want to decorate my house in that style. Visiting this palace helped me to learn a little bit more about the war. They had many rooms to see, the president’s bedroom, the receiving room, and other typical presidential type rooms. At the end of the tour we watched a video about the history of the palace and a little about the wars that Vietnam has had. This was a very serious video, but there were so many people in the darkened room nodding off that Kyle and I found ourselves silently giggling. The Asian girl in front of us was so sleepy, her head would droop so low, with her chin almost resting on her chest! Then she would snap her head up and act as if nothing happened, only to nod off again. The man to her left was wobbling from side to side, the third person in their group finally noticed his sleepy companions and started to giggle a little, then it was very hard for Kyle and I to control our laughter, so we eventually left.
We walked from there to the War Remnants Museum. Along the way a street vendor carrying two baskets on a long pole with coconuts in them, asked Kyle for a light for his cigarette, then he gave us a coconut drink for free, of course we felt bad and offered to pay for it, so then he sold us two. It was like $5 USD what a rip, and we didn’t even want it! It was fun to watch the vender pull out a huge machete type knife to whack off the top so there was room for a straw.
The War Museum was very disturbing. The pictures displayed showed all of the horrifying aspects of the Vietnam War. The disfigured villagers, the birth defects from agent orange, and the horrible things the American and Korean soldiers did during the war. There was a replica of a Tiger Cage, where prisoners were kept in horrible conditions. The museum was very one sided, as to be expected. And it was interesting to see things from the other side. The closets thing I have seen to this was the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. This was another museum spotlighting a terrible event that happened well before I was born, and in a far away land. But seeing this museum actually here in Vietnam where these atrocities happened was really eye-opening. One of the worst pictures I saw was an American soldier standing in a field holding up a shredded Vietnamese soldier, the soldier had been torn open by some type of bomb, and in the photo the US soldier was holding a piece of this man, while the man’s head dangled upside down. It was very gruesome, but what bothered me the most was that this US Soldier actually picked the dead man up, as if it was no big deal and then he seemed to pose with it for the picture. I would think a normal person would see this man lying there and run in the other direction and throw up, not pick it up! Anyway, there were many other disturbing sights. It made me think about how American’s back in the states were protesting the war, and it again confused me as to why this had to happen. I realized I need to learn more about this time in our history.
The museum was closing and we needed to go, but we happened to run into the couple from the palace. They were from the US as well. We started talking, and then started to head back towards the city center. Then it started to rain, and then it was pouring. Robin and Erica suggested we wait it out under an umbrella outside a store, eventually it was raining too hard to stay there, and we were ushered into the store, of course it was filled with cute girl clothes, so Erica and I looked around and tried on a few things. Erica bought a shirt, but I didn’t find anything I loved. Surprisingly I haven’t really been in the mood to shop much since we have been on this trip.
When the rain died down a little we decided to share a cab with Robin and Erica, and have dinner with them at a French restaurant. We noticed that they were a lot like us, they took similar pictures of food, and traveled in the same way we did, kind of on the cusp of being a backpacker and being an older traveler with more money to spend. They both live in Boston, but are moving to NY. They both quit there jobs as well, put all their stuff in storage and headed to Asia for a month! We really hit it off with them. They are a wonderful couple who seemed to have been married for many years but had only been married for 3, perhaps they have been together for many years though! It is so hard to find a quality couple, where both the man and the woman are fun to be with, and where we have the same ideas about what is fun and what we should do next.
Dinner was very good, we polished off two bottled of wine, shared three desserts and had coffee, we were the last diners in the restaurant. We talked about the museum, travel, and Kyle’s time in the Navy. I felt like this was dominating the conversation, but Erica kept asking question and saying it was fascinating since they didn’t know anyone personally in the military.
After dinner, we walked to the main part of town where the large hotels are, apparently these were the hotels where the journalists stayed during the war, I guess they are very historic. Robin had heard about a hotel bar called Q, so we checked it out. Kyle and I would have been fine with it, we are pretty easy, if there is booze then we are fine. But Robin wasn’t feeling it, so he brought us to another hotel he had heard about. The Caravelle Hotel is known as one of the most luxurious hotels in Siagon. And the lobby was beautiful. Robin lead the way to the rooftop bar. From the elevator we went up a small flight of stairs, from the first step we knew we were heading somewhere fun. Erica commented that it sounded like it was happening! Unlike Q which was incredibly dead.
Once upstairs our attention went immediately to the three women on stage in front of a full band, wearing tiny dresses with the sides cut out. They oozed sexuality. And they were good, they had all the moves, and great voices. The lead singer was a little shorter than the others but where she lacked in height she made up for in talent and charm! We had to wait a few minutes for a table but it didn’t matter, we were all so happy to be there. Kyle kept laughing and saying how great this place was. The girls did a set filled with Michael Jackson’s songs, Beat It, Thriller, Billy Jean… it was amazing. All the songs the girls did it perfectly for our age. We were having a blast, and so were Erica and Robin. To commemorate the discovery of this amazing place, we had a shot of tequila, and then more drinks. We took photos with the girls, and talked to Queenie- the lead singer about her life and her job. She and the other women in the band are from the Philippines, they used to perform in Bangkok. Queenie’s story was straight out of the Selena movie, her father was a performer, and taught her to “own” the song no matter what, and Queenie did own the song, and then she owned our hearts. We were having such a good time, we didn’t want it to end. We gave Robin all the credit for finding this gem, with its amazing city views, strong drinks, great people watching (the Vietnamese cougar in the tiny red dress, that Queenie, called a bitch) and perfect entertainment. During the first break Queenie sat at the table next to us with a guy she knew. Robin just sat back looking like the perfect ex-pat at home in this posh hotel bar, a self-satisfied look on his face, it was great. Kyle and I were clearly falling in love with this couple. Erica was so cute when a new song would come on, she would start dancing in her chair. The night couldn’t have been going any better. Once they were performing again Kyle went on a reconnaissance mission, and started chatting up the guy at the next table. He came back with all sorts of dirt on the bar and the band. It was great. When the girls were done for the night Queenie spent some time talking to us at our table and invited us to meet her at a club called Apocalypse Now. We were in!
Erica and I were feeling pretty good, and of course I committed my worst drinking sin, and had started to mix my alcohols! Oh no! So Apocalypse Now was a typical dance club, two levels with two different types of music. We made our way upstairs and even though we were dancing a little (Kyle hates dancing) he was having fun. We had more drinks, ran into Queenie. And there was a group of gay (I think) French guys, I tried to tell them that Queenie was a celebrity but they just looked at me like I was a dumb drunk American. I don’t know how much snootier you can get then middle-aged gay French men! We danced a little bit more, I let my hair down, literally (which has become a theme in Asia, when I start drinking and dancing I feel the need to take my clip out of my hair and swing it around) Finally we called it quits, I think it was like 2am. Erica and I were pretty lit, and she was so cute about meeting us and invited us to visit them on NY! They also invited us to tag along on their Halong Bay cruise. We considered this. The last sight of Erica and Robin were them on the steps of their hotel, with Erica jumping up and down saying we should visit them on NY, again so cute! Kyle and I took a cab back to our hotel, rinsed off in the shower and hit the bed. We had a flight the next morning to Da Nang, on the road again after a memorable day in Saigon!
