Woke up early this morning for our city tour. Had our usual breakfast of bread, jam, watermelon, cucumber, egg, coffee, and tea. Turns out that the time he told us was off by a half an hour so we tried to upload some pictures. Don’t really know why it wasn’t working since we had used it twice already on this hotels computers.
We were told that it was just going to be the two of us and our guide. But as things go I already had a feeling that we would be on the tour with other people. Sure enough we were squeezed into a mini suv with four other people. Thankfully enough there were all very nice. There was an older couple (from Alabama) who were here because the husband was teaching at a university and the other couple (from Chile) was here on their honeymoon. Their honeymoon of course ends in Paris. How romantic.
We headed of with our animated tour guide (which seems like a standard around here). He was also very nice, I guess out of necessity. We first went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. It was a very long line to get in and you had to be wearing the “proper amount of clothing”. You had to have your skin covered below you knees, no cleavage, and no shoulders.
They also had to search everyone’s bags to make sure there wasn’t anything bad in there. In the process of looking through Angy’s purse she pulled out and went to throw away her water bottle. Angy got upset and grabbed it back, the lady then looked back at Angy with a look of disgust. Apparently it is like an airport, no liquids allowed. They of course have no signs and the woman didn’t speak English. She then pulled out the book that Angy and I are reading and threw it on the table. She threw it down in such a way that one of the pages tore out. We were both very insulted by this and gathered everything back up into Angy’s purse and walked out not even caring if she was done with the search. I was very surprised at how long this line was. If I were to guess, I would say that the line was about 10 blocks long. Or longer. But luckily the line went pretty fast.
(Side note) The reason the page was torn out so easily is that Angy and I are reading the same book. It actually started out as Angy’s book that she bought in S. Korea called “The Historian,” and I was wishing I had a book to read also. She was already halfway through so we decided to tear the book in half. So there wasn’t a cover to protect each side of the book, but, we had been removing and inserting the torn halves of the book in our bags many times in the past few days with no sign of any extra damage.
It wasn’t really much to see him. Just another preserved body out of history behind glass. There was no talking allowed once inside the mausoleum and they really shuffle you along. The guards in white uniforms were actually grabbing my arm and pulling me along like I wasn’t moving as fast as everyone else. Side note: I have discovered that I really dislike it when people touch me for other reasons than being nice. Which sounds like it makes sense, but I think I get a little too upset by it. Just like I can deal with the haggling women trying to get me to buy their stuff. But when they starting tapping on me or grabbing me to pull me into their store makes me what you could say as being a little unhappy. Then there are the guards at the mausoleum, I felt like elbowing them in the stomach every time they grabbed and pulled my forearm to usher me along. Is that wrong? I don’t know. Well on with the story.
So we left the mausoleum and received the cameras that we had to turn in before we entered the mausoleum. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that. So we had to turn in our cameras at a booth before we entered. Consider yourself informed. Then we walked around snapped some photos with our group and struggled to understand our guides heavily accented English.
Next on the list were some museums and other memorials dedicated to Uncle Ho. Slightly interesting but my mind was not really in the game for this at the moment. I guess it was kind of like an, “I’ve been there” kind of thing. It seems that the more and more tourist attractions that Angy and I go to the more disenchanted we become with the sights.
Then we visited a pagoda, and then a temple, lots of history, same old stuff. Nothing particularly extraordinary. My old lady and I decided to split this city tour gig and head out to the cool tourist sights. You know, like the ethnology museum. Sounds like a killer time, eh? Well it was a lot better than visiting another temple.
The ethnology museum described the history, traditions, lives, and everything that you wanted to know about the different tribes living within Vietnam. Many still retain many of the old styles of dress and even ways of living. Most are located up in the northern part of Vietnam. You may recognize the names. They are usually distinguished by the style and color of their dress. Such as the Black Hmong, maybe you’ve heard of the Hmong people? Maybe not. There are also the Jarai who wear indigo colored clothing.
It was a very interesting and fairly large museum. They even had commissioned people that live in these villages to build their traditional houses and such on the museum grounds for people to observe and appreciate. Unfortunately towards the end Angy was not as amused. It turns out that she was getting hungry again. So we left shortly after I heard the dreaded phrase, “I’m Hungry!”
So we stopped at a restaurant at the museum called baguettes and chocolate. Funny enough the sandwich I ordered was supposed to come with a baguette but they ran out of baguettes. Nice.
Time for us to head back to hotel. We walked out the gate of the museum and a guy of course asks us right away, “Taxi!” This time I was fine with that since we actually needed a taxi. He even said that it was a metered taxi which is usually a good thing since you know that is legit. So we hopped in the taxi and told him where we were going and he knew so we took off.
Oddly though the meter started at 15,000 dong, whereas the metered taxi that we took to the museum started at 6,000 dong. I figured that maybe it was 15,000 for 3km instead of the 1.8km on the other taxi. Nope, it started getting higher and higher. So I started timing it. It went up 1,000 dong every four seconds. That wily little shit. He tampered with his meter. So I asked him how much it went up per kilometer. He said, oh about 15,000 a kilometer. Now we were stopped at a stoplight and it was still going! So we told him to pull and that we weren’t going to pay. He was just kind of smiling to himself like he was thinking “Shit, I’ve been busted!”
So he said that he take us there without the meter. Which I said was ok we decided on a price and we were once again off. I then thought that since his little scam was revealed I could ask him an honest question. I asked him how often he tricked people into paying his rigged prices. He just kind of smiled and said nothing, so I asked him again and I got the same reaction. I then asked him if he just wasn’t going to tell me. He shook his head yes. Oh well.
After we got to the hotel there was not much more that happened that night except that Angy was HUNGRY again and we had to find a restaurant to eat at. So as usual we wandered around numerous restaurants but none were to Angy’s liking and she getting more and more upset about this dilemma as the minutes ticked by. I believe we walked around for 30-45 minutes looking for somewhere to eat. I would ask Angy what she wanted and she would reply, I don’t know. I would make suggestions, How about there, that restaurant looks nice. No way, it looks dirty. So at this point in time I usually just shut up and tag along for a little walk. Sometimes it’s pretty amusing, other times it’s not.
We (Angy) finally picked a restaurant and ate some basic fare and went to bed.
Another adventure in the books!
