It was totally unprepared! I bought my flight tickets on Friday and flew to Edinburgh on the next day.

This is probably the first time that I went on a trip with Shuyi’s parents, so it was a little different… and special. I mean, usually people dress up and prepare for a long time before meeting their bf/gf’s parents right?

But Shuyi’s parents had to suffer my puffy, whole-night-no-sleep eyes, long and ungroomed hair etc. In fact, when I look back at the pictures of this trip, I think that my hair was an EPIC fail, having not cut it for almost two months. I expect to look back at these photos 20 years from now and be absolutely horrified by myself.

 

Anyway Edinburgh is an enchanting, ancient city. As the capital city of Scotland, there are so many fascinating stories about the country’s history that could be relived in this city. I have a certain amount, but limited, knowledge of the country’s history, having read about the Scottish wars of independence and some of their famous monarchs. 

However, with only three days in Edinburgh, we could experience only a small fraction of what the city had to offer!

Something that I would consider myself to have really missed is a ghost tour.

Apparently, Edinburgh is one of those few British cities that offer immensely spine-chilling ghost tours (given its long, brutal history), with participants claiming to have had ‘unexplainable’ experiences…

Anyway, the City of Edinburgh is divided into the ‘new’ and ‘old’ city, and the latter is dominated by the majestic Edinburgh Castle.

Whenever I look at this castle I cannot help but marvel at the size of the ego of whichever king who built it LOL. I mean, right in the middle of the city there is a reasonably sized, steep hill… Not too big and not too small, perfect for a castle of a scary king lording over its subjects!

Haha technically it’s not just a ‘hill’, but rather an extinct volcano! All the more intimidating! Haven’t we all learnt from the Dark Lord Sauron that building a fortress near a volcano is very bad ass?

If this was Sauron’s castle, then we would all have been Orcs! On the first day we marched straight to the gates of Edinburgh Castle and entered without being killed. We had to pay the Dark Lord a tribute ticket of 14 pounds each but that was fine.

Behold the entrance:

Certain parts of this castle were almost a millennium old, and the area within the fortress walls were huge – like a small town of its own!

In ancient times, I bet nobles and servants to the king would live in the fortress during peace times, and during war times civilians would be kept within the fortress walls while defending against a siege.

How would I know that? Because Orlando Bloom did that in Kingdom of Heaven and Theoden King of Rohan did that in Return of the King LOL.

 

Imagine sieging a castle like this! You would need to bring your army and go around and climb the hill, trying to get to the entrance with your battle rams and stuff while being showered with arrows by archers and (later) cannons from the fortress!

You would have 25% of your army dead by the time you reach the entrance.

AND that’s not all! Building a fortress on high ground (such as a hill) gives you another tactical advantage and that is enemy range attacks from below suffer a 10% chance to simply – MISS!

I know all this from years of personal experience defending castles against sieges.

No?

Anyway I know all this is childish but I can’t help it. We haven’t got many castles in Malaysia (Kellie’s Castle?) and as I walked on the castle grounds I imagined what it would have been like around me back in the Medieval ages. 

For instance, this path must have been trodden by heavy horses of knights and riders rushing up to the king’s hall to deliver some news of war or famine…

This small hut must have been where a servant of a powerful lord lived with his deaf sister.

And Archers would line up along these walls and rain death onto the enemy’s army below!

…

…

LOL anyway, back to reality. Here’s a fantastic view looking down to central Edinburgh from the heights of the castle.

There were several exhibits and displays within the castle and to visit them all would probably take half a day or more (our ‘days’ were quite short as the winter sun started setting at around 3.45PM.)

One of the more interesting exhibits that we visited was the Prisons of War, where prisoners ranging from captured enemy soldiers to women accused of witchcraft had been held! Evil!

It’s interesting how the prisoners were made to sleep on these hammocks which look like those that you find on Pangkor Island beaches. Apparently this is to save space in the prison as the hammocks could be placed over above each other!

Many of the stuff on display here were real and actually used centuries ago.

There was a board detailing rations of food (and alcohol) that each prisoner was to be given, a small but detailed warship model built by (I presume) really bored prisoners, and even counterfeit money used to pay for extra food!

Imagine the freedom and time that these prisoners had in the dungeons that they could do all these things! If I were a prisoner I would probably start a food trading company and get rich!

Let me focus on what probably is the primary exhibit in Edinburgh Castle – the Royal Palace!

This, obviously, was the residence of many Scottish kings and queens of old. There was a lot of educational displays describing the various kings and queens of Scotland and their lineages.

Accordingly, I sought out King James I.

Also inside the castle was the King’s Dining Hall and the Birth Chamber where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to yet another King James, but the Sixth.

King James IV was perhaps the most famous James’s of them all, having survived Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot, sponsored the King James translation of the Holy Bible, and united Scotland and England under one crown after ascending to the English throne, which eventually led to the formation of Great Britain as we know today.

This is all very interesting but perhaps the most fascinating part of the royal palace was the Crown Room!

The Crown Room houses the very precious Scottish Crown Jewels – the Crown, Sceptre and Sword of State of Scotland! The Crown of Scotland was worn by several kings of Scotland and the Sceptre and Sword are gifts from Pope Alexander VI and Pope Julius II, respectively.

The Crown Room was extremely well guarded and the high-security transparent case that contained Crown Jewels looked like those in Mission Impossible movies.

Photography was naturally forbidden in the Crown Room and I dared not cross the guards! Haha therefore credits to the Edinburgh Castle website for the photo above.

After we were done with the castle we headed out to the street right outside Edinburgh Castle – the very famous, very beautiful, and very touristy… Royal Mile!

The Royal Mile is about a mile long (of course), and connects the two historically important places in Edinburgh – Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace.

I remember hearing from someone that Holyrood Abbey was where coronations of kings were held. Kings would be crowned in the Abbey and then parade up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle to be robed.

Today, Holyrood palace is the official residence of Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland, which makes sense – if I were the Queen, I would not want to seem so insecure as to live within the cannon-lined walls of Edinburgh Castle.

Anyway, there were many attractions along the Royal Mile such as the The Writer’s Museum (featuring several famous Scottish writers), Witches’ Well (where over 300 women had been accused as witches and burned at the stake), and  the Scotch Whisky Experience. Scotland is famous for scotch whisky, and regulations make it compulsory that all whisky in the world bearing the name ‘Scotch’ must be distilled in Scotland. Interesting!

Besides all that, fantastic architectures and marble statues of famous Scottish people could also be found along the Mile.

Can’t possibly talk about all of them but one extremely popular attraction is Mary King’s Close. We wanted to visit this place on the first day but tickets for the guided tour were completely sold out! So we had to purchase the following day’s ticket. 

Mary King’s Close is one of the many ‘closes’ in the Edinburgh – streets with tenements or multi-storied apartments on both sides that were built several centuries ago for housing purposes.

Due to many people living close to each other, these closes were especially vulnerable to plagues, such as the bubonic plague which was responsible for the Black Death in Europe back in the 14th century.

Many, many people were infected in these closes and died during the plague. There are also rumours that people who got infected were eventually thrown into the closes and left to die. Later, the entire Mary King’s Close was allegedly sealed with walls (on all sides and above) and the rumour goes that the plague victims were simply walled in and left to die in their now dark, underground apartments.

New roads and buildings were constructed on top of the entire seven-stories of underground tenements sealed underneath its floors. Imagine being left underground in a sealed, abandoned building while people above you simply build new buildings on top and forget about you!

 

All these myths and history give rise to a large amount of ghost stories, making Edinburgh an internationally famous destination for ghost and paranormal activity hunters.

In fact, I think several paranormal-hunting TV shows featured Mary King’s Close in their episodes!

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And so moving on we also found, in Edinburgh – the University of Edinburgh!

The University of Edinburgh is one of the universities that kindly offered me a place earlier this year. UoE is an ancient and highly reputable university in the world. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like studying here in this fascinating city had I accepted the offer.

Would I visit the castle everyday? Would I have learned to play bagpipes? Would I have seen the Loch Ness monster?

Ahh, anyhow I still love Bristol more.

Other interesting things that we found around Edinburgh include this statue of Greyfriars Bobby, in memory of a world-famous dog with a very touching story.

According to the story, Bobby’s owner, John Gray, died of Tuberculosis and his dog Bobby guarded his dear master’s grave until he died himself after fourteen years.

It is a fact that John Gray and Bobby the dog both did exist. In fact, their graves are right behind the row of shophouses in the background.

 

The story’s authenticity, however, cannot be confirmed.

A few hundred metres down the road from Bobby’s statue is the Elephant House – the cafe made legendary by J.K. Rowling herself having frequently visited and sat for long periods of time at the start of her career, writing the first few books of the Harry Potter series.

I would have gone in and sat for a long period of time trying to get inspiration to write a blog post worthy J.K. Rowling on James-Chow.com, but the cafe was closed by the time we reached.

So in the evening we ascended Calton Hill, one of the most famous and picturesque hills in Edinburgh.

Calton Hill was used as a place of public execution in ancient times and even in later times still remains a place of great political significance.

But I couldn’t be bothered with history anymore and you wouldn’t too if such an incredible view were in front of you.

There were several very important monuments on Calton Hill and the two that you see above are the Nelson Monument and the National Monument of Scotland, respectively.

The National Monument of Scotland has an interesting bit of story behind it and I’ll briefly tell it before I end this very long travel log (which I am lazy to split into parts).

The construction of the National Monument of Scotland was proposed back in 1822 and it was envisaged to be a grand and momentous project – to build a monument after the Parthenon in Athens!

Long story short, all the rich lords in the city supported the proposal by promising money for its construction, but after the construction had actually begun, the rich guys decided that they would rather keep their money in the bank and earn interest (I presume).

And thus the construction could not be completed due to a lack of funds. A rumour was told that the neighbouring city of Glasgow offered to pay for the remaining costs, but Edinburgh – you know – being Edinburgh the capital city, was too proud to accept the offer.

And so without money the monument construction is abandoned and the structure left as you see today! Bad ending!

Moral of the story: When people offer you money (especially huge sums), swallow your pride, grab the cash and run.

**********

All in all, Edinburgh as a city is such a nice place to visit and I will definitely be back again!

But in this trip:

I should have bought a Scottish kilt (the male ‘skirt’) as a souvenir.

I should have tried playing a Scottish bagpipe.

and I really should have cut my hair.

Note: This is the second part of a 2-part travel log to Ho Chi Minh City. If you haven’t read the first part, please click here.

**********

… And so I joined the terrorists team, pressed B-4-1, bought some 39mm rounds.. and… BOOM!! HEADSHOT!!

*Yeah I know I’m holding the rifle wrongly*

LOL.

Please excuse the CS language. Haha this was the first time I fired an AK-47… or any live firearm for that matter! It was pure pwnage!!

Everybody knows that in CS you can easily headshot with an AK – both long and short range.

It was one of the primary activities at the Cu Chi Tunnels that I’d been really looking forward to… firing a rifle!  

We could choose between the AK-47, M16 and M60 rifles (all of which were historically used at the Tunnels during the Vietnam War), and fire them AT WILL at the shooting range!

Of course, you had to pay for the ammo and we paid 300,000 Dongs (approx. RM50) for just ten 39mm rounds.

I chose the AK-47 over the M-16 because most people who had been to National Service (although myself not included) have fired the latter before.

The AK-47, however, is quite exotic and widely perceived to be used by terrorists (LOL thanks to CS) and is therefore more bad ass. 

My rifle’s magazine loaded by an officer:

The firing range was at the end of the Cu Chi Tunnels tour.

So back to the very start, we were made to sit in a comfortable hut in the middle of the jungle and watch a short film documenting the history of the Cu Chi Tunnels and how they were used by Vietnamese guerrillas to fight against the American forces during the Vietnam War.

The story was fine but it was really interesting how much the short film felt like an organized propaganda effort. Many ‘adjectives’ were skilfully used to imply how cruel the Americans were, and video clips illustrating how pitiful the Vietnamese peasants had been during the war… thanks to the aggressors.

After the video our tour guide gave us a short lecture on how the tunnel systems worked and then we were off! 

We climbed into these narrow, dimly-lit tunnels that were once used by the Vietnamese guerrillas to hide, communicate, store and generally transport soldiers and supplies without having to risk getting killed over ground.

These tunnel systems were very huge and span many, many kilometres across the area.

And what’s more, the Cu Chi Tunnels are just a part of an even larger network of tunnels existing across the entire country!

It may look easy but it was very exhausting crawling through these bloody tunnels… Your thigh muscles get really worked out as you will need to be duck-walking all the time…

You can imagine the life of the Vietnamese soldiers in these tunnels… what a tough training!

And yeah… here’s a handsome, muscular and manly soldier fearlessly emerging from a tunnel vent.

The tunnels aside, there were also lots of other war remnants on display…

… such as booby traps! If you were an American soldier and you accidentally stepped on this:

AHHHHHHH!!!!

… and many other brutal traps that you’d think you’re watching a SAW movie…

Other stuff to see include American tanks that were captured during the war:

Bomb Craters:

HO BOM!~

As well as bombs…

… and landmines recovered after the war:

If so many landmines were used in the war will not help but think if there are any more live ones hidden in the forest grounds of Cu Chi… LOL… So we watched our step!

At the end of the tour I brought back some spent shells of the three rifles available at Cu Chi as souvenir. Left to right: Rounds of the M60, M16 and AK-47. Wahahahaha!!

**********

The next day we went on another tour, by the same company, to the Cai Be Floating Market.

Cai Be is about 3 hours from Ho Chi Minh City, in the Mekong Delta region. We were brought on a boat and off we sailed towards the floating market.

The floating market is, well… a floating market! Traders basically own their own trading boats, and they would put up goods for sale every morning… just like a regular market!

And buyers would buy from these traders either from the river bank or from their own boats. 

I’m not sure why they would prefer to trade this way compared to a physical, landed market. The only two reasons that I can think of are:

1) the dominant mode of transportation in this village is by boat, so it is actually more convenient to do your shopping by boat than by car/bike/foot.

2) Traders don’t have to pay rent! LOL (or do they?)

It was a little late in the morning when we reached there but apparently the river would have been extremely crowded with boats and market-goers earlier in the morning!

To advertise their goods, the traders would put up a ‘sample’ on a long pole so that prospective buyers can see it from afar.

This boat below, for example, sells turnips:

Imagine someone selling chickens…

… or pork, LOL!

I wouldn’t say it was an incredibly exciting trip but it was certainly worth the experience.

We got to see the not-so-busy side of these traders’ life. In fact, we could see some of them taking a nap or even cooking on their boats… yes, for some of the traders, these boats are also their homes!

It is interesting that a majority of the boats on this river has got a rather ferocious pair of eyes painted in front of them (see pic below). According to the tour guide, they’d been drawn as part of a traditional practise to deter attacks from alligators in the river!

Apparently, the Mekong river had been teaming with alligators back then.

Well I think the practise makes sense. If I were an alligator and I see a huge pair of eyes on a bloody red face cruising barbarically towards me… Well I would just shut up and pretend to be a piece of log.

Incidentally, the Mekong River is the 10th longest river in the world, with a length of almost 5,000 kilometres spanning across six countries.

After we disembarked, we were invited to visit one of the factories that produce local confections. While I will not dwell in the specifics of the rest of the trip (this entry is getting to long and I want to sleep), I must mention the snake wine:

Snake wine is rather famous in Vietnam and China. It is a gruesome infusion of snakes in alcohol and is claimed to bring lots of health benefits to the drinker, including increased sexual performance!

The wine was drunk in a shot and tasted horrible. The feeling in my stomach became much more horrible when I investigated what was in the jar:

 

Layers upon layers of dead snakes lie quietly in the jar along with herbs and other stuff.

I simply took the other ‘stuff’ in the jar for granted and was walking away happily when Tom, a British guy whom we became friends with, ran over to me and asked me to go back to the drinking table and check out what he had ‘discovered’.

On opening the jar, my stomach turned:

  

HOLY SHIT.

There was a fuckin’ dead bird in my wine!!! Why?? With feathers and all…

1. Did the poor bird hit a wall and fell into the jar?
2. Did the guys run out of ‘exotic’ things to put into their almighty-tourist-attracting exotic wine and decided to put in a dead bird as well?
3. Had the bird been swallowed whole by one of the snakes and upon the snake’s death got regurgitated undigested? 

I don’t know!! WHY IS THERE A DEAD BIRD IN MY WINE?????

I couldn’t believe what kind of torture I’d just subjected my stomach to, but we simply felt a wave of nausea and wished each other best of luck and that we would still see each other alive the next morning.

Well, technically we were told that we would be drinking snake wine. That was  a grave misrepresentation, wasn’t it? It should have been snake-infused-with-disgusting-dead-bird-with-feathers-and-lots-of-shit-looking-things-wine.

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We dedicated our last day in Ho Chi Minh City to visit the many fine museums and historical buildings within the city centre itself.

The first was the War Remnants Museum:

Having just finished a major war less than 40 years ago, Ho Chi Minh City has got lots of war stuff to display.

Within the compound of the museum exterior was a large arsenal of artilleries, tanks, war planes and helicopters. Many of them were captured from the Americans during the war and still bear the US Army label, such as this Chinook, which you should recognise if you play C&C Generals LOL:

 

The War Remnants museum was fascinating, although personally, I felt it was more of a propaganda centre.

The museum basically informs and reminds its visitors of the horrors and atrocities of the Americans during the Vietnam War. With a complete lack of journalistic neutrality, it also featured a major department almost exclusively documenting how ‘evil’ the Americans were.

The whole exhibition was very dramatic and rhetorical, and at certain points bordering on comical. It began with a tongue-in-cheek display of an excerpt from the US Declaration of Independence, which outlines universal human rights:

… Immediately followed by a photograph with the caption:

“The father of this little girl arrested by (American) GIs. She Implores them: ‘Don’t kill my father’.”

I’m not sure if the ‘don’t kill my father’ part was indeed recorded by the journalist or was simply added in later for dramatic effect.

Right next to it is a photograph of an old man (cropped to show an M-16 rifle held in front of him for maximum rhetorical effect) with the caption:

“A Vietnamese civilian pleads with the 101st Air Cavalry Division soldier who is interrogating him during a ‘search and destroy’ operation in early 1968”

While I sincerely sympathize with the plight of the Vietnamese civilians and concur that the Americans troops were definitely not angels, I utterly fail to see how these photos along with their cheesy captions qualify as ‘war remnants’.

In fact, the incidents, while tragic, are not very historically significant and the whole presentation seemed to exist more for the purpose of generating anti-American sentiment (and love for the newly formed Communist government) than to educate the public on concrete historical facts. 

And then all of a sudden it gets much, much more gruesome:

(WARNING: GRAPHICAL IMAGES AHEAD)

There was even an entire gallery dedicated to showing the horrible effects of Agent Orange, an extremely toxic chemical that was used by the US military to clear large areas of forest and track the guerrillas.

These chemicals caused severe biological deformities among victims and the gallery makes sure that you see the most horrific examples:

Yea, I know how you’re feeling. I am not feeling very well too at the moment.

…

So let me stop posting disturbing pictures and instead turn to some REAL, physical remnants of the Vietnam War…

… A real Bazooka, baby!

 

And Claymore mines! Oh we’ve seen this already in the Cu Chi Tunnels.

Alright, so moving on we went to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum:

It was a rather short stay as we were short of time. The museum basically emphasizes the history of the city itself, rather than the entire country.

Naturally, a large part of the museum is dedicated to showing how the Communist party was formed, their righteous struggle for independence and noble sacrifices etc.

I noticed something interesting at the exterior of the museum:

It would seem that there were so many war machines left in Ho Chi Minh City after the war that they could give one to EACH museum for display!

Here’s me with a real F-5 Fighter in front of this museum:  

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And finally we went to our last destination in Ho Chi Minh City – the Reunification Palace.

This can probably be referred to as the White House of Ho Chi Minh City.

Once the palace of the French governor when the city was a French colony, it became the office of the head of the State of Vietnam after World War II.

After the Vietnam War, the palace again changed hands into the ownership of the current Communist government.

Many state functions are held in the palace and the President of Vietnam also has an office in the building.

We could tour most of the state function rooms in the palace for a small fee.

… Found a very iconic bust of Mr Ho Chi Minh in the middle of the banqueting hall! Paid my respect to the man who made this country great!

We also visited the ‘underground’ parts of the palace, which was used by the previous administration to coordinate troops and run the government during the war.

It was more like a military command bunker with shady corridors and narrow walkways:

We found ‘the War Room of the President’. I guess this is where the President sat and gave orders during wartime:

And this is the ‘Combat Duty Bedroom of the President’ (Well he could’ve used a table lamp instead of TWO bloody telephones):

Yeah so basically that’s it. There were lots of other interesting stuff in the Reunification Palace but I don’t think I can cover them all in this blog post.

Annnnnnnnnd yes, have to mention this one though…

Didn’t I say that there are war machines (fighter jets, helicopters, artilleries etc.) in almost every museum?

There were TANKS in this one!

Apparently these were the tanks of the North Vietnam army which had barged into the Palace in 1975 and ended the Vietnam War.

I can vividly see how the war ended.

If I were the South Vietnam president at that time and there were enemy tanks like these ridding through my walls and pointing their badass cannons at my room… I’d SOOOO surrender thank you very much.

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Before I end this super looooong entry (my laptop is lagging), a tribute to the unbelievably tasty, authentic Vietnamese beef noodles.

I seriously can’t get enough of them. Love ‘em!

Went to Vietnam last week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Specifically, we went to Saigon, which was the capital city of South Vietnam and the preceding French colony. Today, there is no more South Vietnam, having been unified with North Vietnam to form, well… Vietnam!

The city’s name was also changed from Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City, in memory of the the great communist leader (pic above) whose shadow I can be seen hiding under to escape the scorching heat!

It was weird because coming from Malaysia, a country much closer to the equator than Vietnam, I was supposed to be well accustomed to the heat… but this was different!

Your skin literally roasts under the sun! I could remember that the mere 10 minutes that my brother and I took to take pictures with Mr. Ho’s statue was sufficient to give us sunburns!

Or maybe it was just an unusually hot day!

Saigon was one of the cities that were most heavily sieged during the Vietnam war some 40 years ago.

Because of this, one would inaccurately think of Ho Chi Minh City as a relatively underdeveloped and inward city.

I’d expected to arrive in a city where everything was to be complete unfamiliar – language, food, signs, culture, retail brands etc.

I’d also thought that everything would be rather traditional and old-fashioned.

-

I was wrong.

Hah! Nowhere in the world escapes western capitalism and consumerism!

A stroll around the beautiful city centre dispels whatever notion that communist controlled Vietnam is out of touch with the outside world!

This city is the most important economic centre of Vietnam and its residents are some of the richest in the country.

We spent the first day just exploring the city centre.

One thing about the city that really caught my attention was, despite its development, Ho Chi Minh City still retains much of the cultural and more primitive side of things.

It was absolutely lovely!  

For instance, we couldn’t be bothered to visit nice restaurants but instead were drawn to these little street vendors who sell very interesting local food and speak utterly zero English.

 

We couldn’t communicate at all, but were determined to try whatever it was that they were selling!

This extremely friendly lady tried her best to describe in Vietnamese what her product was, but we could only smile and nod. We understood nothing but decided to try it anyway!

Well, that’s what traveling is all about right?

In the end we were given a delightful bowl of what looked like soya bean curd with glutinous rice – and it was delicious!

The lady was doing business right in the middle of the footpath and there were absolutely no tables and chairs. So we simply put our bags on the floor and sat on them while we ate.

We also tasted many special and rather exotic food that were sold by these little portable stalls sprouting out of literally random places.

This is a multi-flavoured glutinous rice with a variety of coconut toppings (didn’t like it really much):

What looked like and probably was roasted pigeon (very yummy):

and a fusion of French baguette and what looked like Malaysian SATAY: (tasted quite good!)

We were a little concerned about the hygiene of such street food that were prepared with uncovered, bare hands and literally sold beside the main road with hundreds of motor vehicles passing by every hour.

But well, neither my brother nor I got food poisoning after that, so I guess they were fine!

The food aside, the next thing that I immediately noticed around the town centre was political imagery.

This is the first time that I visited a communist-governed country, and was rather taken aback when I saw this symbol placed literally all over the city.

The media that I grew up with was predominantly western-oriented, and as we all know western countries dislike communists.

So here I was facing the hammer and sickle – a symbol of Communism. It was a strange feeling as I had immersed in war movies and games like Red Alert that actively portray these symbols as the ‘enemy’ and yet here I was in its territory and still loving the place.

The third remarkable thing about this city that you will immediately notice is – the sheer amount of motorcyclists!  

 

The number of motorcyclists in the city was absolutely staggering! I made a quick estimation and I think I can safely say that the ratio of motorcycles to cars is approximately 20 to 1 – that’s 95% motorcycles!

We were on the road a couple of times and the taxi driver was like Brad Pitt being chased by a dozen CIA agent cars in a Hollywood movie. He was sounding his horn all the time and even driving onto SIDEWALKS just to avoid the massively overwhelming amount of motorcycle traffic in the city.

 

Well, I guess if you live in a metropolitan area with a population of 9 MILLION, motorcycles are indeed the best way to get around.

Anyway, there was a huge market at the middle of the town centre called the Ben Thanh Market. It was really huge and is one of the icons of Ho Chi Minh City.

Since it is an icon, you can expect lots of tourists to visit this place.

Since lots of tourists visit this place, you can expect the prices to go off the roof.

Since opening prices are exorbitant, you can expect lots and LOTS of price bargaining.

… and that was exactly what happened.

 

Now I think this happens in most countries, not just Vietnam, and I’d had my fair share of experience in price bargaining at tourist-infested places.

But this was different.

In general, the sales girls here were extremely friendly and approachable, and I would say that they really, really wanted us to buy their stuff.

And due to this reason, price bargaining was actually quite, err… fun, over here.

Let me explain:

First of all, none of us could understand each other.

So all we did was tapping a price figure on a calculator, passing it to the other, the other would widen his/her eyes in apparent horror at the absurdity of the price, scream ‘noooo… no no no…’, laugh, key in another number, and pass it back to the other person.

This process would repeat for half a dozen times or more before a deal is reached.

This sounds tedious BUT the good part is that you would use the universal language – laughter – A LOT, and they will be laughing all the time as well!

It was very interesting how they tried to do all sorts of things to make us believe that the goods were worth more than the price we offered!

The girl at the store told us stories in simple, broken English about where the clothes were imported, how good the quality was, and how we wouldn’t be able find it anywhere else in Vietnam… She kept going and going until she contradicted herself at some point, realized that we noticed, and then we all laughed.

We both knew that the product wasn’t as good as she was trying to portray as, and we both knew that none of us believed it. But it was still good fun!

At night, we had our hotel book for us two tickets for a water puppet show!

Water puppetry is a traditional form of entertainment that is particularly famous in Vietnam.

In this approximately one-and-a-half hour performance, wooden puppets were attached to long rods underneath and controlled by puppeteers behind a screen. The rods were invisible beneath a pool of water and the puppets would appear to be moving over the water.

This tradition is many centuries old and was historically done at impromptu ‘stages’ on flooded rice fields in Vietnam as a form of entertainment among farmers.

The puppets acted out a series of traditional Vietnamese folk stories and legends, and we were each given a booklet that tells the synopses of the stories in six languages. What a fantastic way to learn more about a new culture!

The puppets were cute, the stories interesting and the acting humorous. This might be nothing more than a puppet show, but the performance was by absolutely no means juvenile or childish.

All music and conversations in the show were produced live on both sides of the stage, and man… everything was so professionally done!

Don’t be fooled by the ‘wooden’ look of the puppets! The puppeteers behind them were masters in what they do and the puppets were made to move so lively and full of expression!

There were even fighting scenes where water was actually splashed onto the some of us on the first few rows, but it was all fine!

After the show ended, the puppeteers emerged from behind the screen to tremendous applause.

After the show we took a night stroll across the town towards the Saigon river.

Ho Chi Minh City was not at all a quiet and lonely city at night. In fact, there were lots and lots of nightlife venues that were extremely lively and busy!

We also noted the high amount of police presence in the city centre – was this because it is a tourist area, or was it that some big event was coming up?

Vietnam was a colony of France, and so the French built a Notre-Dame Cathedral in Saigon! Named after its famous counterpart in Paris!

All the original building materials for this church were imported from France. Why leh? Don’t trust our south east asian materials?

The Virgin Mary statue in front of the cathedral became famous in 2005 when it was reported to shed tears! Tears were reported flowing down the right cheek of Mary and caused a tremendous influx of people (literally thousands) that year to gather around the basilica and witness the ‘miracle’.

Despite being night time, we could still see believers gathering around the statue of the Virgin Mary and praying… right there. What a peaceful sight!

The next day, we went on a day tour to two famous destinations located to the north of Ho Chi Minh City – the Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh, and the Cu Chi Tunnels. I’ll talk about each of them.

The Great Cao Dai Temple, also called the Tay Ninh Holy See, is the seat (sort of like the religious headquarters) of the Cao Dai religion.

While you may not have heard of it, Cao Dai is a relatively new religion (established in the twentieth century) founded in this very city in Vietnam. It currently has several million adherents across the globe.

I don’t really have a good idea of what this religion is all about. All I know (from the 2-hour tour of the temple and Wikipedia) is that it is sort of a fusion of several religions and political figures.

For instance, Jesus is regarded as a Buddha and the ‘saints’ include an all-star mixture of Mohammed, Napoleon, Jesus, Buddha and Shakespeare (?!). No kidding.

According to Wikipedia, the ‘holy spirits’ of Cao Dai include Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Lenin and Victor Hugo.

I have no idea how and why, but it is so.

Here’s a large portrait at the front atrium of the temple depicting ‘The Three Saints’ signing a covenant ‘The 3rd Alliance’ between God and man.

The Three Saints are apparently Sun Yat-Sen, Victor Hugo, and a Vietnamese poet called Nguyen Binh Kheim. Beside the picture is a sign explaining the meaning behind the portrait.

At the very end of the temple is an altar with a huge, green, watermelon-like globe with an eye at the front.

This symbolizes the Divine Eye of God overseeing the universe and the Cao Dai adherents basically pray and worship towards its direction. 

I can think of a million way to make fun of this subject but in the spirit of respect for religion, I shall refrain.

We were there just in time for the noon mass. At precisely noon, Cao Dai followers entered the temple dressing in flowing robes and began the ceremony. There was a high-ranking priest in front leading the congregation through the prayer chants and hymns.

Those dressed in white are lay followers and those in colour are priests.

We didn’t stay in the temple for too long as it was a place of worship and we were eager to continue to the next destination of our tour – the Cu Chi Tunnels!

I had heard of the Cu Chi Tunnels before I went to Vietnam, of its wartime tunnels, deadly booby traps, and most of all – there’s a shooting range where you could shoot an AK-47 or M16 rifle, or even an M60 machine gun!

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This travel log is getting too long for a single post, so I am splitting it into two parts. Click here for Part 2.