Karen and I spent most of the day on Thursday 14th February having fittings with the tailors and then having to go back again because the size wasn't quite right. In between the fittings, we somehow managed to acquire two pairs of trousers and another dress! All the more amazing was the time it took them to make what we wanted. We ordered the dress at 3pm and we had our first fitting by 7.30pm. All this frenzied buying did make us feel a bit guilty though, as some of the owners of the smaller shops don't pay their shop keepers particularly well. One girl works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and only gets paid US$4 per week. She seemed quite content with life though, although when we went back on the Friday morning to pick up the finished clothes, she wasn't very pleased, as her boyfriend had gone home rather than spend Valentine's Day with her. His excuse was that he was tired after a hard days' work (he is a painter).
They do celebrate Valentine's Day in Vietnam but as most of the locals cannot afford to go to nice restaurants, a lot of them spent the evening at the noodle stalls with a bowl of noodles and a nice red rose. We also saw couples on their motorbikes off out for the evening in convoy. Karen and I ended up having a nice dinner - we were both feeling a bit sorry for ourselves, like a couple of sad singletons. I gave her a bunch of flowers to cheer her up - only 15p from the market! Maybe that is why our buying went out of control in Hoi An.
On Friday morning we took a flight from Danang (the nearest airport to Hoi An) to Ho Chi Minh City, where it was sizzling hot when we got off the plane (over 30 degrees). The toilets at Ho Chi Minh airport (and the airport itself) were spotless, which gave me a good vibe about the city itself (apart from the fact that the sun was out and we could put our shorts and shades on). In 1998 Ho Chi Minh Citywas 300 years old. From the 1st to the 6th century, the city was part of the Funan empire until it was absorbed by the Kambuka peoples of the Chenla empire, then the Khmer Empire of Angkor until the 15th century.
The Vietnamese people first occupied the region in the 1670s and in the 18th century, the area was taken over by Nguyen Anh, Vietnam's Nguyen lord based in Hue, and renamed "Sai Gon" after the kapok tree. After the Tay Son rebellion in 1772, Nguyen Anh made Saigon his interim capital and bricked the whole settlemeent into a walled fortress. After quelling the rebellion in 1802, he returned to Hue with French assistance as the new emperor Gia Long and started the last feudal dynasty. Saigon remained the administrative centre in the south. French traders and missionaries settled in the city in the early 19th century but in 1861 the French finally seized Saigon. The 1862 Treaty of Saigon declared the city to be the capital of French Cochin China (the southern third of Vietnam) and a vast public works programme began with Saigon becoming known as the Pearl of the Orient). The nationalist movement was fuelled by the French occupation and the Viet Minh mobilised against the Japanese who occupied Vietnam during World War II. On September 2nd 1945, President Ho Chi Minh formally declared the independence of Vietnam from the French and the Japanese. British interference in the south resulted in the overthrow of the new Viet Minh government in Saigon and the return of the French. In October 1945 the US transported 13,000 French troops into Saigon and military assistance to the French increased. 30 years of war followed.
In 1954, the Viet Minh finally defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Ngo Dinh Diem became President of the Republic of South Vietnam with the support of the US and refused to hold reunification elections which were called for under the Geneva Agreement signed in 1954. Saigon became the military centre for the US during the Vietnam war until final victory by the Ho Chi Minh campaign on 30 April 1975. After Vietnam was reunified in 1975, Saigon was formally renamed Ho Chi Minh after the President and is currently its largest city.
In the afternoon we went to the Reunification Palace, which was built in 1871 and named Norodom Palace. It was used as the colonial mansion of the French Governor of Indochina and in 1954 President Ngo Dinh Diem took it over as his Presidential Palace. In 1962 it was damaged extensively in an assassination attempt on Diem's life by two Saigon pilots and subsequently demolished. The present building was built and named the Independence Palace by Diem. It was renamed the Reunification Palace after tanks smashed through the front gates on 30 April 1975 and Saigon surrendered to Ho Chi Minh's National Liberation Front soldiers.
The group took an evening cyclo tour around the city. The city is really bustling and there are a few department stores and posh shops! We saw the Opera/Municipal Theatre, Notre Dame Cathedral (built in 1877-1883 from materials imported from France - Vietnam has the second largest Catholic minority in Asia after the Philippines) and the General Post Office (built in the 1880s and inside are original paintings of Saigon and environs and one of Ho Chi Minh. The ceiling was designed by Gustav Eifel) (See photos).
Dinner was at a restaurant which specialised in barbecue meats, except they did not only serve beef, chicken and pork but weird and wonderful things such as ostrich, kangaroo, crocodile, rat, snake, worms, crickets and scorpions (see photos). We got a mix of everything other than snake (they had run out) and worms - I went for boring old fish, as I wasn't really sure whether I would be up for eating something different or a whole dish of creepy crawlies. I did actually try some of the ostrich (delicious), kangaroo (a bit too gristly), crocodile (a cross between chicken and squid - a bit too chewy) and surprisingly, rat (which I never thought I would). The rat was quite bony and had an odd taste. I'm afraid I wasn't adventurous enough to try the deep fried scorpion (which was not very tasty) and the deep fried crickets (which were tasty but were more like the size of locusts). Apparantly in Cambodia you can eat tarantula salad but I can't imagine I will be tempted to eat that.
I can't believe how many motorbikes there are in Ho Chi Minh - the streets are full of them and there are probably more motorbikes than there are people living here. Crossing the road is interesting - you have to walk in a group and hope that the motorbikes drive around you. At least they are a bit more obedient at obeying red traffic lights than they are in Laos.
They do celebrate Valentine's Day in Vietnam but as most of the locals cannot afford to go to nice restaurants, a lot of them spent the evening at the noodle stalls with a bowl of noodles and a nice red rose. We also saw couples on their motorbikes off out for the evening in convoy. Karen and I ended up having a nice dinner - we were both feeling a bit sorry for ourselves, like a couple of sad singletons. I gave her a bunch of flowers to cheer her up - only 15p from the market! Maybe that is why our buying went out of control in Hoi An.
On Friday morning we took a flight from Danang (the nearest airport to Hoi An) to Ho Chi Minh City, where it was sizzling hot when we got off the plane (over 30 degrees). The toilets at Ho Chi Minh airport (and the airport itself) were spotless, which gave me a good vibe about the city itself (apart from the fact that the sun was out and we could put our shorts and shades on). In 1998 Ho Chi Minh Citywas 300 years old. From the 1st to the 6th century, the city was part of the Funan empire until it was absorbed by the Kambuka peoples of the Chenla empire, then the Khmer Empire of Angkor until the 15th century.
The Vietnamese people first occupied the region in the 1670s and in the 18th century, the area was taken over by Nguyen Anh, Vietnam's Nguyen lord based in Hue, and renamed "Sai Gon" after the kapok tree. After the Tay Son rebellion in 1772, Nguyen Anh made Saigon his interim capital and bricked the whole settlemeent into a walled fortress. After quelling the rebellion in 1802, he returned to Hue with French assistance as the new emperor Gia Long and started the last feudal dynasty. Saigon remained the administrative centre in the south. French traders and missionaries settled in the city in the early 19th century but in 1861 the French finally seized Saigon. The 1862 Treaty of Saigon declared the city to be the capital of French Cochin China (the southern third of Vietnam) and a vast public works programme began with Saigon becoming known as the Pearl of the Orient). The nationalist movement was fuelled by the French occupation and the Viet Minh mobilised against the Japanese who occupied Vietnam during World War II. On September 2nd 1945, President Ho Chi Minh formally declared the independence of Vietnam from the French and the Japanese. British interference in the south resulted in the overthrow of the new Viet Minh government in Saigon and the return of the French. In October 1945 the US transported 13,000 French troops into Saigon and military assistance to the French increased. 30 years of war followed.
In 1954, the Viet Minh finally defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Ngo Dinh Diem became President of the Republic of South Vietnam with the support of the US and refused to hold reunification elections which were called for under the Geneva Agreement signed in 1954. Saigon became the military centre for the US during the Vietnam war until final victory by the Ho Chi Minh campaign on 30 April 1975. After Vietnam was reunified in 1975, Saigon was formally renamed Ho Chi Minh after the President and is currently its largest city.
In the afternoon we went to the Reunification Palace, which was built in 1871 and named Norodom Palace. It was used as the colonial mansion of the French Governor of Indochina and in 1954 President Ngo Dinh Diem took it over as his Presidential Palace. In 1962 it was damaged extensively in an assassination attempt on Diem's life by two Saigon pilots and subsequently demolished. The present building was built and named the Independence Palace by Diem. It was renamed the Reunification Palace after tanks smashed through the front gates on 30 April 1975 and Saigon surrendered to Ho Chi Minh's National Liberation Front soldiers.
The group took an evening cyclo tour around the city. The city is really bustling and there are a few department stores and posh shops! We saw the Opera/Municipal Theatre, Notre Dame Cathedral (built in 1877-1883 from materials imported from France - Vietnam has the second largest Catholic minority in Asia after the Philippines) and the General Post Office (built in the 1880s and inside are original paintings of Saigon and environs and one of Ho Chi Minh. The ceiling was designed by Gustav Eifel) (See photos).
Dinner was at a restaurant which specialised in barbecue meats, except they did not only serve beef, chicken and pork but weird and wonderful things such as ostrich, kangaroo, crocodile, rat, snake, worms, crickets and scorpions (see photos). We got a mix of everything other than snake (they had run out) and worms - I went for boring old fish, as I wasn't really sure whether I would be up for eating something different or a whole dish of creepy crawlies. I did actually try some of the ostrich (delicious), kangaroo (a bit too gristly), crocodile (a cross between chicken and squid - a bit too chewy) and surprisingly, rat (which I never thought I would). The rat was quite bony and had an odd taste. I'm afraid I wasn't adventurous enough to try the deep fried scorpion (which was not very tasty) and the deep fried crickets (which were tasty but were more like the size of locusts). Apparantly in Cambodia you can eat tarantula salad but I can't imagine I will be tempted to eat that.
I can't believe how many motorbikes there are in Ho Chi Minh - the streets are full of them and there are probably more motorbikes than there are people living here. Crossing the road is interesting - you have to walk in a group and hope that the motorbikes drive around you. At least they are a bit more obedient at obeying red traffic lights than they are in Laos.
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