Saigon

Trip to Saigon - as written by Linda (Grandma) and Michael (Grandson) Introduction: Linda

Introduction:  by Linda

We had arrived in Vietnam in the middle of November and a few days later were surprised by Mike's prostate which decided to completely close off the ureter.  I admire him so much as he quietly and uncomplainingly went through his days here using a catheter. 

But by January it became really clear that things weren't getting any better so we got an appointment for surgery at the international Franko-Viet hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (aka HCMC or Saigon.)  Our plan was to fly down early Wednesday morning and take a taxi into town for the 10:00am appointment, have the surgery that afternoon and come home to Da Nang 3 days later.  We took grandson Michael with us to see the sights.

 Day 1: Michael

There was, as often happens, confusion at the airport. For one thing, the people at the airport had said that they would put us on a flight at 6:30am, but the night before rescheduled it to 8:15. However when we got there at 7:00 they said that the flight would leave at 9:20! But we had a doctors appointment at 10:00.  With the help of a very harried customer service agent, we were out the door and on the plane at 8:30.

We finally got on the plane, and just in time. I enjoyed my ride, because when we got above the clouds, the view was amazing. We were rising through the clouds, and I wasn't expecting much. However when we got to the top, the cloudscape was surreal.   I didn't get a picture so I will make a word picture.  A plane of white, lumpy dollops of cotton, like a huge white comforter. There were blobs of larger clouds, and there were stratus clouds that were floating above and around the plane. As the plane continued to rise, I started to see more and more, and there came into view a spire of clouds that looked like a castle. I imagined jumping out and landing softly on the pile of clouds, and exploring around this quiet world. Then the horizon came into view, an the as the clouds got further and further away, they got flatter and flatter. It looked as if we were flying over the Arctic, with huge ice mountains of cumulonimbus clouds looming on the horizon. There was a collection of stratus clouds hanging in the air like a disc, and the effect was astonishing! After a while there was a break in the clouds, and I thought, "Those clouds must be very thin, that break looks jagged! Not at all like the thick cumuli clouds." But as more came into view, I could see that it was not a break, but a mountain! A mountain range was so high up that it was rising through the clouds. Afterwards I could see more and more through the clouds, the glistening lakes, the neat farmlands, and little villages, their roofs shining like gold. I reflected on how, looking up, the plane I was on would be just another plane, but each person on each plane feels that the plane that they are on is somehow special.

Into Saigon: Michael

Our descent into Saigon was uneventful. I don't know much about Saigon, but I know that it is a big city, and so I was surprised that as we went down below the clouds all I saw were the winding river and tributaries of the Saigon River and farmland. The rivers were beautiful though, and I enjoyed it, mostly. By this time I had developed a bad headache and wasn't feeling so good. I am also getting airsickness from writing this. We started to come into the city, and I noticed more and more big apartments. Grandpa knew we had to get to the hospital, so he got into the aisle and held our place while we got our carry-ons. We got off the plane and immediately got into a taxi to go the FV hospital.

Into Saigon:  Linda

Leaning over to look out the window, I was so impressed by how dense the housing below was.  Later I learned the population of the metropolitan area of Saigon is around 12 million which, by the way, is more than Oregon state with its 4 million or even Washington with only 7 million people.  The land use cannot be improved on.  There is nothing wasted on lawns, parking strips, big alleys, etc.  Like in Da Nang the houses are narrow, tall, and share walls with the neighbor.  The white building below, in the heart of the business distrit where most buildings were much bigger, was the width of a patio table and umbrella and is the narrowest that I saw:

Here are two pictures from one of the museums that show the before and after work on one of the main canals in preparation for last year's celebration of the 40th anniversary of the "liberation" of the south, and the "reunification" of the country.

The traffic is amazing - it would be total gridlock if we tried to impose American traffic rules.  Here is a picture taken out of the cab window.  We were probably driving about 25 mph.  Seriously.

For example, when I look out the taxi window to my right across 2 more lanes of a city street, I can see solid motorcycles with maybe 18” clear space in any direction around each.  Now my taxi wants to turn right.  It announces with a beep on the horn and starts turning, slowly, right into the crowded lanes.  Motorcycles slow down, speed up, crowd together tighter, and, as we diagonal across both lanes, they split, flowing around both sides of us.  I often think of an anthill or hive of bees with all working together, merging and “threading the needle” in a good-natured spirit of cooperation.

The Hospital: Michael

We finally got to the hospital, and then we waited. And waited. And waited. Then they took grandpa in to do a blood test. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. My phone died. And so I read. And waited. And waited. A couple of years later we went to get some "lunch" (a bowl of flavored water with sponges in it, served with a delicious side of an orange flavored sponge with whipped cream on top) and then we, wait for it, waited. A couple decades later they let us out of priso- I mean, the hospital, and we went and found a hotel. 

The Hospital:  Linda

The staff and doctors at FV were wonderful.  They spent the first day doing a variety of additional tests to make sure the surgery would go well.  We were there all day going from one department to the other - they assigned a young man in a suit to be the personal guide for people like us who were new to the complex.  Lunch was fun - the cafeteria had an international selection of foods.  In the afternoon I even got to watch Mike’s mitral valve in his heart working perfectly away on the ultra-sound screen.  They gave him high grades for being in great shape but needed to wait until some cultures came back before giving the final go-ahead.  So with the surgery scheduled for Monday, we could become tourists and what a great place to see!

The Market:  Michael

After leaving the hospital, we walked out to get dinner, which is how we realized that the hotel was right next to a bustling market! We wandered through the fruit section, and bought three different kinds of oranges, some longans, a bunch of bananas and a bag of guavas, and then suddenly the fruit and vegetable stalls turned into fish stalls! Many kinds of fish, eel, shrimp, frog, clams, snails, and oysters. We passed small plates of fish, with the fish still flopping around, and big vats of prawns.(occasionally a prawn would hop out, and the owner of the stand deftly popped them back in again.) 
We came to a place where a stand was serving big

pork chops with rice and a kind of vegetable that is very common here. It's technically a weed, and it grows up in the rice paddies, but it is delicious when it is served with a kind of garlic sauce and rice. Once we were done eating we went back to the hotel to deal with the various fruits we had purchased. The grandparents were seeing what was on tv, and they came to a myth busters Alaska special, complete with snow, which we watched longingly from our room in the tropics.  Eventually we turned off the tv and went to sleep.

Day 2: Michael

I slept in. When I woke up at 8:00, most of the breakfast sellers were already packing up shop. We went out and grabbed some bún bò huê, (bun = rice noodles, bo = beef, Hue = a local town known for its citadel and imperial palace,,,  and its especially delectable soup broth recipe) and I got a sugarcane drink, which is basically juiced sugarcane in a cup.    Then we split up, and grandma went her way to Lotte Mart, and me and grandpa went to our room to rest.

 Linda’s Day
Mike and Michael wanted to stay in the hotel and do quiet activities but, fearless explorer that I am, I wanted to see the area.  After exploring all around our hotel and learning how to walk from there to the hospital, not that far as it turned out, I decided to walk the 2-3 miles to Lotte Mart.  Saigon is further south and the average daytime temperature there was 95 degrees.  So I drank some extra water and took off.  Lotte Mart is a giant department store/grocery store. Looking at the parking lot, I found out everyone else had apparently come by motorcycle.

I stocked up on fun things including a $7 electric tea pot for making tea, coffee, and other hot broths in our hotel room.  I was happy to decide that I was so loaded down that I had a good excuse to take a taxi home to the hotel.  




Goat Pizzle: Michael
   
We went to a popular hotpot place for dinner. Grandpa appreciated the big chairs.  Many of the places have small stools that can easily be stacked and transported on a motorcycle but aren't well-designed for super-sized foreigners' bodies.








The menu had English subtitles so ordering was easy.  

I got a lemon beef, grandpa got goat in an Indian curry, and grandma got chicken legs. My order came first, and it revealed my arch nemesis. Onions. Apparently when they said lemon, they meant onions. It contained a bit of delicious beef, but it was buried inside a mountain of more onions than I would eat in a decade. Grandpas came next, and the goat meat was truly delicious but the hot curry sauce was sending curls of smoke up from his head. Here we found a use for my onions.  Grandma sorted out my mountain and used the onions to mellow down the curry sauce. 

While she was doing this her order came. 

Apparently what they meant by chicken legs was chicken feet, and they brought her a plate of about 7 chicken feet, skin, bones and all.  It gave us a chance for a picture opp and some quiet merriment.  But then she actually ate them!!  When we had finished eating, we went back to the hotel. I needed to go to the bathroom really badly, and so the first thing I did was rush to the bathroom in our room. There I found not one, not two, but three of the largest cockroaches I had ever seen. I suddenly didn't need to go anymore. We went through our nightly routine, trying to ignore the fact that there were probably monster cockroaches under everything in the bathroom. Eventually my bladder couldn't take it and I went in. I could see the antennas of a cockroach hiding under our bathtub, and I tried not to imagine it running out and eating my soul. The next morning the cockroaches were gone.

 Day 3: Michael

Today we went to a tourist agency to look for tours to Cu Chi tunnels. Since we were going to be tourists for a few days we checked into a hotel in the center of the city that had half day tours to many different places.  We intended to go the next day. In the meantime, however, we had a lot of time to kill.  There was a zoo within walking distance of the hotel, and we decided to go there. 

On the way there we also saw a building with tanks and planes and military stuff parked out in front, and the gates were open. We went in and explored around, and there was a lot of cool stuff. Remnants of shot down planes, tanks, artillery, and even a giant surface to air missile! Afterwards we went into the zoo, and I bought some cotton candy. It was so humid, however, that my candy began to shrink in my hands! We went around looking at the different exhibits, and found that the animals in a Vietnamese zoo look a lot like animals in an American zoo.  However there were several big cranes that were wandering around freely, apparently not wanting to leave!

 One exhibit, however, made my day. Monkeys. There were several small grey monkeys with long tails that had escaped! I know they escaped because I saw one of the monkeys slide through the bars out of his cage as easy as pie. By some awesome chance there was a Russian tourist who had a bag of peanuts. He gave some to me, and one of the monkeys climbed on my leg and grabbed them from my hand. Then a couple of monkeys went into the cage of a big black monkey, and stole some of his food! Oddly enough, this monkey seemed scared of the little tiny ones, and he hid at the top of his cage while the others ate his food! Eventually though, we had to leave. 

When the zoo closed we went to a cathedral that was an exact replica of Notre Dame, built with only material from France. There was a little square outside the cathedral with a statue of Virgin Mary where some food vendors were sitting on the grass. We got chopped mangoes and a sort of rice cake sandwich thing, and then we went home.

Day 3:  Linda

In the lobby as we were leaving to go to the center of HCMCity, a cleaning team was scrubbing the marble floor and I saw a giant cockroach trying to swim through the suds on the floor.  The ladies heard my sharp intake of breath and looked to see what the cause was.  They gently swooshed him out the open door to freedom. Hmmm.  I see.  It is all in a person’s attitude.  So I decided to regard cockroaches with joy, the same feeling that I have about butterflies, or the little lizards that hang out on the walls.  I didn’t get much practice on attitude-shifting though.  During the rest of the time there I only saw 2 other big guys.

Today we found a classy hotel in the central zone of the city - the Old City.  Here there were many remembrances of recent wars.  Talking about the war with our many Vietnamese friends during our stay here has been interesting.  I share with them my understanding of history:  The Geneva Accords in 1954 divided the country on the 17^th parallel just north of Hue into North and South Vietnam and gave the people 300 days to freely settle in the country of their choice.  

About 30,000 southerners moved to the north and about 800,000 northerners moved to the south.  It is thought that more people wanted to come south but were intimidated by the guards at the border and the already stringently controlling Communist government in Hanoi.  Also, it was later clear, some stayed in the south who were Communist sympathizers and could later join in subversive activities.  South Vietnam asked for and got assistance from the US in developing their country - the US was at that time in a cold war with the USSR and feared a growing Communist presence.  North Vietnam turned to China and later Russia for aid.  Their trained troops had successfully dislodged the French and now, under the powerful leadership of Ho Chi Minh, they turned their attention to getting control of the southern areas.  US helped the south with material goods but didn’t send advisers over until about 1964.  The French had not developed strong governmental skills in the native people and they basically just wanted to be left alone to farm and live peacefully.  Finally, at South Vietnam’s request for help, the US sent “feet on the ground.”  The North Vietnamese aggressed into the south, not vice versa.  Americans tried desperately to help the south target VC supply routes and encampments, which was very difficult.  Eventually, they gave up.

Then I let them share what they have learned in their history classes which is that a puppet government had been set up in the South by outsiders and that the southerners were waiting to be liberated and were happy to have Ho Chi Minh accomplish the reunification of the country.  Everyone agrees that this version is correct.  It is, however, against the law to disagree with the government, an offense punishable with jail time, 

Day 4: Michael

I spent this day sick. What a shame.

Day 4:  Linda

After enjoying the breakfast that came with our room, 

Mike and I left our grandson in the air-conditioned hotel room and spent time exploring through the Ho Chi Minh Historical Museum.  History here is long and complicated.  There were 18 rooms in the museum, each dedicated to artifacts and information about eras of rising and falling dynasties.  A delightful interlude was a water puppet show offered periodically throughout the day – water puppetry being an ancient theater art form here.   And yes, the performers stand in thigh deep water behind the screens to manipulate the mannequins attached to long underwater sticks.

 Day 5-7:  Michael

The next day was mostly uneventful. We went to a revolutionary museum that had more artifacts of the war, and a history of Vietnam as well. There were charts of who ruled what and where, and a bunch of old stuff. I know this is a bit unprofessional, but I was still a bit sick and tired. We went back to our original hotel near the hospital, which was a 45 minute drive (10 miles) I went immediately to our hotel room when we got there and rested the next days.

Day 5-7:  Linda

Mike and I attended the English international mass at Notre Dame Cathedral, a beautiful landmark in the center of the “old city.”  The service was standing room only and the congregational singing reverberated through the cathedral with a richness of sound and spirit that I will never forget.  I wonder how many nations were represented in that service.

Later we saw the Imperial Palace and went through the HCMC Museum - I hung out mostly in the room that had full-sized recreations of the traditional wedding dress and customs of the many ethnic minority groups here,  

We then regretfully said good-by to District 1 and headed back to District 7 to get ready

for the next day’s surgery.  The next few days, for me, were spent walking back and forth between the hotel and the hospital with some side trips for exploring the area.  The surgery went very well.  We were extremely pleased with the expertise and the care that we found there.  And the prices.

Day 8: Michael

 Cu Chi tunnels is a popular tourist location, where the north Vietnamese hid out in a massive tunnel system, ranging over 250 kilometers, under rivers, villages, farmlands, and even an American military base!

We got in a van at 7:30 to go to Cu Chi.  On our way there we watched a video that explains what we were about to see.  Cu Chi tunnels is an old system, dating back to when Southeast Asia was still called "Indochina" and the French were still here. It is a key tactical position, just a short distance from Saigon, and the Viet Cong made good use of it. Soldiers had whole families in there, and in the course of 8 years, 15 babies were born in the tunnels. When we got to the tunnels, we saw several artillerys? Artilleri? What do you call that? Anyway we saw several, along with old weapons and bombshells. 

We made our way into the forest with our guide, and you could see many bomb craters and collapsed tunnels. 

Also there were many big termite mounds, but our guide said that most of them were actually a ventilation system for the lower tunnels. 

We got to a clearing with a small hill in the middle. The guide said that the mound was a place where soldiers would wait and ambush the American troops, shooting their AK-47's through the slit at the bottom. 

Then he guided me to a place in the undergrowth, and told me to shuffle around in the dry leaves. I did, and it revealed a trapdoor into the bunker! 

We could tell that parts of the tunnels we went through were touristified, as they were very clean and big.  Grandma went into those tunnels - she had to stoop way over in places, but no crawling on her belly.

A bat flew over my head once, but that was all. We moved on to a place where an example of a VC trap was, as there were many traps. This one was a tiger trap, but easily used for humans as well. It was a rotating platform that flipped easily with weight, and under it was a pit full of spikes made out of American bombshells. Our guide said that when an American soldier fell into the trap, the VC would run out and put land mines all around the trap to cause collateral damage. 

We went on and saw hospitals, wells, barracks and more, all underground. We eventually came to the "cafeteria", where we ate a classic VC meal of manioc root, a potato-like vegetable, and sticky rice. You dipped the root and rice into a sugar-salt-peanut mixture, and it was actually kind of good, but I would not want to eat that every day for 8 years like some of them did. We left the cafeteria, and that marked an end to our tour. I bought a hand-crafted model F5 fighter plane at the gift shop, and we were on our way.

Back to Da Nang: Michael
We got to the airport at 4:00, and only 4 "short" hours (yay) later the plane finally left for Da Nang. I
am glad to be home. It's nice to be a tourist, but I like my home. I am glad to be home.

Linda
Me too.

Pictures of Mike and me 1 block from our 

Da Nang home: (There are 6 banana trees on our block)