2012 Vietnam - Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City

Saigon, Day 1
We justy landed this morning at 7.30 after a 12h flight in which I didn't sleep much and Jay not at all. The time difference is 7h. The hotel room is not ready until 2pm so we came out for a walk.

The first impression at the airport is that it's lovely. The air is warm and moist and smells of strange sweet flowers. It must be pink flowers, these were in the hedges at the airports.

The first photo I wanted to take was the tree of yellow flowers, decorated for the Chinese / Lunar New Year at the entrance of many buildings. Or pots of little yellow chrisanthemums.

The second was the piles of little red spiky rambutan fruit. And then the fuchsia pink and green scales of the dragon fruit. Outside Benh Tranh Market there were fruit sellers with neat piles of strange fruit, and Jay told me their names: jackfruit, guava, custard apple.

We then went inside the market. Fresh shellfish, crabs stacked like library cards, scallops, snails, prawns moving around, a large fish still moving being peeled with a large knife by a no-nonsense woman, another fish being washed by a large splash of water from a plastic bowl by a swarthy woman sitting open-legged.

Hairclips with crystal colours, silk handbags, cotton pyjamas for petite women. I bargained for a pair of sunglasses, got them at 90k or £3, 2/3 of our taxi ride. I'm sure the man was not losing money as he said. Laquers, carved and painted shoe soles made of wood, smelly pickled fish, prawns and fish paste. A cobra with a scorpio in its mouth in a bottle of yellow something, and Jay looking very tired in the picture.

We then went to a clean looking restaurant, Pho 24, to have the breakfast that the market traders were having delivered to their stalls: pho, aromatic noodle soup with fresh herbs. Light, refreshing, satisfying. And a fresh ice-cold coconut, with a straw to drink and a spoon to eat the flesh. The best drink I ever had - except perhaps for watermelon juice.

I talked to a woman on the plane. She was from England, coming to Vietnam on holiday. But then she told me more. She was half American, half Vietnamese, her father was American and she had Vietnamese brothers that she didn't know very well. Because she was adopted. She had been adopted by an English family and it was the best thing that could have happened to her. So the history is real and I met someone who was a cirect product of it. Strange how remote and unreal does history seem when you haven't yet met someone like this.

The conical hats are also real. An the street hawkers carrying two balancing loads on a stick across the shoulders. People wear the conical hats on the street, to go shopping, or riding about their business on bicycles or motorbikes. It isn't just a postcard, they really do. It's not like the wrinkled criollas in Havana, wearing flowers in their turbans and cigars in their mouths just for photos for tourists.

Talking about Havana, I was thinking of it when landing. Saigon looks much cleaner from the airplane, and so far from the street as well. Not many derelict, grey buildings here. For me, it's a sign of prosperity. this communism with a market economy seems to be doing something. Let's see.

I am so tired. I really need to sleep. Jay has gone to the War Remnants Museum, reluctantly as he is also tired. I refused to see it, despite the hype. There is something indecent about exposing the horrors of war and wanting to see them. What good does it do, seeing all that violence and cruelty that man is capable of? Does it prevent it in another place? Does it really? Do people have a choice, when they are sent to fight? Under authority they commit more violence. Violence porn.

Saigon, Day 2.
I slept really well with no tablets, but I had a hard time waking up.

We had to organise our re-entry visa first, and after about half an hour of explaining to the travel agency girl at reception we gave up and applied online. Hoping for the best.

Then I had a passport photo taken by a careful photographer with a serious round face who arranged my head position and my clothes. She even picked up a hair off my clothes, as if it mattered.

We then went to the market to buy some silk bags I liked yesterday. She told me yesterday she'll sell them cheap, $2, and gave me her card. So here I am, back for the cheap silk bags. She quotes me $12. Then $10 because I came back. I offer $3 and remind her it was $2 yesterday. She says that price is for low quality bags, which she shows me. My handbags are silk, washable, embroidered on both sides, high quality, she says. I I'll think about it and make to walk away. She grabs me by the arm. (She is not the first one to do this. Another woman grabbed me at the airport, quite nicely: we got between her and her friend in the queue, and we insisted she goes in front to join her friend. She wouldn't have it, and she reinforced that by holding on to my arm to keep me in place.) So back to my handbag woman. She then shows me the cheaper handbags, embroidered just on one side. They store them ingeniously in the ceiling of the stall, above a griddle they remove by getting on a ladder.

I only want the ones I have chosen. There are others, in many colours, with delivate embroidery on silk, and I know how much I crave these in London, and how much they cost. I offer her a price, last price, $4 each. She gives me a bit more. I say I'll go for a walk and think about it. she then says OK, $5 each. We are both happy. She tells Jay I'm very clever. I wonder what ranking this is. The jewlry seller in Morocco said the same thing, also to Jay. I feel good, she also feels good. This always makes me feel suspicious. But I like my bags and they will make me and mabe Sarah happy.

Next, we catch a taxi to the Emperor Jade Pagoda. Jay pronounces it like them, to make the taxi driver undertand: "pakora". We carry the bags and 3 guavas with us. Jay wouldn't leave without guavas.

The Pagoda is extremely busy, shrowded in te smoke of the burning incense sticks, and no, it is not made of jade. We don't go inside, there are too many people and we don't have a lot of time. We need to go to the Cu Chi tunnels. I take two pictures and Jay tells me people are giving me dirty looks and to stop.