Day 2: 12 September 2017, Thursday
This morning, I woke up at 8am and went to the rooftop of The Like Hostel for breakfast, which was included in my hostel booking. It was a simple buffet breakfast with sticky rice, vermicelli, pasta, baguette, sunny side eggs and fruits to choose from. I loved the sticky rice (sprinkle some sugar to make it even better!) and the baguette. Somehow the baguette in Vietnam is always very nice and fluffy. It’s so tasty you can eat it plain on its own and you’ll keep going back for second helpings.
At the communal dining table were a few other travellers, so naturally we began to talk. There was a 52-year-old American lady who was on her maiden trip to Asia. She was actually accompanying her 27-year-old daughter on this trip. She shared that her daughter previously worked as a zoologist but had quit her job to go travelling. Before coming to Asia, the daughter had travelled to Madagascar alone, and she then joined her daughter for the Asian leg. They had been travelling in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam together for the past 3.5 weeks. The lady would be returning to the USA tomorrow, but her daughter would continue travelling on her own – until her money runs out.
The lady said that before coming on this trip, her friends back home were telling her how expensive it would be to travel for 3.5 weeks. But now that she’s done it, she found out that it is totally not true, and she would possibly have spent the same amount if she had gone to Los Angeles for just one week of vacation. For the Westerners, Asia is really a very affordable destination, value for their money.
She was also really glad that she joined her daughter on this trip because they got to experience it together. Earlier, while her daughter was in Madagascar, she couldn’t really relate to what her daughter told her because she wasn’t physically there with her. All the places her daughter visited and the things she did sounded great when she described them over the phone, but it just wasn’t the same because she wasn’t there to experience it with her. But for the past 3.5 weeks, they had this shared experience in Asia, visiting numerous places and trying all sorts of food for the first time, and it was really wonderful.
She was also happy that she overcame her initial reservations about travelling so far away, and managed to step out of her comfort zone to come to Asia, where the culture is totally different from home. She had no regrets and said it was the best decision ever. Sometimes the hardest part really is taking the first step, so be brave!
I also loved that she was so supportive of her daughter’s plan to travel till she ran out of money. I’m sure her daughter won’t travel until she has zero dollars in her pocket, but I’m referring to her willingness to embrace her daughter’s adventurous spirit, with no fixed date on when she might return. Somehow Westerners are more open to this concept of carpe diem.
The other lady at the breakfast table is a German but she had been living in Switzerland for the past eight years. She also just quit her job and is currently travelling until she starts another job later in the year. This is really my favourite part about travelling – meeting other like-minded people and hearing their stories. It’s also kinda reassuring to know that there are many others who would quit their jobs to travel. I’m not saying everyone should do it, but I’m saying that it is not uncommon for people to do so and it’s perfectly acceptable to do it.
After breakfast, I went to the War Remnants Museum to learn more about the history of the Vietnam War. The museum is located about 1.5km away and it took me around 20 minutes to walk there.
The War Remnants Museum (click here) is located at 28 Vo Van Tan, Ward 6, District 3 and it is open daily from 7:30am to 6:00pm. An entrance ticket costs only 15,000 VND (S$0.90). I paid another 20,000 VND (S$1.20) for an information booklet that contained English descriptions about the exhibits.
The museum’s main objectives are to research, preserve, collect, exhibit and educate the public using the evidence of the crimes and the consequences of wars of aggression. The nine permanent exhibitions are spread over three floors in the main building, while an outdoor exhibition showcases U.S. weapons and vehicles used in Vietnam and a harrowing imprisonment system used during the Vietnam War. I toured the indoor exhibitions first. They are numbered and segregated into rooms so I just followed the sequence of the numbers.
From the various exhibitions, I learned that France had colonised Vietnam for about 100 years before Vietnam gained independence in 1945. Then president Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence at Ba Dinh Square on 2 September 1945. However, France later reneged on the Geneva Agreement and tried to take back control of Vietnam. The U.S. then interfered and installed a puppet president in Vietnam. An uprising began and a war broke out. The war finally ended in April 1975.
As I read the stories and saw the destructive effects of Agent Orange (a herbicide and defoliant chemical), I felt emotional and had to suppress my tears. Many of the black and white photographs showed people with deformed limbs and suffering from various conditions like blindness due to exposure to the toxic chemical agent. It was a grim reminder that war is never pretty and the scars can take a long time to heal.
The outdoor exhibition was even more sobering. There were displays of artefacts such as a guillotine used to behead Vietnamese patriots, tiny tiger cages with barbed wires to contain prisoners and an iron grill where prisoners had to roll over while naked. These instruments of torture showcase the very worst of humanity. It reminded me of my visits to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The War Remnants Museum has attracted some criticism for being one-sided, presenting a distorted version of history and being full of propaganda. However, I find that it lays out the facts and figures objectively for the visitors to decide for themselves. Facts are facts and they cannot be disputed. Regardless of what you feel about the Vietnam War, it is important to visit the War Remnants Museum and learn about this historical event that happened less than 50 years ago. Learn from past mistakes so that they will never be repeated again. It was a good 1.5 hours well spent here and I highly recommend anyone going to HCMC to pay a visit.
After that, I didn’t really have any agenda so I just walked around the city. For lunch, I had my first bowl of beef pho at a random eatery. It cost 55,000 VND (S$3.30) and it was yummy. Nothing beats having a good bowl of beef pho in Vietnam.
I then went to The Morning Café at Le Loi street for some coffee. I had some difficulty locating the entrance to the café as it was hidden inside a narrow alleyway. I was on the main road staring at the building and I could see the café on the second floor but couldn’t locate the entrance till some five minutes later. The café is quite obscure and I found out about it through a blog. At the time of writing this in January 2018, I just discovered that the café is now permanently closed. Oops, I think it was a bit too obscure and couldn’t survive.
Anyway, The Morning Café is small and low key, with retro furnishings and a homely feel. It was perfect because I wanted a quiet place to write my journal and sip on some iced coffee to escape from the searing 32 degrees Celsius heat outside. I ordered a cup of ca phe sua da, or Vietnamese iced milk coffee, and it was a knockout! The coffee was so thick it tasted like melted ice cream. You have to try it when you’re in Vietnam, it’s so good! And they served a complimentary glass of lemongrass tea to go with it, which was very refreshing. All for 50,000 VND (S$3.00). A great way to spend an afternoon here just to write and relax.
For dinner, I ran out of ideas for what to eat so I popped into a restaurant called Mon Hue near Ben Thanh Market. As usual, I was hungry to try everything so I ordered too much food again. I had a chicken noodle salad dish (forgot what it’s called), fried spring roll, a taro dessert and a soya bean drink. The food was only so-so. Thankfully it wasn’t expensive and all the food cost only 128,000 VND (S$7.70).
After dinner, I visited the night market at Ben Thanh once again. After observing the prices in the various markets for the past two days, I concluded that the night market here was the cheapest for (replica) Under Armour T-shirts. A men’s tee costs 70,000 VND (S$4.20) while a ladies’ tee costs 60,000 VND (S$3.60). You can bargain but the prices are already so low, and the material is really good, so it’s already a very good deal. Don’t be too cheapskate! I bought five tees for my family and myself and left the market very happy. And that wraps up Day 2!
