Tales from Ho Chi Minh City

Day 2 of our Vietnam adventure started at the Ben Thanh market: a stunning experience of colors, smells and oddities. 

How about a dairy shop that sells a dozen kinds of eggs including pigeon, duck and the black ones are pickled and salted eggs (Yuck)? 

Or Cobra wine that comes with a complete cobra and scorpion inside.  The Vietnamese believe  that the snake and the scorpion leak medicinal effects into the alcohol. I believe it is just all-around gross.

We had to search for what the Vietnamese call “French Bamboo” and discovered it’s asparagus. That's  actually a surprisingly good name / description when you think about it. 

Lots of different fruit (or all kinds, colors and shapes). Some look downright alien.

Then came the “wet” section of the market where all of the meat and seafood is kept “cool” by pouring water on them.  Check out the entire milk carton filled to the brim with squirming crabs? They are packed in so tight that not a single crab can crawl out.  All you hear is the scratching of their claws on each other and the bowl. 

There was also a woman cutting the heads off frogs. And there is no part of the pig that is not consumed…. From ears… to intestines 

The pig's heart

The trotters or feet

And even the tails 

Madeline’s face says it all about what the weirdness we were seeing ...

We spent the rest of the  morning at a cooking class. It was actually a lot of fun.  

They took us through – step by step – the 2,495 step process for making spring rolls, soup and a meat dish.  Never again will I order Asian food without an appreciation for how complicated the food is. We started by making a tomato flower .. Jordan’s turned out perfect. Mine fell over in a heap.

Then it was on to chopping

And folding

And stirring

And – finally - eating. 

By 1 PM we were finished and ready to take on all of Ho Chi Minh City in a single afternoon… hour after hour of walking in the blistering heat.  I just about melted.

We visited the botanical gardens (with its cute, open-mouthed penguin trash cans) and amazing bonsai trees.  

And the Jade Pagodo to make an offering to whatever God calls that place home.

And the Notre Dame of Saigon, a large Catholic cathedral in the center of town, where we had to photograph the tiles of gratitude: Most are in French and say “Merci,” a permanent Thank You note to God for fulfilling some particular wish. 

And the American Embassy where the last helicopter took off when Saigon fell.  We were supposed to photograph it but you are not permitted photos in front of the embassy.  I snuck this picture (over my shoulder) as we walked away and two men immediately jumped on me yelling and waving their hands. 

And the Reunification Palace, built by the French, and the last building to fall when North Vietnam took over Saigon .

We also had to take photos of multiple women wearing Au Don (the traditional long dresses over silk trousers).  The Vietnamese people are so petite that even Jordan towers over them. 

But the highlight of the day was talking to a gaggle of schoolchildren to ask them for about their names. I asked a few of them to write their names on the back of my scavenger book. Each took an inordinate amount of time to do so and I walked away thinking that every child’s  name started with Mynami (maybe standing for something like “daughter  of”) before I realized that each of them had laboriously written out “My name is” before their actual name. 

OBSERVATIONS:  Photos of some of the more bizarre food we’ve encountered along the way:

Scary street food: chicken with full claws 

Tea with a full helping of grass 

Fluorescent green soda (a truly unnatural color)

And ... the top of the list...A popsicle made of mushed-up peas which Jordan just had to buy and taste. The conclusion: disgusting. 

REMEMBER -My friend Wendy is also blogging so you can get more details and a different perspective from her blog as well: www.Wendy2world.wordpress.com.