Vietnam Day 1: Ho Chi Minh City Arrival: Ready or Not, Here We Come

How did I decide to go to Vietnam?  Well, talk about impulse buying, the decision to travel to Vietnam was fairly close to an impulse as well.  Let's just say I feel really happy when I can be spontaneous and not plan ahead, but that I also function really well being part of an organized, scheduled system.  I loved being part of the study abroad program in Chiang Mai.  But once it was over, I fell into my schedule-less life in my comfy balcony-clad apartment quite comfortably. After almost a month of chilling, computing and cycling, I knew I needed to do something.  A travel buddy surfaced - Jonathan - and we sat down in front of AirAsia.com together and picked "Ho Chi Minh City."  Neither of us knew much of anything about Vietnam or how to speak Vietnamese, but we were ready for a new experience.  And that's what he told me repeatedly throughout our time in Vietnam: ประสบการณ์ เป็น สิ่ง ที่ ดี.  ("prasobgan pben sing thii dii")  Translation: Experience is a good thing.  Indeed, this was the truth of our time in Vietnam.

Colorful currency: Vietnamese Dong, about 20,000 VND = $1US

Four things you should have ready when arriving in a Vietnamese airport: a pre-arranged visa (or visa letter, which we got online at www.myvietnamvisa.com), $25 US cash to get the visa stamp, permission from your bank back home to use your card at a Vietnamese ATM machine so you can withdraw some multicolored Vietnamese cash, and  the name and address of a good-priced guesthouse already decided upon.  Without the first, you will be sent back to where you came from.  Without the second and third, you'll probably have to borrow from a friend.  Without the fourth, you'll get ripped off.  Let's just say we learned all four in the Ho Chi Minh airport either first-hand or by eye witness account.  :)
I in no way expected Vietnam to be as friendly or easy to get around as Thailand, especially because I don't speak Vietnamese.  But getting laughed at when you walk out of the airport with a piece of paper showing how much you paid for the taxi and the hotel is not a good way to start!  We paid $23 for our guesthouse in Ho Chi Minh City and $8 for the taxi to get there.  Good thing we each paid half, because (as we later discovered) that was way too much!  Oh well, when you don't plan ahead, you have to take what you can get!
After we checked into our hotel, we headed out for food and exploring.

My first impressions of the city: alive, clean, open.  By “open” I mean that the main thoroughfare has two wide lanes going in each direction, with a grassy median between them, flags flying and a wide sidewalk on either side.  By “clean” I mean that the roads, sidewalks and air felt welcoming and safe.  By “alive,” I mean that I instantly felt the “human life” everywhere we walked.  Lots of restaurants with outdoor seating, street food carts, trees dotting and towering over most sidewalks, and people of all ages walking, sitting, standing around talking....  When I think about the average American city or town, I imagine most people spending their evenings in their living rooms with the AC on, watching TV, playing video games or surfing the internet.  Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends or family members.  But it’s hard to know exactly.  Because when you walk down the street, the best you’ll usually get is a glimpse through a crack in the curtains, or perhaps a glance in the direction of people sitting on their porches.  But normally, these after work hours are considered our “private life.”  We don’t go around peeking into each other’s houses, especially if you’re a visitor to that city or town, or in my case, a foreigner visiting Vietnam for two weeks.  But here in HCMC, everyone is outside; the “living room” is the sidewalk space in front of your or your friend’s house.  (And this was a Wednesday evening, mind you, so I could safely assume that this was pretty typical Vietnamese evening culture.)  People set out small tables with tiny stools and sit there to spend time together: drinking hot tea (or beer or whiskey – but you can’t really tell the difference because they’re all the same color!) in small glasses, talking, playing this game with domino-sized pieces, sometimes selling things, mainly just chilling.  And the weather definitely wasn’t “cool” when we were there, even in the evening, so sitting and relaxing seems like a great idea.

We, on the other hand, didn't sit down for a good hour-plus.  We wandered through the streets, getting turned around a number of times, trying to recognize landmarks.  But when everything is new, things tend to all look the same; either that, or the same street or store looks completely different every time you pass it.  Nonetheless, here are a few things that caught my eye:

A street cart of grilled and steamed corn on the cob (notice the lady behind him sweeping the street?).  This was on a corner of a rather ritzy-looking restaurant with outdoor seating.  I always find the confluence of new and old, traditional and modern, quite eye-catching.  Maybe I could have turned around and gotten a picture of the restaurant, too, but the white people sitting there were already conspicuously laughing at me taking this picture…

         

A bit of Spanish and an ATM machine that had air-conditioning but no money available.

Lots of Vietnamese to try to decipher.  You might think the fact that Roman letters are used would make this a little bit easier.  Not so much.  The phonetics of Vietnamese is a bit different than English (and other European languages).  On top of that, Vietnamese has 7 tones, which are marked with various symbols.   So “sounding out” words was rather difficult.  Over the days, I did learn to recognize some words, like bánh mì  (pronounced “baang mi”), which means “bread.”  I’m pretty sure this word is used similarly to how ชัาว (Khao^ which means “rice”) is often used in Thai to mean “food.”  Indeed, this market definitely sold more than just bread: snacks, cookies, meat, veggies, etc..

Despite all the raw red meat on display, I was drawn in by the bright lights and faces to find a little snack.  A lightly sweetened bean-paste filled floury pastry with the trademark red-ink printed Chinese symbol that I can’t read stamped on top. (sorry, no pic!)

It’s a good thing I had that snack, because we walked around in circles and squares for a good while trying to find the restaurant we first saw when we started our walk.  This was after not going to a phở place that Jon really wanted to try, because they had no vegetarian option!  Good travel buddy, taking one for the team.  I guess he knew that there would be plenty more opportunities for feasting on phở.

 

This cutely-named restaurant (which I later found out is a popular new-ish chain all around Vietnam) had a nice little four-dish Vegetarian section.  The Fried Tofu wasn’t available, so that brought it down to three choices.  I decided on the Vegetarian steamed rice crepe rolls.

For 38,000 VTD (Vietnamese Dong), which is just over $3, they were quite perfect for my first meal in Vietnam.  Everything was fresh and tasty: some greens, mushrooms and thin rice noodles marinated in some sauce, tofu strips, bean sprouts, and probably something else.  Sorry for the very vague description, but I’m writing this post more than a month after the fact!  I do remember that it came with one dipping sauce; the other one in the picture was with Jonathan’s dish.  I tried them both, and unfortunately one had a strong meat flavor, and the other a strong fish flavor.  So I opted for straight up soy sauce.  Since there was none on the table, I consulted the short list of important Vietnamese food phrases I had written down in my notebook, smiled at the waiter and said “xì dầu” (pronounced “see zau”).  He smiled right back and brought me a little dish of delicious, salty, animal-free soy sauce!

Food is definitely an integral part of our daily lives.  And that certainly doesn’t go away when we travel; actually, it gets magnified.  One of my favorite parts of traveling is trying new food.  (Or food on its home turf for the first time.)  Then there’s the challenge of communicating what you want to eat.  Sometimes it’s as easy as pointing to a picture in a menu.  Other times, there are no pictures.  Or no menu.  Then it becomes a real act of communication.  Herein lies the challenge.  And the fun and learning!  In the days following this inaugural Ho Chi Minh City meal, I learned new words and phrases pertaining  to food and food preferences, progressed with actually correctly pronouncing what I was attempting to say, and enjoying the fruits (and vegetables and noodles and baked goods) of my labor.  I also learned that it’s so very easy to follow the well-trodden tourist track through Vietnam, speaking English with guides, hotel staff, waiters at restaurants catered to tourists, and other people in the tourist industry.  The fact that I had some “special” requests, questions and vocabulary as part of my daily life traveling, I found that this very challenge also opened doors for me to have a number of person-to-person interactions that made me feel like more than just a bypassing tourist.  Overall, I found people to be patient, kind and helpful in all matters related to food and my attempts to converse about it!  So despite a less-than-satisfactory experience at the airport, things only got better.

An Impulse Buy

When it comes to shopping, I probably only have a few weak spots.  Perfect notebooks.  Pants long enough for my long legs.  And new fruit.  If I see a fruit that I've never eaten before, much less even come across in real life or pictures, I pretty much have to buy it on the spot.

So when I went to Chiang Mai's Walking Street last month, it was mainly for the purpose of spending time with my friends who would be heading back to the U.S. the following week.  I knew I didn't need any more scarves or paintings or gifts for family. I did end up buying a great pair of earrings after about 15 minutes of contemplating and choosing.  But what I did buy on the spot without hesitation was a half kilo of lychees.

I'd heard of this fruit for years, but  never stayed in Thailand past May to when they are in season.  For less than $2 (I think I paid 50 Baht), I took home a half-kilo.  I brought them out to the balcony to eat, because I had a feeling they'd be a little juicy and messy.  They're quite pretty to look at, I just had to figure out how to get them open.

I used my thumbnail as tool of choice.  Worked quite well, as the outer skin is dry and dense but thin, so I could pierce through it fairly easily.  As I guessed, it was nice and juicy!  But meaty, not mushy.  It was probably perfectly ripe, given that they are grown in Thailand (as well as China and Vietnam).  At this point in the "lychee experience," it was really reminding me of a rambutan.  Thinner shell, but similar texture, and a very similar-looking rubbery translucent white inside.

I know a lot of people really like rambutan.  I admit, the spikey red "hair" on the outside is quite attractive, but i don't think the flavor is that amazing.  And beyond that, I'm really turned off by the way the meat sticks to the inner seed/pit, so that when you try to maximize what you can chew off, you inevitably get some of the dry cardboard-like seed coating.  Lychee, on the other hand, does NOT have this problem!  The seed doesn't cling to the meat at all.

The seed has its own smooth outer coating, so it doesn't stick to the a bit.  And the taste?  Really flavorful, juicy, chewy but soft, not sour, not tangy.  Just sweet yummy satisfaction.

I do find it interesting that lychee is called ลิ้นจี่ in Thai, which is procounced "lin^chee\."  In Korean it's called 그 열매 , which is pronounced "gue yeolmae."  However, rambutan is called เงาะ in Thai, which is "ngaw/," but it's called 램부탄, "raembutan," in Korean.  Seems that we borrow, share, copy and differentiate as we please in the world of languages.  I will close with one word I hope we all can share: peace.