Have I mentioned the heat and humidity?

Have I mentioned the heat and humidity?

So, it's hot and humid and we walked around in the heat, off and on, for hours. Our first stop was the Ben Thanh Market, one of the earliest surviving structures in Saigon. It is jam packed with stalls selling everything from food to clothing, shoes and purses, ceramics and lacquer ware, tourist trinkets, fresh (and stinky) fish and meats, and food stalls selling pho, bahn mi, etc.  As soon as you set foot in the place you are assailed on all sides by people trying to sell you stuff. We bought t-shirts for the grandsons and even with bargaining and walking away I'm sure we paid more than we should have for them, but I just wasn't willing to argue too much. As it is I tried to walk away at least four times and was dragged back by the seller. Best quote of the day - Don said to one female vendor "I'm just following her" (pointing at me) and she said to Don, "Maybe you should follow me, you might like it better!"

 On the way to the market

 Typical street scene

 The Ben Thanh market. No idea what those crazy, spikey things are to the left.

 Every where you look there are motor bikes for rent.

After the market we walked a little farther on, towards the Saigon River, to the Bitexco Financial Tower. It has 68 floors above ground and a sky deck for viewing. However, you have to buy tickets to the sky deck, or if you have read the guide book, then you would know to go to the cafe or bar a floor above the sky deck, and for the cost of a few drinks you can relax and see the same great view. It was wonderful:

 A word about the air pollution here - it's bad. You can really see it when you're up in the tower, it's just a haze over the city. Almost everyone on a motor bike wears face masks or filters of some kind and so do many of the pedestrians. It was so bad at the street level that I found myself covering my nose with my shirt collar on more than one occasion. My eyes are still stinging from the pollution and we've been indoors for at least four hours.

From the Bitexco Tower to the river is just two blocks.

 I'm not understanding why there needs to be eight billboards all advertising the same product.

 I'm sure that when it is cooler at night that these paths are probably full of pedestrians, promenading up and down the river, however, at one in the afternoon, only crazy tourist people are out walking around here.

Having seen a few architecturally interesting looking buildings from the top of the Bitexco Tower we sought them out once we were back at ground level:

 This lovely yellow building used to be the Hotel de Ville but it is now the People's Committee Hall and is not open too the public.

 We bought crispy fried waffles from this woman.

 We bought coconut water from this woman.

 So, Christmas is everywhere here in Saigon. There are Christmas trees in almost every hotel lobby and decorations like this one in many shop windows.

 Sampling of hand made, pop up greeting cards.

 This seems to be the Starbucks of Saigon.

1 1/2 hours - 14 hours - 5 1/2 hours

Sunday, Nov. 25th, 6:30 am

1 1/2 hours - 14 hours - 5 1/2 hours

That's the flight time to get from Minneapolis to Ho Chi Minh City and that doesn't include airport time (hint - it was a lot of hours). Then there's the traffic, it's crazy, even on a Saturday, and it took us almost an hour to get to our hotel by hired driver, without the traffic it would probably have been a 10 minute drive, the airport is right in the city in District 10. The masses of cars, trucks, and motorbikes are staggering and the motorbikes weave in and out of traffic as if every driver believes they are invincible. They will also drive on the sidewalk and being a pedestrian here in HCMC is an adventure all on its own. We quickly learned to cross the street by closely following Vietnamese people, they know what they're doing and you can cross safely if you just stick to crossing right behind them. Even if the light is in your favor that means nothing. Motorbikes are whizzing around from all directions and many run the lights.

How's the weather? It's hot and humid. We're going to be pretty sticky for our whole stay here, however, I promised Don I wouldn't complain about the humidity if we came here so that's the last word on that.

We only had the energy yesterday to unpack, have a drink in the hotel bar and venture out twice. The first time was just a block away to the pharmacy to buy band aids. You buy them in singles, not by the box, at least that's how it's done in this tiny little pharmacy (about the size of a large walk-in closet). We bought five large band aids for 10,000 dong, about 45 cents in USD. 

In the hotel lobby bar with my vodka tonic with a large pink straw. Don's gin and tonic had a blue straw.

Our next time out of the hotel was to stroll around the large Tao Dan Park, which is 10 hectares of Saigon and is home to over 1,000 big trees. We only took a few pictures since it was getting dark.

The reflecting pool is empty because work is being done on it. Too bad, I bet it would make for a lovely scene.

We only looked at one small section of the park, we'll explore more tomorrow.

Since we were weak from hunger (my declaration, not Don's) it was time to find a place to eat. Don noticed a sign for a restaurant down an alley just a few steps from our hotel. We were the only customers at 5 pm. A note on service: food comes to the table when it is ready and in no relation to how it was ordered. Don't expect to get an appetizer before the entree. We ordered a spring roll appetizer and a seafood pomelo salad for me and beef bun bo for Don. It was all amazingly fresh and tasty. The seafood pomelo salad came out first and Don and I decided to just share the food as it came to the table. The salad was wonderfully presented:

A rather large shrimp trying to escape from the bowl. 

The fruit and mint were so fresh and the light dressing was a little spicy. I would order this again. The three spring rolls were a revelation and the beef bun bo with noodles was tasty and all the ingredients were fresh. We shared a bottle of water and the total bill was under $10 USD. 

After that we just couldn't stay awake, and we tried. We should have had a coke or coffee with dinner, we hadn't had enough coffee on this trip and it would probably have helped keep us awake until at least 9 pm.  

Last post about our trip to the Nordic countries. I promise.

Today is the big midsummer celebration in Stockholm. It is at Skansen on Djurgarden Island. Skansen is another open-air museum. We took the ferry (with about a million other people) to the island and we immediately went to the Vasa Ship museum. It is really remarkable. A ship from the 1600's, mostly intact, that was brought up from the ocean floor in 1961. It is 98% original. The ship is HUGE, about four stories high. The Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 and wasn't found and raised until 333 years later.

There are elaborate carvings all over the ship.

There are two decks of gun ports.

 This is just the lowest part of the mast, the two upper portions did not survive.

 

Crazy amount of carving on the back of the ship.

 

 Look at the size of this ship! That is the longboat down there.

 The ship wasn't just a uniform color. It was very brightly painted. Here is a rendering of some of the ship carvings in color.

 There are seven floors for viewing the ship and its artifacts.

 See what looks like a square waste can on the deck? That is a latrine for the crew, there was another across from it, they're on the bowsprit. It could be dangerous to be sitting there during rough seas.

 The capstan on deck was manned by 16 crew members and was used to haul the ropes for the sails. There was another one below deck for the anchor.

 If there was close up fighting with another ship, men with muskets would be placed in here.

Really, I just geeked out over this whole museum. I was so happy. A real, honest to goodness, sailing ship from the 1600's!

There were scraps of sail recovered from the wreck.

 Carvings of musicians over the door to the captain's cabin.

 Clay pipes and board games.

 How the ship would have looked with all of the wood painted.

 About 15 complete skeletons from the ship were recovered.

There was a short film about the raising of the Vasa in 1961. I recommend looking up the information about the raising and restoring of the Vasa, it is extremely interesting but too much for me to go into here. There are still many artifacts from the ship being analyzed and restored. We saw clothing, dishes, wood carvings, coins, so many things were on the Vasa.

After we were done in the museum we had a short lunch and then stood in line to get into Skansen, an open-air museum about life in olden Stockholm. The lines were really long because Midsommer is a special time at Skansen with the raising of the Maypole, dancing around the Maypole, lots of bands playing, people wearing garlands of flowers they braided themselves, people with picnic lunches (you can bring your own food and drink into Skansen and we saw some pretty elaborate picnic set-ups), people just sitting or lounging all over the place, having a good time.
The Nordic Museum.

 Shakespeare in the park. In English.

 

Long lines to get into Skansen. There were six ticket booths and we were in line for 20 minutes.

 

Braiding flower wreathes for the hair.

The Maypole.

 A band.

 The funicular. Skansen is hilly!

I have to tell you that by this time I was sick to death of cobblestone streets and hills. Just not a good combination.

 One thing that I noticed was that it was almost always the male who was pushing the stroller and tending to the kids while the female was usually walking in front and enjoying herself. As it should be, Sweden is a civilized country IMHO.

 A small summer residence.

More dancing around the Maypole. This time to a Swedish band playing bluegrass.

 A manhole cover on the walk home. Goodbye Stockholm!