A Different Perspective

D and I spent the day Saturday walking around, I showed her the markets, and it was just really nice to have someone to do this with. It’s fun to have someone to laugh at things with, like when we saw some guy selling Viagra to another guy on a street corner, and it’s good to get a second opinion on things. We had a good time together, and man is she better at bargaining than I am. She’s absolutely ruthless, and far better at feigning indignation over a price that’s too high than I am. She’s spent time in Cambodia and Morocco, and she has local friends in each place who have carefully schooled her in the art of haggling. We spent Sunday doing some sightseeing, which I was glad to have the chance to do – and I brought several spare rolls of film for the occasion.

We had a really fun day walking around and sightseeing. We went to a few temples, the Fine Arts Museum, had lunch on the rooftop restaurant of the Majestic Hotel, and all kinds of other stuff. When we set out in the morning, we headed for District 5, Cholon (Chinatown), to see Quan Ang temple. We hopped into a cab, tried to pronounce the address, failed, and then showed the driver the map from the tour guide, at which point he nodded enthusiastically and we lurched off into the melee. When we arrived at our destination, we didn’t see a temple, but we did see a large market that had blocked off the entire street that we wanted to walk down. We decided to check out the market, so we got out of the cab and started to pick our way among the stalls.

We wound through stalls selling incense and fake paper money to burn at the Buddhist temples as an offering, and I took a picture of something that you would never be able to sell in the US – bundles of fake US $100 bills. I did a double take, but then remembered about the whole “burning paper money at the temple” thing from Taiwan, and it started to make sense. At least, I hope that’s what it was for. After the incense, there were clothing and jewelry stalls, where people were trying on shirts and bracelets and shoes under the tarps covering each stall. There were rows of butcher stalls selling every kind of animal product imaginable, from meat to organs to things I couldn’t quite identify. We rounded a corner and came to the produce stalls, with the sharp, musky smell of incense pervading everything. One of the cool things about traveling, particularly in places like Vietnam, is the produce you see and the new and unfamiliar things you can try. Some of them are good, some are wholly unappealing, but it’s all really cool to look at. The colors are fantastic, between the chilies, dragonfruit, the citrus fruits, and everything else. It’s almost overwhelming to try to take in, amid the din of people buying and selling and browsing and bargaining. I’ve also noticed that it’s easier to be stared at when there’s someone else that’s being stared at with you, if that makes any sense. D is the same height as me, and we both kept ducking slightly so that we wouldn’t whack our heads on the support bars that were holding up the tents covering the stalls. We probably would have cleared them, but it felt awfully close.

We walked down the adjoining street after making it out of the market, and were somewhat confused as to where Quan Ang actually was supposed to be. As we walked, we came across another temple and stepped inside. The attention to detail and level of artistry you see in these places are wonderful. There were massive spirals of incense hanging from the ceiling, with altars to different gods on all sides. In Vietnamese Buddhism, if I’m understanding this correctly, they believe in three Buddhas, not just one – one of the past, one for the present, and one for the future. So this trinity makes a difference in how they pursue their search for enlightenment, how they believe they should behave in their present life, and what eternity will be like for them. We took some pictures, and I had another Marlon Perkins moment, not wanting to be disrespectful, but also wanting to capture a little bit of what I was seeing. I’m sure that people in churches and synagogues and mosques and temples all over the world encounter this, but it still feels very strange to be taking pictures and marveling at the aesthetics of a house of worship while people are praying and exercising their faith.

After a few minutes, we wandered out, and crossed the street. And almost got demolished by an avalanche of scooters, which kept us on our toes, to put it mildly. As we walked down the curved street, surrounded by street vendors, foot traffic, and scooters, we finally stumbled across Quan Ang temple, which was absolutely packed with people. I don’t know what was happening yesterday, but I would guess that it was a holy day of some sort. After a few minutes, the incense started to sting my eyes, but I didn’t want to leave because there was so much to see. A few minute after that, after having gotten some more pictures, D and I gave up, as I could barely keep my eyes open. We exited the temple and selected a somewhat roundabout way to get back to the main road so that we could explore a little more.

We came to the area known for its traditional medicine practitioners, and the shops selling the herbs they use. We walked past shops that had the aura of an old-fashioned pharmacy about them, complete with shelves crammed full of mysterious looking substances in glass jars. Some stores had massive open barrels filled with plants whose names I wasn’t likely to remember, even if I could have understood them in the first place. The air smelled sharp and spicy, and all the signs were written in Chinese.

After exploring a little more, we decided to take a cab back into District 1 and have lunch at the Majestic Hotel’s rooftop restaurant. We sat down at our outdoor table, nestled comfortably into our chairs and marveled at the lovely view of the Saigon River available from the rooftop. However, shortly after our lunch arrived, so did the rain, so we had to hustle inside and find a seat. True to form the rains didn’t last long, but were very violent, so it was good to seek shelter. We finished up our lunch and sat browsing through our travel books, figuring out what to do next. We decided upon the Museum of Fine Arts, which was supposed to be quite good, and had several galleries in the ground floor with original artwork for sale. It wasn’t far away, so we set out on foot after the rain subsided.

I generally pride myself on having a good sense of direction, but it was failing me yesterday. Fortunately, not only is D’s sense of direction worse (her admission, not my observation), but she was a good sport about all of it, so we both kept our sense of humor. We got completely turned around, and had to whip out the travel book map frequently to get our bearings and see which way we should be going. I noticed that my gift for being outside at the beginning of an excursion when the rain starts has morphed into something else. Whenever I stop to look at a map or some kind of reference, I will invariably figure it out just in time for a cavalcade of traffic to come rushing down the street, preventing me from crossing for a few minutes. It’s a fun gift. Really. It is.

We eventually found the museum and wandered inside. They had a really beautiful photography exhibit featured, so we walked around looking at these massive photographs taken from every continent. The funny thing was that each picture had a caption with a cheesy tagline of some sort, like “The twinkling, colorful promise of a rainbow touches the soul of the rural farms”. It was great. We went downstairs to check out the art galleries as well, which had some fantastic work by local artists. There’s a large courtyard in the middle of the museum, which, oddly enough, is painted like a tennis court – and might have actually been one, for all I know. There’s no net, but the family of one of the gallery owners was romping out in the sunshine, so perhaps it’s just as well.

We were both feeling a little parched and a little in need of a blood sugar boost, so we walked over to a place that I’d passed by before, but had never been to. It’s an ice cream parlor, but it’s housed in an old French colonial mansion. The building is a warm, sunny yellow color, with a large, covered veranda dotted with café tables. The ice cream is all freshly made on the premises and it is delicious (I had some ginger ice cream that had real ginger in it…yummy…). It absolutely hit the spot, as it was another hot and steamy day here in Vietnam.

When we were finished, we hopped in a cab for our last stop of the day – the Jade Emperor Pagoda. It wasn’t quite as full as Quan Ang, but it was still crowded. There was actually a French tour group there, so D and I followed them for a bit. She, obviously, understood more of the explanation than I did, but I managed to catch a good bit of it. The pagoda was beautiful and ornate, with ponds of koi and turtles out front. The turtles were actually in really poor condition – tremendously overcrowded, in dirty water, pelted with bread by people “feeding” them, and some of them with rotting shells. It wasn’t something I wanted to spend a lot of time looking at, so we went inside and caught the tour group. There were lots of different tunnels and rooms you could go into, and it was nice to have someone there to explain what it all symbolized so that I could put it in some context. It was quite large, and as with so many things here, brought back echoes of my childhood. I’ve read that the sense of smell is one of the most powerful memory triggers, and based on a day spent smelling prepared food and produce from street vendors in Chinatown and exploring Buddhist temples where the air was thick with incense, I have to agree.

Once we finished looking around, we made our way up to the main road, collapsed into a cab, and headed back to our apartments. I fell into bed, managing a short nap before heading out for dinner. The new PM seems very nice and very mellow, so I can imagine that will change the dynamic around here considerably. (The current PM is very nice, but I would never describe him with the word “mellow”.) I didn’t sleep well last night (again), so it was easy to get up to run at 6 am, since my eyes first popped open at 5. Argh. I can’t wait to get a good nights’ sleep! It’s strange to think that I leave Vietnam in a week. But then I get to head to London the week after that, which I’ve been looking forward to for months. And a quick glance at my calendar tells me that I’ll be home in just 23 days!