Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam Mar 8th

Our first excursion in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon was to a Vietnamese Medicine Museum. It is constructed from different ancient houses where the art of medicine evolved over the centuries. Vietnamese medicine is traditional medicine using existing plants, acupuncture and techniques. The museum showed the basic teas, spices and herbs that are used even to modern day as an alternative medicinal approach to what we know as western medicine.
Then we visited a very traditional Vietnamese market. They had all kinds of coffee, fruits, teas and many 'tourist-ey' things to buy. We did find some Dorian fruit to try and purchased some Jack Fruit. The Dorian fruit is very, very smelly on the outside, but a sweet, sticky fruit on the inside. Scott did not like it at all, but I did. This fruit is forbidden in hotels and on our ship due to the stinky skin you have to peel off before getting to the fruit. We also purchased some Luwak (weasel) coffee. The weasel eats the coffee bean and husk in nature, then digests the outside skin and poops our the coffee bean. This is then cleaned and roasted to sell as the coffee beans that we purchased to try at home. We also bought some flowers for the room, some candies and a few basked goods that we had no idea what they were.
Then to our final stop, the restaurant. It was an Vietnamese meal of many courses and a lot of food. We had spring rolls, very spicy noodles and fried pork, pumpkin and shrimp soup, grilled chicken and pork with quail eggs and finally a simple desert of watermelon pieces and pieces of dragon fruit.
On the drive back to the ship, the city was lit up all over with decorative lights on the lamp posts and hotels. It looks very different than in the daylight. And as you can see from the pictures during our way into the city, the traffic is very bad since it's a city of 10 million people. And a LOT of scooters. They call them all 'Hondas' no matter who makes it.Read more