Ho Chi Minh City 3

Today we slept through our hotel breakfast cutoff time, damn, so we headed over to a nearby French bakery for breakfast. Warm baguettes and croissants - yes please.

After breakfast we walked over to the Bitexco Tower, now the second tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City, which has an observation deck on it’s 49th floor. Unlike the Space Needle or the CN Tower, there was no wait. We walked in, paid, took our own private elevator up, and had the whole observation deck, consisting of an entire floor with floor to ceiling glass, virtually to ourselves. Fantastic views of the city and outlying areas. I had read that smog can be a problem with the view but I guess yesterday’s downpour helped with that as we could see clear and far.

After the tower we walked along an adjacent pedestrian thoroughfare, which was very reminiscent of something you would see in Europe, to city hall. Reaching the end of the thoroughfare we stopped, took some shots and moved on, looking for a cool place to stop. This has become our routine: Make our way to a point of interest, 4 iPhone’s are then pulled out and we take the same pictures of said point of interest, look for a place to cool off, and enjoy the a/c and Wi-Fi at whatever coffee house/pub/restaurant/shopping centre we have stopped at. Today we landed at a shopping centre which seemed to cater to a more affluent Japanese clientele. No matter, it was cool and had Wi-Fi. I visited an upscale food retailer to check out the products while Nat and the boys found a Baskin Robins. Somehow the boys managed to down $20 worth of ice cream. Had to remind them we are not affluent Japanese.

In the food shop they were selling some of the real deal civet coffee. These are the beans that the cat like creature eats, and then some poor bastard follows them around until they defecate, and picks out all the beans which are then roasted (and hopefully washed at some point). Apparently the stomach acid of these animals gives the beans a unique flavour - no shit (pun intended). The coffee beans came in a nice box, contained 1.8 oz of beans and were for sale for the equivalent of about $37. Someone is making money off that and I doubt it’s Mr. Shit Sorter.

After spending some time at the mall we headed to a waterfront area of the Saigon river. Nice enough area but holy plug your nose and breath through your mouth is that river ever polluted. Amongst all the garbage floating downstream I did see a couple of what looked to be catfish swimming along. How they can survive in that floating, festering garbage dump is one of nature’s true miracles.

Dinner tonight was middle eastern. I think I should rename this blog “How not to eat Vietnamese food over the course of 16 days in Vietnam”.
Just to give an idea of the price of meals here (Baskin Robins ice cream not withstanding), our dinner tonight consisted of 4 entrees, a shared large salad, 2 large bottles of beer, 2 pineapple juice, a mango smoothie, and a coke. Our bill came to $30. We’d be eating for even less if we were to eat Vietnamese food.

Random thoughts:
We’ve driven in a fair number of vehicles here - taxis, vans, and buses. Every vehicle has had a manual transmission. Of the dozens of drivers we’ve had, every one of them drives with super low revs. Merging onto a highway, it’s zero to 60 in about 90 seconds, changing gears at about 1200 rpm. And they hate downshifting. If they are driving along in 4th or 5th gear, and traffic slows to a speed where you would normally downshift to 2nd, they leave it. The vehicle will be shaking and vibrating and struggling to keep from stalling, but they leave it until they absolutely have to downshift. It’s the strangest thing.

The number one job here appears to be bored security guard. They all wear uniforms so are easily identifiable and virtually every store has one, and every 20 feet or so of sidewalk space has one. The guards working the sidewalk are there to direct and charge for scooter parking. There are no parking meters or machines of any kind, anywhere. Usually the guards are just sitting on a little plastic chair in the middle of the sidewalk looking bored as hell, playing on their phone, or snoozing.Read more