Making Peace

I began my second morning in HCMC (Tuesday) with more of the city's touristy sites.  First was Notre Dame, a beautiful cathedral built by the French with materials imported from France.  

I simply wanted to look around the place.  I was informed by three not-very-official looking children that I could only enter the main portion of the church if I wanted to pray. I told them that I had read online that I could visit the church during these hours and they said that I could go around the cathedral, but only with them.  I agreed and they dashed off to get the printed script for an English guided tour of the cathedral.

We made our way clockwise around the church, starting at the back, and stopped at each small chapel along each wall's length.  As expected, each was dedicate to a saint.  Unexpectedly, this 19th century church had gotten a modern, neon upgrade.

Many of the chapels were also redundant, and the explanations that I received were practically nonexistent despite the substantial packet in the children's hands.  Still, I enjoyed the quirks of the church, like the special Vietnamese version of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Certain chapels were also covered with stone and tile plaques expressing thanks in multiple language, given to decorate the chapels by believers around the world whose prayers had been answered.  I later learned that this church had a brush with fame a few years back.  In October 2005, the statue of Mary outside the entrance was reported to have shed tears, bringing thousands of people to the small square and stopping traffic in the area.  The Vatican denied that the statue had shed tears, but the faithful remained for quite some time.

After the cathedral I walked over to the Reunification Palace.  It's a beautiful structure, with grand banquet rooms and offices, richly decorating sitting rooms and a helipad on the roof.  

The basement is fortified in case of bombing, especially since the previous structure was partially destroyed by bombs, and houses old radios and the emergency living quarters (quite basic) of the president.  The palace (an the palace that this one replaced on the same site) has an interesting history, serving the leaders of various governments throughout (South) Vietnam's history.  The architecture of the building is quite interesting, incorporating various Chinese characters into the overall design to create subtle meaning.  But inside there isn't actually that much to see unless you're just dying to check out beautiful sitting rooms.

On my walk back, I stopped briefly at Ben Thanh Market, a bustling building of shops by day and a pair of lively street markets by night.  

I wandered through, but found that the prices were all higher than in other countries and the goods didn't really appeal to me.  Perhaps I'm a little jaded about SE Asian markets now, but I wasn't very impressed.  I later found out that you could get armadillo poop coffee or something of the sort, where the animals poop out the beans and then you use them for coffee.  Sort of a new gag gift trend (I had heard of it for elephants).  I can't help but think about the new jobs being created for poop searchers.

I took the afternoon off to relax and get ready for my flight the following morning, but I did make one last stop: Huynh Hoa (26 Le Thi Rieng Street, District 1) for a traditional Banh Mi sandwich.  

Banh Mi is basically a baguette smeared with pâté and topped with cold cuts, pickled vegetables, and soy sauce. This shop sign sort of explains it:

I went to go get one with Patrick, who has just arrived at the hostel and who was staying in my dorm room.  On the walk over, I learned that Patrick had just finished a 2-year stint in Bulgaria with the Peace Corps, but is originally from Seattle.  He'll be returning there for a Master's degree in what he described as "basically managing international NGOs".  This trip is a chance to explore but also to figure out where he wants to live abroad next.  It's easy to tell that he's fascinated by other languages and cultures - a long thin tattoo of the history of root languages (Egyptian, Greek, Latin) coils down his arm in quotes from texts that are important to him.  Pretty cool tattoo, if you're going to have one.

We ordered our Banh Mi and, since this quaint little shop (recommended by a Vietnamese food blogger) had no chairs, we retired to the park for our late afternoon meal.  HCMC does a pretty great job of dotting parks throughout the city, at least in District 1, and the local public really takes advantage of them.  As we ate, we were approached by a couple of vendors, but also by a young man who wanted to practice his English.  He said he was an engineer and started a conversation with us about the Vietnam War, arguing that the US didn't make any mistakes.  He had previously mentioned that he didn't like having only superficial conversations with people because it didn't improve his English, so I suspect he was playing devil's advocate.  But he also sort of seemed to believe what he was saying.  Eventually we had to leave, and both agreed that it was a somewhat strange experience.

HCMC has been interesting, indeed, but it still doesn't compare to the other places that I have visited on this trip.  I can't wait to go north to Phong Nha and then Hanoi/Sapa/Halong Bay!

Spotted: The "Gambling Room" of the Reunification Palace.  It's a bit too airy and lavishly decorated to be a traditional man cave, but its the closest to a state-condoned one that I have ever seen.