Friday, December 15, 2006
Highlights
à War Remnants Museum
à Ben Thanh Market
à Restaurant Augustin – French Restaurant
à Municipal Theatre
à Saigon Tourist Centre – Parkson Departmental Store
à Fanny’s Ice-Cream Parlour
à Ben Thanh Night Market
* * *
--- Xin Chao ---
The plane swoops in for final approach. Buildings appear below us.
We’re actually flying above the urban landscape.
As the plane descends we can see vehicles speeding along a thoroughfare, with houses and shops. The distance from the runway to the concrete habitats is probably less than a kilometre, separated by a concrete wall. It is almost like flying into Kai Tak airport, where the landing gear of the plane can easily pick up someone’s laundry.
* * *
Arriving at Ho Chi Minh International Airport is like being transported back to the seventies and eighties, where airports of those days had yellow signs showing immigration, customs, duty-free shopping, toilets and the like. Airports these days have such sleek modern architecture of metals and glasses and wood panelling to provide some warmth to the otherwise cold aura of the metals.
Officers in smart uniforms and peak caps mill around the immigration area. I feel a sense of trepidation: do something funny, make a wrong move, and one or a few of these men might suddenly grab me and haul me off to some interrogation room. The last time I went to China ten years back there were officers with the same garb guarding the pier where our ferry had just come in from Hong Kong. My mum took photos of the vessel we had just disembarked and was immediately stopped by an officer. Thankfully the camera wasn’t confiscated.
I stand in line before one of the counters. Darius remarks that the man dealing with the paperwork for the people in my queue is of a rather high position. I get a little more nervous… could this man have any power over my fate?
The situation turns sour for the Caucasian man at the counter. Apparently his paperwork is incomplete or his passport has problems – in some way or another he is not qualified for entry into the country. The immigration officer calls his colleague, who leads him and his partner somewhere else.
Next please.
It looks like one of the scenes from a spy thriller – “Sir/Madam, please come with us…” and the local officer brings you to some secret hideout in the bowels of the complex, leads you in, shuts the door and God knows what happens in there.
It is business as usual at the airport.
It is my turn. I remember Dad’s advice: “Don’t say too much.” So I pass him my passport and the entry slip and fix my eyes at his hands, trying hard not to survey his uniform and his epaulette and medals. I have a habit of intensely surveying my surroundings and deducing properties of the objects I study. Without looking at the rank I try to ascertain his status in the bureaucracy, reminded by Darius’ observation that he is a high-ranking officer.
I actually feel butterflies in the stomach: that something might go wrong with my passport or my entry form, and then it’s good luck.
He passes back the materials. I nod in acknowledgement and walk away from the counter.
* * *
Before we leave the airport we change our US Bills to Dong, as the Vietnamese currency is not available in Singapore. I underestimate the price of things and ask for only 150,000 Dong, which is simply insufficient and leads me to beg and borrow and disturb my friends.
* * *
The best idea concocted is the pool system. Each day each of us will pass a certain amount of money to one person who will be responsible for footing the bills. The idea is that when it comes to payment, we can avoid the situation where all five of us whip out our wallets and expose ourselves to any prospective pickpocket. Also in Singapore, when we go out for meals together we have experienced the problem of not knowing how to divide the change especially when we combine payment into a single dollar bill forked out by one person in the group.
* * *
Si Ying had called ahead and now there is a taxi driver waving a placard bearing her name. There is some sense of comfort in knowing that there are people to meet us. The package provided by the hostel includes transfer from the airport – USD10 for a large five-seated cab that can pick all of us up in one go.
But we realise no large five-seated has been sent to pick us. Instead there are two three-seaters that charge USD10 each.
We split up and bundle into the cabs.
--- It’s A Long, Long Way to Yellow Hostel ---
Coming from orderly Singapore the roads of Ho Chi Minh City can be quite a shock initially. Suddenly we entered this gigantic pathway that could be the entire basement of Wisma Atria from Ngee Ann City to Orchard MRT Station – albeit on a larger scale and accompanied by machines. God, what crazy traffic! Motorbikes, cars, even the happy trishaw rider who cycles to the middle of the road and is oblivious to the honk of the vehicle behind him. Drivers zip past one another. Every few seconds our driver hits the horn. BEEEEEEP.
The journey seems to take forever. Partly because we had no idea where we were headed. Partly because the airport was in the city itself. On the turn out of the airport’s parking lot we hit a huge boulevard which seemed to be one of the main thoroughfares. Very quickly we navigated through the maze of narrow streets.
Almost every street is teeming with life. You could feel the hype even within the air-conditioned car. As usual the driver has to navigate through the crazy traffic. The drivers have no regard for the line in the centre of the road dividing traffic into two travelling directions. Motorists wishing to bypass others happily take on the wrong side of the street.
We pass a railroad crossing. You didn’t even notice it was there, because it is camouflaged by the colourful array of structures and humans and moving machines. Motorcyclists use the gravel as their shortcut to get to the next street.
* * *
Yellow House Hostel is not easy to spot – miss the signboard and you miss the hostel completely. Its entrance is simple, like that of a shop, the only identification being the appropriately-yellow-backed signboard that bears its name.
Yet do not judge a book by its cover. For USD5 per night you get free Internet access, breakfast and change of towels daily. The rooms are air-conditioned, and some have attached bathrooms.
The ground floor bustles with activities – here administrative work is conducted. Enter the double glass doors and to your left is the check-in, check-out counter. To the right is the money-changer-cum-tour-agent. Further in, two computers reside on a desk – here is the window to the world – virtually. Circular tables are placed in neat rows nearby – here is where patrons can enjoy breakfast in the morning. On the wall a huge table shows the tours that are offered. There are tours to the famous Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple. Further ones include trips into Siem Reap, Cambodia, or boat tours along the Mekong Delta which is just nearby.
We are given our keys. Si Ying and Jeremy have a twin-sharing room, while the rest of us guys take the triple room. We initially ask for three single beds, but that would mean a common toilet outside of our room. The attached toilet is of greater importance compared to sharing the same bed.
The third floor is the equivalent of Level Four, so we trudge our way up the winding staircase all the way to the top of the building, dreading the fact that we have to repeat this practice every day. We are consoled by the fact that we will probably be spending the entire day out, so that minimises any prospective exercising.
The room is pretty well-furnished! There is a wardrobe, dressing table, television set and a refrigerator. A fan hangs on the wall above one of the beds but it looks dangerous – the cover is missing. The last thing we need is a samurai chop of the head if the blade comes lose in the middle of the night. So we decide not to use the fan at all during our stay. The air-conditioner is sufficient, only if we turn it down to the lowest temperature so that it cools up the room more quickly. We would like to leave it running throughout our disappearance from the hostel, but rules state that all electrical appliances must be switched off because the area sometimes faces electrical shortages.
--- Unforgettable, that’s how you are ---
Our first stop is the War Remnants Museum. This time we hire a five-seater cab – very much like a station wagon, with a third row of seats behind the second.
Bui Vien Street, where our hostel is located, is a backpacker’s accommodation destination. There are many other hostels located here. There are also cafes, art galleries – there is life! We can actually explore and hang around here if we are bored staying in the hostel at night.
More exposure to the crazy traffic, especially the roundabout outside Ben Thanh Market. Everybody moves in different directions. Pedestrians daringly defy the direction of traffic flow and whack their attempt to get away from the circus to the other side of the road. For people from a land where jaywalking is barely a culture, you just have to admire them.
As the taxi drives on we try to follow the map, but to no avail. The French style of street design is not exactly easy to manoeuvre. They like huge circuses, from which streets extend in all directions. Not all the streets meet at right angles. Sometimes you hit a Y-junction.
At one point the taxi has to turn onto another street. Talk about taxiing like an aircraft – only to be ruffled by a hoard of motorists from the other side of our street and from the street that we want to turn onto. The taxi slowly edges its way onto the new street, while oncoming motorists encircle our slow-moving vehicle like currents of water meeting a boulder in the river – they are inhibited by the buffalo stuck in the middle of the junction.
Is the taxi-driver making a mistake? He seems to be turning onto a one-way street where our junction is a no-entry point! It turns out that it is a bi-directional lane but motorists have disregarded the demarcation. With much difficulty – but with the admirable persistence and patience of the driver – we are finally moving again.
We eventually arrive at the War Remnants Museum. It is located within the compound of a former prison, enclosed by towering concrete walls. The entrance is imposing – cold steel doors left open, and we walk through thick walls to the ticketing booth.
The main building is a marble-surfaced block that holds about three storeys. The ground floor contains photographs and artefacts with relation to the Vietnam War. The upper levels are closed for renovation. Surrounding it are machines from the War – Hueys, M113s, Howitzers – for the public to snap photos and touch.
I find it difficult to believe that some of the artefacts I am looking at are real – they were actually from the war. For instance, the remains of a B52 bomber. The plane crashed, broke up, and now this piece from its fuselage lies in the museum before our very eyes. Something from the past being looked at in the present, and by the future. It is incredible.
Heart-wrenching photographs cover the walls. Pictures of torture in the most brutal of ways, of suffering… there is even a live specimen of a foetus in a glass jar of chemicals. We do not know if it is live, or merely a replica. I choose to believe it is real, because all the other artefacts are real. Even the exhibition about the anomaly of the body by the German doctor that raised much furore had figures created from real body parts of the dead.
A consistent stand throughout the exhibits: the Americans were blamed. To prove it, there are photos of American soldiers in acts of cruelty – abusing Vietnamese people, manhandling them, setting fire to property. As we are to see in the other exhibits, the South Vietnamese puppet government was not spared either – it was seen as the American lapdog and equally responsible as evil-doers. In fact the ex-prison we are in is a former stronghold of the South Vietnamese authoritarian regime, where the Vietnamese police tortured their own fellow country men.
The next exhibit takes us through the actual prison structure. In a small room, there are pictures showing torture methods, such as filling water into the belly and then stomping on it; suspending victims in the air then beating him up and other acts of cruelty.
The next building shows an instance of a Tiger Cage. The description reads:
This is a perfect copy of the “Tiger Cages” set up by the Saigon regime in Con Dao Island.
‘“Tiger Cages” are in fact special cells for the detention of political prisoners considered “stubborn” by the Saigon authorities. There are 120 cages of such type in Con Dao Island. Each cell measures 2.70m x 1.50m x 3m. During the hot season about 5 to 14 prisoners were kept in one cell. In winter time there was only one or two of them kept in it with their feet shackled to a long iron bar. Eating, drinking, sleeping, etc… is only allowed in the very place.
‘Narrow passages were reserved to jailers who went back and forth and were ready to harass the prisoners. Talking, laughing, coughing, even slapping on mosquitoes might serve [as] an excuse for the cruel jailers to use violent measures against the detainees. They injured them with sharp sticks or shovel slime on them. A lot of prisoners received burns or vomited blood.
‘The detainees’ meals consisted of handfuls of rice of very poor quality and small pieces of decayed dried fish. Vegetables, meat were definitely non-existent. Each prisoner was given half a tin can of drinking water a day let along water for bathing or washing. The lack of water was really a punishment inflicted on women [e]specially during their menstrual days.
‘Prisoners’ health got worse day after day. Obviously casualties among the political prisoners kept in “Tiger Cages” were high.’
We peek into the cell. The statue of a man sitting with a deadened and eerie look, as if he has completely lost his mind from sitting in that claustrophobic little space all day long. Prisoners today are more fortunate – at least they can move about within the confines of their residence, but this guy here is rendered immobile even in his space. From above, Big Brother is watching. Total curtailment of freedom.
We climb up the steep staircase to see the ‘narrow passage’ for the jailer. From there, you can look into the cell below. Buckets are placed along the edge of the passage, either to toss food or something disgusting down to the prisoners. A perspective mural makes you feel slightly dizzy – it looks as if the passage extends all the way forward, when it is in reality just a wall. Certainly not for one with a fear of heights.
In the last room is a guillotine. Looking at it in real is more freaky than in reel life. Especially the metal tin basket beneath that captures the head after it is chopped off. Next to the guillotine lies a huge box where the body is disposed of thereafter. It still makes me sick to think about the dislodged head rolling about in that basin…
One portion of the exhibits is devoted to the combat photographers, who risked their lives to capture moments on the battlefield, but unfortunately gave way to fire. Without them we would not have such vivid images of the battles. They actually stood alongside the soldiers while they fought. While the soldiers triggered their rifles, the photographers triggered their cameras from the same trench.
Another exhibit celebrates the Communist achievements. There are manuscripts of letters by Ho Chi Minh; Uncle Ho’s declaration of independence… a large diagram showing countries in the world that have ties with Vietnam. Not surprisingly the former Soviet Union and China are mentioned first and second respectively. Vietnam was not only a Cold War hot zone, but a tussle within the Communist world as well. It was a chance for either China or the Soviet Union to play big brother. The Sino-Soviet split had already occurred -- after Stalin died in 1953, Mao felt that he ought to become the elder statesman, but the new Soviet leader Khrushchev did not accord Mao this status, which left the latter displeased.
It is impossible to find museums that remember life after the Vietnam War, when the Communists took over. The Communists still run the country, and they prefer the New Economic Zones and Re-education Camps, which drew the lives of many and shattered so many hearts, be forgotten. The opponent is always viewed as the enemy in the eyes of the people. Miss Saigon the musical portrayed the Vietcong as ruthless people, and the Americans as piteous and sympathetic human beings who try to save women and children from the brutalities of Communist life. The desperation that American lives are at stake are clearly portrayed in the opening number The Heat is on in Saigon where they try to be optimistic about their fate in a losing war, in the hope that they enjoy what could possibly be the last entertainment.
On the other hand, the Vietnamese view the Americans as barbarians. They recklessly bombed the landscape and infiltrated them with agent orange and other damaging chemicals. The pictures all show it. Deformed humans, the (in)famous picture of the naked girl running down the road after her clothes had been sprayed by corrosive chemicals – her adult photo is also shown. She was featured in the Readers’ Digest some years back about her forgiving the pilot who had dropped the chemical in her area and affected her. Other pictures show American soldiers torching property, handling Vietnamese who were brought in for interrogation ruthlessly. Even the Diem regime was not spared. Diem was an authoritarian himself, but the Americans had to keep him because they were fighting against Communism. Diem was the answer to prevent the South from falling to the Communists, even though he ruled with an iron fist and was no better than Saddam Hussein or Pinochet today. Diem and his cronies were even more unpopular by the fact that he tortured his own people and did not practice liberalism as the Americans were forever preaching.
--- The Hunt for Vietnamese Coffee and Other Stuffs ---
Thereafter we head to Ben Thanh market.
We get dropped off along the street behind the market, and this marks our first attempt to cross the road. We try to wait till the street clears of vehicles, but they are never-ending. Adopting Nike’s slogan: Just do it, we stepped onto the road and made our way across, car or no car. The drivers merely honked at us, or swerved and avoided us, like we were supernatural beings.
We made it across the road!
Ben Thanh Market is not just a fresh produce warehouse, it functions as an eatery as well as emporium, with goods from scents to craftwork to everyday utensils to clothes.
Kwai Sum stops at the first corner shop to buy titbits and other dried goods, while Darius and I head off in search of the fabled Vietnamese coffee. It turns out that any coffee stall offers Vietnamese coffee. I have mine as kopi-o while Darius adds milk in his.
Superb! The powder is strong – the tingling sensation almost immediate. You can feel that surge of energy leap up and fill your brain. Talk about being alive! In Singapore the coffee is always too diluted, the concoction never as strong as this.
Kwai Sum buys a packet of Vietnamese chwee kueh (rice cakes. That’s not the exact name – I have no idea what it is really called, so I shall use this analogy). Unlike chwee kueh they are shaped in little balls. As with Vietnamese dishes it comes with fresh, raw vegetables. You’re supposed to empty a bag of oil into the salad and cake and eat everything together. Again like Vietnamese food there is a pleasantly sweet and spicy flavour. Although I enjoy eating I am quite apprehensive to eat too much as I am unsure if my stomach is able to handle food prepared with different hygiene standards compared to Singapore. No offence, but our stomachs are all adjusted differently. Otherwise people living in places where food is prepared with a lower level of hygiene will be visiting the toilet and the doctor everyday! How can the country survive?
During our tour, this little boy hawking postcards tries to sell me a pack. I politely reject him. He is persistent. “Please, sir,” he pleads.
I try to tell him that I am really not interested in buying the postcards. Then I quickly disappear after my friends into a stall.
Now this stall has two entrances. The boy has apparently calculated my move and hurries to the other entrance to try to grab his prospective buyer, appearing like a ghost. We tell him politely, no, sorry, we’re not interested. The boy is still persistent.
We walk out of the shop. He follows us. We decide to ignore him, hoping it would shake him off our path. After a while he indeed gives up on us. It is bad that we have to resort to such tactics, but we are not well-off ourselves and cannot afford to spend carelessly either.
After Ben Thanh we chance upon a night market in preparation along one of the streets outside the main market. The street has been cordoned off but vehicles are defying the obstacles and continue to plough through what is to become the pedestrian area!
* * *
We plan to have dinner at the Rex Hotel and then catch a cultural performance.
Rex Hotel is a fabled hotel in Saigon. It currently carries four-star status, and is being renovated so as to upgrade to five stars. The interior architecture blends both influences from the East and West well. You see ornate pillars and large paintings, and then their lamp shades are made of rattan!
The performance is held at the Royal Court Restaurant, to be accessed from one of the streets the hotel fronts. It turns out that we are early – the performance begins at 8pm. It is about 6. We decide to have our dinner first.
While standing on the pavement, a motorcycle whizzes past us. The kerbs are sloped so as to allow vehicles to drive onto the pavement! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take a photograph of the man riding his bike on the pavement… I’ll have to do it discreetly if I do…
---Starry, Starry Nights ---
Nguyen Hue Street has lots of art galleries offering reproductions of paintings of the great masters. Though they may not be the original, some reproductions are actually well-done enough for you to want to own a replica. The best artists manage to capture the tones and hues. There are some paintings that the artist wasn’t able to capture the spirit of the original accurately enough: in a reproduction of Van Gogh’s The Café at Arles for instance, the blue is too light.
The painters are versatile to handle a variety of artistic styles: modernist, impressionist, abstract, neo-classicism, symbolism, and so on. You can see Matisse, Van Gogh, Warhol, Botero, Picasso…
Besides Western painters, there is also embroidery work, of scenes of the Vietnamese countryside. Most commonly-featured is the Vietnamese girl in the conical hat and the ao dai, whose face is always never revealed. It seems to be a typical motif for all other artwork regarding Vietnamese life.
I take interest in a embroidery artwork done on a card, and I ask the sales representative the price of two. He quotes USD6. I bargain down to 5, citing a purchase of two cards. He is fine. I ask for his name card.
--- C’est Moi ---
Restaurant Augustin is tucked away in a small street, away from the busy traffic. It is a quaint little eating outlet. When we arrive it is empty. The dinner crowd has not yet arrived. Recall that today is Friday.
We each decide to order one main course, and then we’ll share it around. So this is what we all ordered:
Grilled salmon filet with béarnaise sauce (Si Ying)
Stewed rabbit in red wine (Jeremy)
Beef filet with green pepper sauce (Darius)
Grilled sea bass filet with cream, lemon and ginger sauce (Kwai Sum)
Grilled sole filet with lemon, parsley and butter (August)
French traditional onion soup (Kwai Sum)
Fisherman soup served with crouton and Rouille (Si Ying)
Clams in cream and white wine (Jeremy)
Mixed salad
For wine we have Merlot, which I enjoy immensely because it is not as strong as the other wines that I have tasted before. In previous instances my throat and stomach burned – it was tough releasing the gates in the throat for the wine to flow into the rest of the body.
I learn how wine glasses (and other containers of spirits) are designed as such: with a stem suspending the actual holder of the liquid a distance from the ground. You are not supposed to hold the bottom of the liquid-container because your body heat will warm the alcohol inside. Hence you have to hold the glass by the stem when you drink it.
Also people swirl the wine in order to release its scent, for testing purposes.
All these actions only make sense now that I am actually interacting with wine.
The beef is probably the juiciest I’ve ever tasted, yet it is soft and succulent. Rabbit meat somewhat tastes like pork. We often like to compare ‘exotic’ meats to other more common meats to describe their taste. For example, crocodile meat ‘tastes like chicken’.
Not used to fine-dining, I become alarmed when the waitress tries to clear my appetiser plate together with the cutlery. I make a mad dash to retrieve the utensils when it crashes down onto the table with a loud embarrassing noise. I think the waitresses gave stunted looks – what is the mountain tortoise doing?
The waitress serves the main course and sends in a new set of cutlery.
We decide to go elsewhere for dessert – Fanny’s Ice-Cream. But first, the Municipal Theatre to check out performances.
We foot the bill. For that much variety of food we order, plus the alcohol, we actually pay less than what we will have to do at a similar French dining outlet in Singapore. And we have good food.
Worth it. Absolutely.
--- The Phantoms of the Opera ---
The Municipal Theatre is surrounded by three squares. Close it may be to its neighbours, but it stands far away sufficiently to pose regally. From afar it looks like the Paris Opera House, with a main grand stairway leading to the front doors. Its façade is ornate and embellished – the photograph speaks more than what I can write.
So they are playing this ‘Sound Max’ concert thing tonight. The poster lists about ten songs, unfortunately written in Vietnamese which we are unable to read. The design features a clock set to either ten-past-ten or ten-to-two, and some tropical island motif, which makes us wonder if it is a musical.
The gung-ho lot of us decide to crash in the performance, whatever it may be. So we gamely walk up to the box office and order five tickets.
We cannot believe that we are doing this.
* * *
The interior of the theatre is interesting in itself. For one, the floor is not carpeted. The floor is plain marble. Most theatres I go to are carpeted. Back in Singapore I raise this up with a musician friend and he says that it affects the acoustics ‘to some extent’. With a reflective surface, you will get more echoes.
The acoustics are, however, quite good. The sound is pretty dry. As the speakers play background music in prelude to the show, there isn’t much echo to contend with. I’ve heard worse than this. I had to perform after well-known abbot and speaker Ajahn Brahm’s talk, so I arrived there half an hour before my stipulated stage time, and sat in for the question-and-answer session. Now, Ajahn was made to sit at the altar, which is essentially the ‘wrong’ side of the hall – he was facing the speakers. So the sound went out, got picked up by the mike again, and the vicious cycle ensues. Even for half an hour, listening was such a dreadfully tiring chore, because you got blasted with the repeats of the same speech in microseconds, and to accumulate everything it is pretty painful to the ears and brain.
Anyway back to the performance: the curtain opens, and we see a band on the stage. So it is a pop concert. There is a pianist (who also functions as the musical director), drummer, guitarists, keyboardist, saxophonist; and string players at the back.
A guy walks out. The band begins to play. He launches into a Vietnamese pop song. The style is very much oldies pop ballad, when the music runs in triplet rhythms and features the saxophone as a solo instrument during introductions and interludes. As I am to write music in the Vietnamese style for Exit Visa, I pay close attention to the melodic shape and choice of notes of the tune and how the melody fits with the lyrics. It is very much like mandarin pop but you cannot just write in mandopop style and pass it off as Vietnamese. There has got be some defining factor that distinguishes Vietnamese music from others.
There are certain aspects that sound weird at the first hearing. You will hear irregular phrasing – could it be in relation to the expression of the Vietnamese language? There are instances where the tune will drop to some other note which does not quite seem to gel with the chord of that moment, and makes you wonder if the singer had gone out of tune, the band had played wrong notes or the music is like that. I am going to investigate once I get my hands on CDs of Vietnamese pop music. But there were indeed moments when the musicians lost it – in the introduction to one of the songs (I think it was Schubert’s Ave Maria) the solo violinist goes awry and scratched something weird which is really discomforting. Nevertheless it is interesting and refreshing to hear the Ave Maria done in a light pop style. The singer sounds terrific in her upper range – she brings out the power of the song in those moments. I think that is the only number that is most memorable to me after we leave the theatre.
Yes, we leave after the fourth song. It makes it even more difficult that we are unable to comprehend Vietnamese, hence cannot appreciate the songs fully as we do not know the meanings behind the words.
--- Burst My Bubble ---
We walk to the nearby supermarket at Parkson Departmental Store.
Along the way we spot a balloon on the centre of the road. We attempt to guess which vehicle would burst it. Bless you, none did.
And suddenly, to our horror, surprise and amusement, this lady calmly weaves the current of traffic to retrieve the balloon! She picked it up, while the traffic swirled madly around her, horns going off. Balloon and human return to the kerbside all in one piece. She passes the toy back to the child.
You just have to admire her. Few Singaporeans would care if a balloon floated to the centre of the road – just let it pop, I’ll get you another one. Not her. She treasured the toy for its value, and she treasured her kid’s happiness. She treasures the fact that the balloon is the key to her child’s happiness, and she intends to preserve that. Even more admirable is her selfless act – honestly she could have lost her life in that crazy traffic. But I think they are blessed to be protected from any harm.
Parkson is aptly located at the Saigon Tourist Centre. This high-class departmental store design seems to be the in-thing for tourism almost everywhere. Singaporeans, think Takashimaya – peach-blushed walls and ceilings, criss-crossed escalators, large posters of celebrities, models posing in the fashion being sold and consumed – go to Malaysia and visit Parkson Grand, come to Ho Chi Minh, experience this one and you realise they are all the same.
Interestingly their supermarket is located on the second-most top floor, rather than the basement. The topmost floor contains an entertainment centre. Si Ying and Jeremy, thirsty, buy bubble tea for USD1, but it comes with no pearls. Oh well, the extra one buck is for the pearls I think.
For security reasons, we are required to deposit our bags at the lockers. Thank goodness it is a free service, fair especially to those who do not buy anything inside the supermarket.
If prices outside at sea level, those here are Mount Kinabalu (or did I get the height wrong? For Mount Everest is definitely too exorbitant). The prices here are much, much higher than those of the same products sold outside of Parkson. We call this the ‘atas’ (Malay for high-class) store.
Outside the supermarket is a stall selling this plasticine-like toy that you can mould into different shapes. Yet the sales representative says it is not plasticine. Well it looks like half-plasticine-half-rubber, but neither bit can be peeled off. The man is very good with his fingers – in seconds he kneads out different shapes from the same toy. I am impressed, and purchase two of these to take home.
--- Ice-Cream, Ice-Cream, Eat All About It ---
Fanny’s Ice-Cream Parlour is located in a pleasant French-styled villa. It stands out from the rest of the buildings on the street – at that time of the day it is the building that is most alive. The main building is tucked backwards from the street, so it is partially camouflaged when you come up the road. It is substituted however, by an outdoor veranda that brings life to the street. Another bonus is the yellow façade, bathed in hues of warm lighting. It emits a tropical and Mediterranean glow.
The interior is just as quaint. It can function as the lobby of any hotel. We even intend to show people, “This is Yellow House Hotel, where we stayed. Look, even the walls are painted yellow!”
First statement: lie; second statement: fact.
Fanny’s has some of the most interesting ice-cream flavours, from the usual chocolate-vanilla-strawberry (CVS) to the tropical fruit community. They even offer ginger ice-cream! Each of us orders a different flavour to pass around to share.
* * *
After ice-cream we decided to take a stroll back to the hostel.
We pass by Saigon Centre – an ultra-modern complex of offices and apartment suites for the well-off. Western culture very much pervades this building – there is a branch of Highlands Coffee – an upmarket coffee joint – on the ground floor.
At the main entrance of the building, the owners have put up a Christmas display, with the reindeers and Santa Claus and the cotton-wool-covered Christmas-house, coupled with white fences marked “Danger” warning the inquisitive to keep out of the burning spotlights. Typical modern fare for Christmas.
Turn your back and you see the decades-old buildings behind you. Their facades are dark, interiors lit by cold fluorescent lights…
And Saigon Centre is a beehive of activity that probably lasts till late in the night.
What a contrast.
Balloon sellers add to the carnival atmosphere. One person single-handedly carries easily about thirty or more foil balloons of cartoon characters and animals. On the ground there are about five of them milling around the same territory. As we walk further on down Le Loi Avenue, heading towards Ben Thanh Market – remember that when we left hawkers were preparing for the night market? – we spot another army of them on our side of the pavement and on that across. A seller would also zip past us on his/her motorbike, the trail of balloons like a huge bouquet of flowers swaying in the wind.
Crossing road is less of a phobia now – we learn to walk, just keep walking straight. We trust the drivers. They do not speed. They etch their eye on the road and have some silent, telepathic communication with the pedestrian. In short, traffic is yin and yang: the pedestrian and the vehicles, because each is moving in a direction in contrast to the other. The pedestrian frequently travels perpendicularly to the line of movement of the vehicle. Traffic is a cohesive entity. The in-flight magazine of Tiger Airways (on which we travelled) states: ‘The trick to crossing a road in Saigon… is to walk slowly and steadily without stopping or panicking. This way, the oncoming bikes will go around you.’ (Tiger Tales, Nov/Dec/Jan 2007 Issue, p90)
Perfectly true. Even in a moving vehicle, we have seen it for ourselves. The driver hits the horn and turns the wheel and avoids the obstacle present. Inspirationally, drivers do not swear when faced with such unexpected turns on the road. They merely use their horn, never their mouth. Such civility. In Singapore the horn is accompanied by a chorus of swear verses. When vocals end, the percussion sometimes take their place.
I feel safer crossing a Vietnam road compared to Geylang Road which I have been crossing everyday for the past two years.
To make things easier, we try to cross as an extended line, so that the people on the extreme sides watch out for oncoming traffic from both fronts (I’m sorry, but drivers tend to disobey the directional demarcation lines). At the same time, motorists have more space to manoeuvre when they have to avoid us.
The Night Market at Ben Thanh takes place on the streets that surround the market complex itself. Most of the stalls dotting the perimeter of the building are food stalls – in fact designed like hawker centres, with tables under a tarpaulin tent. Most are seafood stalls, and so you see these huge glass tanks with live animals exhibiting themselves.
Along the way, we chance upon the little boy who tried to hawk us postcards earlier in the day. The poor kid was still trying to sell his wares at such a late time in the night, even when the main market has closed.
For those of us who have been fortunate, let us cherish the luxuries big and small that we afford to enjoy. It is a reality check that there are people who are not able to enjoy the standards of living and the amenities that a progressive economy provides, and it is unfortunate we are not often reminded that such situations exist.
* * *
Back to the hostel.
¶ 12/15/2006 11:45:00 am à War Remnants Museum
à Ben Thanh Market
à Restaurant Augustin – French Restaurant
à Municipal Theatre
à Saigon Tourist Centre – Parkson Departmental Store
à Fanny’s Ice-Cream Parlour
à Ben Thanh Night Market
* * *
--- Xin Chao ---
The plane swoops in for final approach. Buildings appear below us.
We’re actually flying above the urban landscape.
As the plane descends we can see vehicles speeding along a thoroughfare, with houses and shops. The distance from the runway to the concrete habitats is probably less than a kilometre, separated by a concrete wall. It is almost like flying into Kai Tak airport, where the landing gear of the plane can easily pick up someone’s laundry.
* * *
Arriving at Ho Chi Minh International Airport is like being transported back to the seventies and eighties, where airports of those days had yellow signs showing immigration, customs, duty-free shopping, toilets and the like. Airports these days have such sleek modern architecture of metals and glasses and wood panelling to provide some warmth to the otherwise cold aura of the metals.
Officers in smart uniforms and peak caps mill around the immigration area. I feel a sense of trepidation: do something funny, make a wrong move, and one or a few of these men might suddenly grab me and haul me off to some interrogation room. The last time I went to China ten years back there were officers with the same garb guarding the pier where our ferry had just come in from Hong Kong. My mum took photos of the vessel we had just disembarked and was immediately stopped by an officer. Thankfully the camera wasn’t confiscated.
I stand in line before one of the counters. Darius remarks that the man dealing with the paperwork for the people in my queue is of a rather high position. I get a little more nervous… could this man have any power over my fate?
The situation turns sour for the Caucasian man at the counter. Apparently his paperwork is incomplete or his passport has problems – in some way or another he is not qualified for entry into the country. The immigration officer calls his colleague, who leads him and his partner somewhere else.
Next please.
It looks like one of the scenes from a spy thriller – “Sir/Madam, please come with us…” and the local officer brings you to some secret hideout in the bowels of the complex, leads you in, shuts the door and God knows what happens in there.
It is business as usual at the airport.
It is my turn. I remember Dad’s advice: “Don’t say too much.” So I pass him my passport and the entry slip and fix my eyes at his hands, trying hard not to survey his uniform and his epaulette and medals. I have a habit of intensely surveying my surroundings and deducing properties of the objects I study. Without looking at the rank I try to ascertain his status in the bureaucracy, reminded by Darius’ observation that he is a high-ranking officer.
I actually feel butterflies in the stomach: that something might go wrong with my passport or my entry form, and then it’s good luck.
He passes back the materials. I nod in acknowledgement and walk away from the counter.
* * *
Before we leave the airport we change our US Bills to Dong, as the Vietnamese currency is not available in Singapore. I underestimate the price of things and ask for only 150,000 Dong, which is simply insufficient and leads me to beg and borrow and disturb my friends.
* * *
The best idea concocted is the pool system. Each day each of us will pass a certain amount of money to one person who will be responsible for footing the bills. The idea is that when it comes to payment, we can avoid the situation where all five of us whip out our wallets and expose ourselves to any prospective pickpocket. Also in Singapore, when we go out for meals together we have experienced the problem of not knowing how to divide the change especially when we combine payment into a single dollar bill forked out by one person in the group.
* * *
Si Ying had called ahead and now there is a taxi driver waving a placard bearing her name. There is some sense of comfort in knowing that there are people to meet us. The package provided by the hostel includes transfer from the airport – USD10 for a large five-seated cab that can pick all of us up in one go.
But we realise no large five-seated has been sent to pick us. Instead there are two three-seaters that charge USD10 each.
We split up and bundle into the cabs.
--- It’s A Long, Long Way to Yellow Hostel ---
Coming from orderly Singapore the roads of Ho Chi Minh City can be quite a shock initially. Suddenly we entered this gigantic pathway that could be the entire basement of Wisma Atria from Ngee Ann City to Orchard MRT Station – albeit on a larger scale and accompanied by machines. God, what crazy traffic! Motorbikes, cars, even the happy trishaw rider who cycles to the middle of the road and is oblivious to the honk of the vehicle behind him. Drivers zip past one another. Every few seconds our driver hits the horn. BEEEEEEP.
The journey seems to take forever. Partly because we had no idea where we were headed. Partly because the airport was in the city itself. On the turn out of the airport’s parking lot we hit a huge boulevard which seemed to be one of the main thoroughfares. Very quickly we navigated through the maze of narrow streets.
Almost every street is teeming with life. You could feel the hype even within the air-conditioned car. As usual the driver has to navigate through the crazy traffic. The drivers have no regard for the line in the centre of the road dividing traffic into two travelling directions. Motorists wishing to bypass others happily take on the wrong side of the street.
We pass a railroad crossing. You didn’t even notice it was there, because it is camouflaged by the colourful array of structures and humans and moving machines. Motorcyclists use the gravel as their shortcut to get to the next street.
* * *
Yellow House Hostel is not easy to spot – miss the signboard and you miss the hostel completely. Its entrance is simple, like that of a shop, the only identification being the appropriately-yellow-backed signboard that bears its name.
Yet do not judge a book by its cover. For USD5 per night you get free Internet access, breakfast and change of towels daily. The rooms are air-conditioned, and some have attached bathrooms.
The ground floor bustles with activities – here administrative work is conducted. Enter the double glass doors and to your left is the check-in, check-out counter. To the right is the money-changer-cum-tour-agent. Further in, two computers reside on a desk – here is the window to the world – virtually. Circular tables are placed in neat rows nearby – here is where patrons can enjoy breakfast in the morning. On the wall a huge table shows the tours that are offered. There are tours to the famous Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple. Further ones include trips into Siem Reap, Cambodia, or boat tours along the Mekong Delta which is just nearby.
We are given our keys. Si Ying and Jeremy have a twin-sharing room, while the rest of us guys take the triple room. We initially ask for three single beds, but that would mean a common toilet outside of our room. The attached toilet is of greater importance compared to sharing the same bed.
The third floor is the equivalent of Level Four, so we trudge our way up the winding staircase all the way to the top of the building, dreading the fact that we have to repeat this practice every day. We are consoled by the fact that we will probably be spending the entire day out, so that minimises any prospective exercising.
The room is pretty well-furnished! There is a wardrobe, dressing table, television set and a refrigerator. A fan hangs on the wall above one of the beds but it looks dangerous – the cover is missing. The last thing we need is a samurai chop of the head if the blade comes lose in the middle of the night. So we decide not to use the fan at all during our stay. The air-conditioner is sufficient, only if we turn it down to the lowest temperature so that it cools up the room more quickly. We would like to leave it running throughout our disappearance from the hostel, but rules state that all electrical appliances must be switched off because the area sometimes faces electrical shortages.
--- Unforgettable, that’s how you are ---
Our first stop is the War Remnants Museum. This time we hire a five-seater cab – very much like a station wagon, with a third row of seats behind the second.
Bui Vien Street, where our hostel is located, is a backpacker’s accommodation destination. There are many other hostels located here. There are also cafes, art galleries – there is life! We can actually explore and hang around here if we are bored staying in the hostel at night.
More exposure to the crazy traffic, especially the roundabout outside Ben Thanh Market. Everybody moves in different directions. Pedestrians daringly defy the direction of traffic flow and whack their attempt to get away from the circus to the other side of the road. For people from a land where jaywalking is barely a culture, you just have to admire them.
As the taxi drives on we try to follow the map, but to no avail. The French style of street design is not exactly easy to manoeuvre. They like huge circuses, from which streets extend in all directions. Not all the streets meet at right angles. Sometimes you hit a Y-junction.
At one point the taxi has to turn onto another street. Talk about taxiing like an aircraft – only to be ruffled by a hoard of motorists from the other side of our street and from the street that we want to turn onto. The taxi slowly edges its way onto the new street, while oncoming motorists encircle our slow-moving vehicle like currents of water meeting a boulder in the river – they are inhibited by the buffalo stuck in the middle of the junction.
Is the taxi-driver making a mistake? He seems to be turning onto a one-way street where our junction is a no-entry point! It turns out that it is a bi-directional lane but motorists have disregarded the demarcation. With much difficulty – but with the admirable persistence and patience of the driver – we are finally moving again.
We eventually arrive at the War Remnants Museum. It is located within the compound of a former prison, enclosed by towering concrete walls. The entrance is imposing – cold steel doors left open, and we walk through thick walls to the ticketing booth.
The main building is a marble-surfaced block that holds about three storeys. The ground floor contains photographs and artefacts with relation to the Vietnam War. The upper levels are closed for renovation. Surrounding it are machines from the War – Hueys, M113s, Howitzers – for the public to snap photos and touch.
I find it difficult to believe that some of the artefacts I am looking at are real – they were actually from the war. For instance, the remains of a B52 bomber. The plane crashed, broke up, and now this piece from its fuselage lies in the museum before our very eyes. Something from the past being looked at in the present, and by the future. It is incredible.
Heart-wrenching photographs cover the walls. Pictures of torture in the most brutal of ways, of suffering… there is even a live specimen of a foetus in a glass jar of chemicals. We do not know if it is live, or merely a replica. I choose to believe it is real, because all the other artefacts are real. Even the exhibition about the anomaly of the body by the German doctor that raised much furore had figures created from real body parts of the dead.
A consistent stand throughout the exhibits: the Americans were blamed. To prove it, there are photos of American soldiers in acts of cruelty – abusing Vietnamese people, manhandling them, setting fire to property. As we are to see in the other exhibits, the South Vietnamese puppet government was not spared either – it was seen as the American lapdog and equally responsible as evil-doers. In fact the ex-prison we are in is a former stronghold of the South Vietnamese authoritarian regime, where the Vietnamese police tortured their own fellow country men.
The next exhibit takes us through the actual prison structure. In a small room, there are pictures showing torture methods, such as filling water into the belly and then stomping on it; suspending victims in the air then beating him up and other acts of cruelty.
The next building shows an instance of a Tiger Cage. The description reads:
This is a perfect copy of the “Tiger Cages” set up by the Saigon regime in Con Dao Island.
‘“Tiger Cages” are in fact special cells for the detention of political prisoners considered “stubborn” by the Saigon authorities. There are 120 cages of such type in Con Dao Island. Each cell measures 2.70m x 1.50m x 3m. During the hot season about 5 to 14 prisoners were kept in one cell. In winter time there was only one or two of them kept in it with their feet shackled to a long iron bar. Eating, drinking, sleeping, etc… is only allowed in the very place.
‘Narrow passages were reserved to jailers who went back and forth and were ready to harass the prisoners. Talking, laughing, coughing, even slapping on mosquitoes might serve [as] an excuse for the cruel jailers to use violent measures against the detainees. They injured them with sharp sticks or shovel slime on them. A lot of prisoners received burns or vomited blood.
‘The detainees’ meals consisted of handfuls of rice of very poor quality and small pieces of decayed dried fish. Vegetables, meat were definitely non-existent. Each prisoner was given half a tin can of drinking water a day let along water for bathing or washing. The lack of water was really a punishment inflicted on women [e]specially during their menstrual days.
‘Prisoners’ health got worse day after day. Obviously casualties among the political prisoners kept in “Tiger Cages” were high.’
We peek into the cell. The statue of a man sitting with a deadened and eerie look, as if he has completely lost his mind from sitting in that claustrophobic little space all day long. Prisoners today are more fortunate – at least they can move about within the confines of their residence, but this guy here is rendered immobile even in his space. From above, Big Brother is watching. Total curtailment of freedom.
We climb up the steep staircase to see the ‘narrow passage’ for the jailer. From there, you can look into the cell below. Buckets are placed along the edge of the passage, either to toss food or something disgusting down to the prisoners. A perspective mural makes you feel slightly dizzy – it looks as if the passage extends all the way forward, when it is in reality just a wall. Certainly not for one with a fear of heights.
In the last room is a guillotine. Looking at it in real is more freaky than in reel life. Especially the metal tin basket beneath that captures the head after it is chopped off. Next to the guillotine lies a huge box where the body is disposed of thereafter. It still makes me sick to think about the dislodged head rolling about in that basin…
One portion of the exhibits is devoted to the combat photographers, who risked their lives to capture moments on the battlefield, but unfortunately gave way to fire. Without them we would not have such vivid images of the battles. They actually stood alongside the soldiers while they fought. While the soldiers triggered their rifles, the photographers triggered their cameras from the same trench.
Another exhibit celebrates the Communist achievements. There are manuscripts of letters by Ho Chi Minh; Uncle Ho’s declaration of independence… a large diagram showing countries in the world that have ties with Vietnam. Not surprisingly the former Soviet Union and China are mentioned first and second respectively. Vietnam was not only a Cold War hot zone, but a tussle within the Communist world as well. It was a chance for either China or the Soviet Union to play big brother. The Sino-Soviet split had already occurred -- after Stalin died in 1953, Mao felt that he ought to become the elder statesman, but the new Soviet leader Khrushchev did not accord Mao this status, which left the latter displeased.
It is impossible to find museums that remember life after the Vietnam War, when the Communists took over. The Communists still run the country, and they prefer the New Economic Zones and Re-education Camps, which drew the lives of many and shattered so many hearts, be forgotten. The opponent is always viewed as the enemy in the eyes of the people. Miss Saigon the musical portrayed the Vietcong as ruthless people, and the Americans as piteous and sympathetic human beings who try to save women and children from the brutalities of Communist life. The desperation that American lives are at stake are clearly portrayed in the opening number The Heat is on in Saigon where they try to be optimistic about their fate in a losing war, in the hope that they enjoy what could possibly be the last entertainment.
On the other hand, the Vietnamese view the Americans as barbarians. They recklessly bombed the landscape and infiltrated them with agent orange and other damaging chemicals. The pictures all show it. Deformed humans, the (in)famous picture of the naked girl running down the road after her clothes had been sprayed by corrosive chemicals – her adult photo is also shown. She was featured in the Readers’ Digest some years back about her forgiving the pilot who had dropped the chemical in her area and affected her. Other pictures show American soldiers torching property, handling Vietnamese who were brought in for interrogation ruthlessly. Even the Diem regime was not spared. Diem was an authoritarian himself, but the Americans had to keep him because they were fighting against Communism. Diem was the answer to prevent the South from falling to the Communists, even though he ruled with an iron fist and was no better than Saddam Hussein or Pinochet today. Diem and his cronies were even more unpopular by the fact that he tortured his own people and did not practice liberalism as the Americans were forever preaching.
--- The Hunt for Vietnamese Coffee and Other Stuffs ---
Thereafter we head to Ben Thanh market.
We get dropped off along the street behind the market, and this marks our first attempt to cross the road. We try to wait till the street clears of vehicles, but they are never-ending. Adopting Nike’s slogan: Just do it, we stepped onto the road and made our way across, car or no car. The drivers merely honked at us, or swerved and avoided us, like we were supernatural beings.
We made it across the road!
Ben Thanh Market is not just a fresh produce warehouse, it functions as an eatery as well as emporium, with goods from scents to craftwork to everyday utensils to clothes.
Kwai Sum stops at the first corner shop to buy titbits and other dried goods, while Darius and I head off in search of the fabled Vietnamese coffee. It turns out that any coffee stall offers Vietnamese coffee. I have mine as kopi-o while Darius adds milk in his.
Superb! The powder is strong – the tingling sensation almost immediate. You can feel that surge of energy leap up and fill your brain. Talk about being alive! In Singapore the coffee is always too diluted, the concoction never as strong as this.
Kwai Sum buys a packet of Vietnamese chwee kueh (rice cakes. That’s not the exact name – I have no idea what it is really called, so I shall use this analogy). Unlike chwee kueh they are shaped in little balls. As with Vietnamese dishes it comes with fresh, raw vegetables. You’re supposed to empty a bag of oil into the salad and cake and eat everything together. Again like Vietnamese food there is a pleasantly sweet and spicy flavour. Although I enjoy eating I am quite apprehensive to eat too much as I am unsure if my stomach is able to handle food prepared with different hygiene standards compared to Singapore. No offence, but our stomachs are all adjusted differently. Otherwise people living in places where food is prepared with a lower level of hygiene will be visiting the toilet and the doctor everyday! How can the country survive?
During our tour, this little boy hawking postcards tries to sell me a pack. I politely reject him. He is persistent. “Please, sir,” he pleads.
I try to tell him that I am really not interested in buying the postcards. Then I quickly disappear after my friends into a stall.
Now this stall has two entrances. The boy has apparently calculated my move and hurries to the other entrance to try to grab his prospective buyer, appearing like a ghost. We tell him politely, no, sorry, we’re not interested. The boy is still persistent.
We walk out of the shop. He follows us. We decide to ignore him, hoping it would shake him off our path. After a while he indeed gives up on us. It is bad that we have to resort to such tactics, but we are not well-off ourselves and cannot afford to spend carelessly either.
After Ben Thanh we chance upon a night market in preparation along one of the streets outside the main market. The street has been cordoned off but vehicles are defying the obstacles and continue to plough through what is to become the pedestrian area!
* * *
We plan to have dinner at the Rex Hotel and then catch a cultural performance.
Rex Hotel is a fabled hotel in Saigon. It currently carries four-star status, and is being renovated so as to upgrade to five stars. The interior architecture blends both influences from the East and West well. You see ornate pillars and large paintings, and then their lamp shades are made of rattan!
The performance is held at the Royal Court Restaurant, to be accessed from one of the streets the hotel fronts. It turns out that we are early – the performance begins at 8pm. It is about 6. We decide to have our dinner first.
While standing on the pavement, a motorcycle whizzes past us. The kerbs are sloped so as to allow vehicles to drive onto the pavement! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take a photograph of the man riding his bike on the pavement… I’ll have to do it discreetly if I do…
---Starry, Starry Nights ---
Nguyen Hue Street has lots of art galleries offering reproductions of paintings of the great masters. Though they may not be the original, some reproductions are actually well-done enough for you to want to own a replica. The best artists manage to capture the tones and hues. There are some paintings that the artist wasn’t able to capture the spirit of the original accurately enough: in a reproduction of Van Gogh’s The Café at Arles for instance, the blue is too light.
The painters are versatile to handle a variety of artistic styles: modernist, impressionist, abstract, neo-classicism, symbolism, and so on. You can see Matisse, Van Gogh, Warhol, Botero, Picasso…
Besides Western painters, there is also embroidery work, of scenes of the Vietnamese countryside. Most commonly-featured is the Vietnamese girl in the conical hat and the ao dai, whose face is always never revealed. It seems to be a typical motif for all other artwork regarding Vietnamese life.
I take interest in a embroidery artwork done on a card, and I ask the sales representative the price of two. He quotes USD6. I bargain down to 5, citing a purchase of two cards. He is fine. I ask for his name card.
--- C’est Moi ---
Restaurant Augustin is tucked away in a small street, away from the busy traffic. It is a quaint little eating outlet. When we arrive it is empty. The dinner crowd has not yet arrived. Recall that today is Friday.
We each decide to order one main course, and then we’ll share it around. So this is what we all ordered:
Grilled salmon filet with béarnaise sauce (Si Ying)
Stewed rabbit in red wine (Jeremy)
Beef filet with green pepper sauce (Darius)
Grilled sea bass filet with cream, lemon and ginger sauce (Kwai Sum)
Grilled sole filet with lemon, parsley and butter (August)
French traditional onion soup (Kwai Sum)
Fisherman soup served with crouton and Rouille (Si Ying)
Clams in cream and white wine (Jeremy)
Mixed salad
For wine we have Merlot, which I enjoy immensely because it is not as strong as the other wines that I have tasted before. In previous instances my throat and stomach burned – it was tough releasing the gates in the throat for the wine to flow into the rest of the body.
I learn how wine glasses (and other containers of spirits) are designed as such: with a stem suspending the actual holder of the liquid a distance from the ground. You are not supposed to hold the bottom of the liquid-container because your body heat will warm the alcohol inside. Hence you have to hold the glass by the stem when you drink it.
Also people swirl the wine in order to release its scent, for testing purposes.
All these actions only make sense now that I am actually interacting with wine.
The beef is probably the juiciest I’ve ever tasted, yet it is soft and succulent. Rabbit meat somewhat tastes like pork. We often like to compare ‘exotic’ meats to other more common meats to describe their taste. For example, crocodile meat ‘tastes like chicken’.
Not used to fine-dining, I become alarmed when the waitress tries to clear my appetiser plate together with the cutlery. I make a mad dash to retrieve the utensils when it crashes down onto the table with a loud embarrassing noise. I think the waitresses gave stunted looks – what is the mountain tortoise doing?
The waitress serves the main course and sends in a new set of cutlery.
We decide to go elsewhere for dessert – Fanny’s Ice-Cream. But first, the Municipal Theatre to check out performances.
We foot the bill. For that much variety of food we order, plus the alcohol, we actually pay less than what we will have to do at a similar French dining outlet in Singapore. And we have good food.
Worth it. Absolutely.
--- The Phantoms of the Opera ---
The Municipal Theatre is surrounded by three squares. Close it may be to its neighbours, but it stands far away sufficiently to pose regally. From afar it looks like the Paris Opera House, with a main grand stairway leading to the front doors. Its façade is ornate and embellished – the photograph speaks more than what I can write.
So they are playing this ‘Sound Max’ concert thing tonight. The poster lists about ten songs, unfortunately written in Vietnamese which we are unable to read. The design features a clock set to either ten-past-ten or ten-to-two, and some tropical island motif, which makes us wonder if it is a musical.
The gung-ho lot of us decide to crash in the performance, whatever it may be. So we gamely walk up to the box office and order five tickets.
We cannot believe that we are doing this.
* * *
The interior of the theatre is interesting in itself. For one, the floor is not carpeted. The floor is plain marble. Most theatres I go to are carpeted. Back in Singapore I raise this up with a musician friend and he says that it affects the acoustics ‘to some extent’. With a reflective surface, you will get more echoes.
The acoustics are, however, quite good. The sound is pretty dry. As the speakers play background music in prelude to the show, there isn’t much echo to contend with. I’ve heard worse than this. I had to perform after well-known abbot and speaker Ajahn Brahm’s talk, so I arrived there half an hour before my stipulated stage time, and sat in for the question-and-answer session. Now, Ajahn was made to sit at the altar, which is essentially the ‘wrong’ side of the hall – he was facing the speakers. So the sound went out, got picked up by the mike again, and the vicious cycle ensues. Even for half an hour, listening was such a dreadfully tiring chore, because you got blasted with the repeats of the same speech in microseconds, and to accumulate everything it is pretty painful to the ears and brain.
Anyway back to the performance: the curtain opens, and we see a band on the stage. So it is a pop concert. There is a pianist (who also functions as the musical director), drummer, guitarists, keyboardist, saxophonist; and string players at the back.
A guy walks out. The band begins to play. He launches into a Vietnamese pop song. The style is very much oldies pop ballad, when the music runs in triplet rhythms and features the saxophone as a solo instrument during introductions and interludes. As I am to write music in the Vietnamese style for Exit Visa, I pay close attention to the melodic shape and choice of notes of the tune and how the melody fits with the lyrics. It is very much like mandarin pop but you cannot just write in mandopop style and pass it off as Vietnamese. There has got be some defining factor that distinguishes Vietnamese music from others.
There are certain aspects that sound weird at the first hearing. You will hear irregular phrasing – could it be in relation to the expression of the Vietnamese language? There are instances where the tune will drop to some other note which does not quite seem to gel with the chord of that moment, and makes you wonder if the singer had gone out of tune, the band had played wrong notes or the music is like that. I am going to investigate once I get my hands on CDs of Vietnamese pop music. But there were indeed moments when the musicians lost it – in the introduction to one of the songs (I think it was Schubert’s Ave Maria) the solo violinist goes awry and scratched something weird which is really discomforting. Nevertheless it is interesting and refreshing to hear the Ave Maria done in a light pop style. The singer sounds terrific in her upper range – she brings out the power of the song in those moments. I think that is the only number that is most memorable to me after we leave the theatre.
Yes, we leave after the fourth song. It makes it even more difficult that we are unable to comprehend Vietnamese, hence cannot appreciate the songs fully as we do not know the meanings behind the words.
--- Burst My Bubble ---
We walk to the nearby supermarket at Parkson Departmental Store.
Along the way we spot a balloon on the centre of the road. We attempt to guess which vehicle would burst it. Bless you, none did.
And suddenly, to our horror, surprise and amusement, this lady calmly weaves the current of traffic to retrieve the balloon! She picked it up, while the traffic swirled madly around her, horns going off. Balloon and human return to the kerbside all in one piece. She passes the toy back to the child.
You just have to admire her. Few Singaporeans would care if a balloon floated to the centre of the road – just let it pop, I’ll get you another one. Not her. She treasured the toy for its value, and she treasured her kid’s happiness. She treasures the fact that the balloon is the key to her child’s happiness, and she intends to preserve that. Even more admirable is her selfless act – honestly she could have lost her life in that crazy traffic. But I think they are blessed to be protected from any harm.
Parkson is aptly located at the Saigon Tourist Centre. This high-class departmental store design seems to be the in-thing for tourism almost everywhere. Singaporeans, think Takashimaya – peach-blushed walls and ceilings, criss-crossed escalators, large posters of celebrities, models posing in the fashion being sold and consumed – go to Malaysia and visit Parkson Grand, come to Ho Chi Minh, experience this one and you realise they are all the same.
Interestingly their supermarket is located on the second-most top floor, rather than the basement. The topmost floor contains an entertainment centre. Si Ying and Jeremy, thirsty, buy bubble tea for USD1, but it comes with no pearls. Oh well, the extra one buck is for the pearls I think.
For security reasons, we are required to deposit our bags at the lockers. Thank goodness it is a free service, fair especially to those who do not buy anything inside the supermarket.
If prices outside at sea level, those here are Mount Kinabalu (or did I get the height wrong? For Mount Everest is definitely too exorbitant). The prices here are much, much higher than those of the same products sold outside of Parkson. We call this the ‘atas’ (Malay for high-class) store.
Outside the supermarket is a stall selling this plasticine-like toy that you can mould into different shapes. Yet the sales representative says it is not plasticine. Well it looks like half-plasticine-half-rubber, but neither bit can be peeled off. The man is very good with his fingers – in seconds he kneads out different shapes from the same toy. I am impressed, and purchase two of these to take home.
--- Ice-Cream, Ice-Cream, Eat All About It ---
Fanny’s Ice-Cream Parlour is located in a pleasant French-styled villa. It stands out from the rest of the buildings on the street – at that time of the day it is the building that is most alive. The main building is tucked backwards from the street, so it is partially camouflaged when you come up the road. It is substituted however, by an outdoor veranda that brings life to the street. Another bonus is the yellow façade, bathed in hues of warm lighting. It emits a tropical and Mediterranean glow.
The interior is just as quaint. It can function as the lobby of any hotel. We even intend to show people, “This is Yellow House Hotel, where we stayed. Look, even the walls are painted yellow!”
First statement: lie; second statement: fact.
Fanny’s has some of the most interesting ice-cream flavours, from the usual chocolate-vanilla-strawberry (CVS) to the tropical fruit community. They even offer ginger ice-cream! Each of us orders a different flavour to pass around to share.
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After ice-cream we decided to take a stroll back to the hostel.
We pass by Saigon Centre – an ultra-modern complex of offices and apartment suites for the well-off. Western culture very much pervades this building – there is a branch of Highlands Coffee – an upmarket coffee joint – on the ground floor.
At the main entrance of the building, the owners have put up a Christmas display, with the reindeers and Santa Claus and the cotton-wool-covered Christmas-house, coupled with white fences marked “Danger” warning the inquisitive to keep out of the burning spotlights. Typical modern fare for Christmas.
Turn your back and you see the decades-old buildings behind you. Their facades are dark, interiors lit by cold fluorescent lights…
And Saigon Centre is a beehive of activity that probably lasts till late in the night.
What a contrast.
Balloon sellers add to the carnival atmosphere. One person single-handedly carries easily about thirty or more foil balloons of cartoon characters and animals. On the ground there are about five of them milling around the same territory. As we walk further on down Le Loi Avenue, heading towards Ben Thanh Market – remember that when we left hawkers were preparing for the night market? – we spot another army of them on our side of the pavement and on that across. A seller would also zip past us on his/her motorbike, the trail of balloons like a huge bouquet of flowers swaying in the wind.
Crossing road is less of a phobia now – we learn to walk, just keep walking straight. We trust the drivers. They do not speed. They etch their eye on the road and have some silent, telepathic communication with the pedestrian. In short, traffic is yin and yang: the pedestrian and the vehicles, because each is moving in a direction in contrast to the other. The pedestrian frequently travels perpendicularly to the line of movement of the vehicle. Traffic is a cohesive entity. The in-flight magazine of Tiger Airways (on which we travelled) states: ‘The trick to crossing a road in Saigon… is to walk slowly and steadily without stopping or panicking. This way, the oncoming bikes will go around you.’ (Tiger Tales, Nov/Dec/Jan 2007 Issue, p90)
Perfectly true. Even in a moving vehicle, we have seen it for ourselves. The driver hits the horn and turns the wheel and avoids the obstacle present. Inspirationally, drivers do not swear when faced with such unexpected turns on the road. They merely use their horn, never their mouth. Such civility. In Singapore the horn is accompanied by a chorus of swear verses. When vocals end, the percussion sometimes take their place.
I feel safer crossing a Vietnam road compared to Geylang Road which I have been crossing everyday for the past two years.
To make things easier, we try to cross as an extended line, so that the people on the extreme sides watch out for oncoming traffic from both fronts (I’m sorry, but drivers tend to disobey the directional demarcation lines). At the same time, motorists have more space to manoeuvre when they have to avoid us.
The Night Market at Ben Thanh takes place on the streets that surround the market complex itself. Most of the stalls dotting the perimeter of the building are food stalls – in fact designed like hawker centres, with tables under a tarpaulin tent. Most are seafood stalls, and so you see these huge glass tanks with live animals exhibiting themselves.
Along the way, we chance upon the little boy who tried to hawk us postcards earlier in the day. The poor kid was still trying to sell his wares at such a late time in the night, even when the main market has closed.
For those of us who have been fortunate, let us cherish the luxuries big and small that we afford to enjoy. It is a reality check that there are people who are not able to enjoy the standards of living and the amenities that a progressive economy provides, and it is unfortunate we are not often reminded that such situations exist.
* * *
Back to the hostel.
