In the second part of my journey, probably since my arrival in Bangkok, I have seen a lot more tourists travelling solo, but the majority of people I come across are either travelling in pairs or small groups.
Naturally, the dynamic of travelling with another person is entirely different to being by yourself, and I am very fortunate that at two points of this adventure I will be with another person, and it's important to take into account that the circumstances of those two weeks will be altered from the majority of my journey.
Not that I act completely differently when I'm by myself, but I only have my own well-being to consider which means I walk walk around for as long as I want until I feel tired, will grab food whenever I'm hungry and will carry out activities that don't cater for anyone else but myself.
Having company means I need to factor in the needs of other people as well as myself.
I will say that it is definitely nice to have a week or so when it's not just me alone with my own thoughts all day, and I realise that I need to make the most of having someone else around as I have to spend another seven weeks taking in the final seven weeks of my journey before I make it to Hong Kong.
*********************************************************************************
Having made the long flight from England yesterday, and only having an hour's sleep in the middle of the day, my mum was pretty tired this morning and had a long lie in so it wasn't until around midday when we decided to venture out of the hotel to continue exploring Ho Chi Minh City.
Today is actually our last full day here as we travel north to Hanoi tomorrow and when we return from there on Tuesday we will be departing and going out respective ways.
I feel like in Ho Chi Minh as much as any other place I have been to on this journey, part of the experience is just walking around and taking in the sights and sounds of the city. There are lots of things to do here, but it isn't filled with as many landmarks as somewhere like Bangkok, and is more like Manila in terms of the activities it has for visitors to enjoy.
As we'd missed breakfast the first task of the day was to try and find something to eat, and I demonstrated to my mum how difficult it can be to find what we'd consider to be lunch in England. In Thailand I was quite fortunate to find a convenience store which sold sandwiches, but here in Vietnam those same shops often don't sell the same things.
We eventually settled on buying packet of crisps and a drink, before coming across a bakery about ten or so minutes later which allowed us to get something a little bit more substantial.
Walking down by the river last night (I forgot to take my camera to photograph) amongst the many tall buildings throughout the city there was one which towered above the rest which I discovered with some research is called the Bitexco Financial Tower. It's a unique looking building which is made up of office blocks and is lit up with a large number of lights on the side which is facing the river.
In relative terms it is quite expensive to get up to the 50th floor of the building, but at 200,000 Dong (around £6-7) is was no more expensive than my visits to the top of the KL Tower or inside the Petronas Towers. I'd read on Trip Advisor that the other way to go about things is to go through the shopping centre which is inside, and then go to the restaurant on the 51st or bar on the 52nd floor however the prices that you will pay to go to either of these would probably be about the same as paying for the entrance fee to go up to the viewing deck.
We paid for our tickets and were ushered into a lift which travelled up to the 50th floor in less than a minute. I think my ears popped at about the 30th floor on this occasion. Mostly filled with businesses I don't know how I'd cope with working up that high, I'd probably spend most of my time looking out of the window taking in the view rather than doing what I was supposed to be.
It was a pretty simple set-up at the top, but at least it was circular so you could talk all the way around the outside and get a 360 degree view of the city. There were a couple of shops up there, and a couple of places where you could sit and stare out at the impressive panorama. On the wall there was some information about the creation of the Bitexco Tower itself, and I read that it is modelled on the shape of a lotus - Vietnam's national flower.
There was a really good view out of the windows, but for some reason there were some dots on some of the windows which obscured the view, and made it difficult to take photos out of. The parts of the window you could look out of weren't also the cleanest (do window cleaners not have ladders that high?) but I managed to get some good pictures, the most impressive of which were out of the windows which faced out towards the river.
Helpfully there were a couple of terminals around the building which gave you an opportunity to pick out a few of the things you could see from this high up view, and there were also some binoculars so you could get a closer look at certain buildings. It seems like the 'Asian haze' was definitely present as some things seemed to just disappear after a certain point, and this was particularly evident when I look out at what appeared to be the main residential area of the city when all of the white buildings in the direction of the airport eventually just blended in with the background.
Eager to see what was up a little higher we took the elevator up to the restaurant on Level 51 and were able to walk around before then doing the same on Level 52 where we saw the heli-pad which is almost like a little shelf just before you get to the top of the building. Not sure who it's actually set out for, but it certainly is a very impressive place to land yourself in the city.
Coming back down to Level 6 where the shopping centre starts we walked through there briefly before deciding to head back in the direction of the impressive looking market which we had so far largely ignored on our stay so far. The Ben Thanh Market is actually opposite the bus station, and we walked past it on our way to the Bitexco Tower and also on the way home from getting some dinner last night.
It's not a huge area but upon walking in it was clear that like several of the other markets I've visited since being in Asia, everything was very crammed together and it was filled with a huge number of souvenirs - pretty much anything you can imagine was under one roof.
Earlier we'd been looking at some souvenir t-shirts in one of the many places along what is known as the 'pedestrian shopping area' and in the market we found the same items which were reduced by about 50% - good job we didn't think about buying them earlier. There were a few stalls which said 'fixed price' where they obviously didn't welcome negotiations over prices, but we soon discovered that everything else was to be bartered over as my mum started looking at some bags, and was drawn into some negotiations with a sales women!
We managed to get a decent price on something which started off being offered at 200,000 Dong, but then went down to 100,000. My mum was considering buying a scarf which started off at 350,000 and went down to 100,000 but we actually didn't have enough money to go ahead with the deal despite the woman in the shop desperately pleading for us to do business with her.
Thoroughly worn out from all the walking we came back to the hotel for a rest before heading back out for dinner at about 6pm. We decided to walk back in the direction of the Bitexco Tower with the hope of finding something on the many busy streets which come alive at night.
I think night-time is the largest contrast between what I though Vietnam would be, and how it actually is in reality. On the journey we walked through an area called September 23rd Park which is the date on which North and South Vietnam re-united after the warm.
It's quite a busy place, like the park near the hotel, and there is an area of concrete just before you get to the road where there are people doing martial arts and playing hacky sack. There is another area close by where there are a couple of pavilions and tonight we saw some kind of spontaneous dance class being held at three different points. It really is fascinating to watch all the activity that is going on around, and when you combine that with the market to the west and the ridiculously busy road surrounding the whole thing which is still filled with mopeds even late into the evening, it really is quite a scene which I don't think my camera can capture properly - my words certainly don't do it justice.
Eventually we managed to find a restaurant which was about ten minutes or so from the market. We were drawn in by the fact there were some other people in there, and they had a reasonable looking menu. My mum and I both had the same thing, a beef dish with rice noodles, which wasn't too bad, but instead of being separate as you'd expect them to be, the noodles were stuck together and came in small squares. They were quite tasty but had a very strange texture which I'm not sure my mum could cope with.
Despite eating everything the portion obviously wasn't enough to fill either of us up as we stopped at Baskin' Robbins for an ice cream on the way back to our room.
We zig-zagged up and down a few streets, and in the last couple of days I think we've been down pretty much every street in Ho Chi Minh City in order to make sure that we don't miss everything. We went down a road which was near the market, and as the main building was closed all of the shops had come out onto the street and were creating a crowded scene with lots of people walking up and down looking at the many thousands of items for sale. To make it even more confusing there were people on mopeds taking short cuts across to the main road which made it completely chaotic, but a perfect example of what these last couple of days in Vietnam have been.
Tonight marks the end of my stay in Vietnam's largest city, although when we return on Tuesday I will be staying the night there before leaving for Laos on Wednesday. Having explored most of the major sights, it will mostly be a case of sampling the food one last time, and I probably won't be able to resist taking some photos of the neon lights beaming across some of the city's main streets.
As I have mentioned before, it isn't fair to use one city to sum up an entire nation, but I feel like my experiences in Ho Chi Minh have been a good introduction to Vietnam, and totally destroyed my perceptions of how I thought things would be here. It is much more developed that I thought it would be, and with all the mopeds everywhere it has been a fascinating experience, and one which I will definitely remember when I'm crossing quiet roads back in York.
Castles in the Sky
Ian Van Dahl (2000)
No comments:
Post a Comment