Rain I don’t mind Shine The weather’s fine -The Beatles
Today’s post will be short. That’s because Day 3 is fairly leisurely, with a brief shopping spree for socks, some remote work, and the beginning of our tour with a group dinner on the 20th floor.
The hotel includes breakfast and it’s quite a spread. I had plenty of vegetables on the flights so trying to balance my diet now more equitably with anything but. As you can see, beef pho for breakfast with accoutrements, a buffet longer than a bowling alley lane.
On Day 3 Adam goes on his own adventure while I plan to catch up on some emails and go to the Takashimaya department store, about a seven minute walk from the hotel. I have three objectives at the store: one, look for a sports watch that doesn’t use any metal with nickel in the bezel or band; two, buy some short socks; three, buy a shirt.
I recall that Casio watches are inexpensive so that’s my focus. My recollection is out-dated or at least completely out of touch with reality. I ask to look at a Casio watch with titanium (Ti) as I have a topical allergy to nickel. She shows me a watch — 40 million Vietnamese Dong (₫). My fascination with currency, currency conversion, and relative costs proceeds unabated. I perfom a quick calculation in my head — somewhere around $150. I would be wrong. At today’s currency exchange rates, one American dollar is equivalent to to 24,345 ₫. Forty million Dong divided by 24,345 is $1,643.05,
No Casio watch is purchased in Ho Chi Minh City.
I find a bundle of ankle height socks. They will turn out to be perfect.
I also find a baby blue polo shirt — XL. Looks to be the right size. I been purchasing similar L shirts lately so XL seems to be an apppropriate guess on the conservative side as Vietnamese sizes are slightly smaller than American sizes. I will be wrong. The shirt hugs me in the waste a little too tightly. Covered with a coat it won’t be too bad. End shopping.
I begin my walk back to the hotel and this is the sky. Ominous, right?
Soon the streets are wet (this is the Walkway).
Then I start to lose control, taking random pictures, slipping and almost falling in front of four men.
There’s the downpour to end all downpours, I think. But I am wrong. I leave that for another day. (Turn sound off before playing unless you like the soothing sound of rain and a police siren.)
Then the tour begins with an evening meal on the top floor of our hotel, with 19 of the 23 registered attendees.
We have a fixed menu.
The venue has an open deck on one end. And on that end is a view of the Adora Art Hotel and surrounding buildings, with the Thu Thiem 2 Bridge, completed in April 2022, in the foreground.
I promise Day Four will have more pictures and more rain… Time for some privacy, creativity, and inspiration!
Staying up for 31 straight hours, from Seattle to Ho Chi Minh City, seems to have paid off on sleep adjustment. After five hours of uninterrupted sleep I wake refreshed.
Adam and I walk seven miles total in what is obviously a temperate [2] climate. A high of 93 degrees with 99% humidity. Low of 84 degrees at night. Fahrenheit. Like being in a hot rocks sauna at the local YMCA, wearing a sweater. We begin at a famous nearby pedestrian walkway, Nguyen Hue Walking Street, that is empty mid-day.
Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) has a population of 9.3 million people and 18.6 million scooters (actually pundits estimate two million scooters but that estimate was obviously made by a French colonial who hasn’t been here since 1954.[1]) So where are all the people. We know where the scooters are as they are parked everywhere, outnumber vehicles probably three to one, and require a quick eye and light step to avoid in crosswalks.
At one end of the walkway is a fountain and city hall, in a French colonial building.
We continue our walk to the Cathedral Basilica of our Lady of the Immaculate Concepion, aka Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon, currently under renovation, and imagine how beautiful it must be when not covered by scaffolding and surrounded by construction barriers. They haven’t had a great football team in years. French colonialists [1] built the cathedral between 1863 and 1880. Its two bell towers reach a high of 190 feet.
You, however, do not have to imagine how beautiful it must be as we have this series of tubes, known as the Internet, that stores pictures of the church without all the construction detritus.
Next on the itinerary is the Saigon Central Post office, constructed between 1886 and 1881. We expect this tourist attraction to have a bit of wow factor.
No so much a wow factor for someone who’s been inside St James Cathedral in Seattle. The post office is, however, a refuge for tourists, many of whom are here for touristy things, some here to obtain stamps and send mail.
Vietnam’s reputation for food precedes it. We see many many many eating establishments along our walk, many closed perhaps because it is Sunday. French colonialists [1] were here for many years and traditional Vietnamese fare fused with French fare. Which brings us to the Banh Mi sandwich.
With the many options available to us
we settle on My Banh Mi (57 Đ. Nguyễn Du, Bến Nghé, Quận 1, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh 70000, Vietnam).
I am a sucker for Vietnamese Bahn Mi sandwiches and recently introduced the Tacoma variety to Mom, who essentially had the reaction, “where have you been all my life.” The meal costs about $23 US, including four beers (I think Adam drinks three beers but it could just as easily have been two beers each). Yes, I drink Sapporo Premium, a ubiquitous Japanese beer. Adam settles on Tiger Beer, a Singapore lager style beer, “world acclaimed,” established in 1932, if you believe the can.
It’s a good meal, but I’d like to find something more off the beaten path. It’s a risk eating any food here with vegetables (e.g., lettuce) that has been washed with tap water. Tap water in Saigon can contain bacteria or impurities that can make one sick. Some point to the “dangerous levels of heavy metals like lead, iron, arsenic and manganese, in addition to industrial chemicals, pesticides and herbicides [in Ho Chi Minh City’s tap water].” Where Saigon’s Water Comes From and Why It Matters – Saigoneer
I don’t hesitate using the shower in the hotel so, there’s that.
Adam I and stop by a local mini mart and buy 24 bottles of water (an entire case, still in the box) for $6 US.
We continue with the water theme and stop at the Ho Chi Minh City Aquarium.
Adam recommends, on our trip back to the hotel, that we walk through a residential district rather than stick to the main streets. It is a good recommendation. In a labyrinthian street plan straight out of Greek mythology, where we lose our way into dead ends countless times, we end up in Japan Town, a “chic and vibrant neighborhood” that contains the largest Japanese population in Ho Chi Minh City. We emerge from an entrance, finally, after what seems like hours. Well worth the detour.
We return to the hotel. I take a nap (as you are probably ready to do now if you are still reading this). We buy tickets to A O Show, held at the Saigon Opera House, a 550-seat venue. The show is almost sold out, so we purchase two tickets on the main floor near the stage, separate from each other by three rows. I find myself in the second row, center, with an unobstructed view. Photographs during the performance are not allowed so you are left with a photograph of the ticket, the opera house, the ceiling, and the stage, five minutes before curtain.
Following the performance we walk back along Nguyen Hue Walking Street. It has transformed. The fountain foredropping city hall is lit up, as are the surrounding buildings.
Compare the empty walking street earlier in the day to now. The photobomb dude in the middle of the below picture exemplifies the mood of most people here. There may be more locals than tourists. The temperature has cooled to a comfortable 84 degrees. There are street musicians, food and trinket hawkers, one security guard who appears napping, a little pan-handling, dancers, and living statutes.
More to tell but we save this for another day.
[1] “On May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam fell after a four-month siege led by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French pulled out of the region.” (Milestones: 1953–1960 – Office of the Historian (state.gov))
[2] Yes, I know what temperate means and this climate is not temperate.
Day 1. We are staying at the Hotel Grand Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
It is a nice 20-storey hotel with three elevators, big enough for three people without luggage, serving 251 rooms. Here’s what the hotel says:
“In a restored 1930s building overlooking the Saigon River, this upscale hotel is a 7-minute walk from the ornate Municipal Theatre.
Featuring city or pool views, the airy rooms offer free Wi-Fi and flat-screen TVs, plus minibars, and tea and coffeemakers. Upgraded rooms add sitting areas, while refined suites have living rooms and/or 2 bedrooms. Room service is offered 24/7.
There’s a casual buffet eatery, and an international restaurant with a piano, plus a posh lobby bar and a rooftop cafe with panoramic city views. There’s also a gym, a business center and a casino, as well as an outdoor pool with a poolside bar. Babysitting is available.”
(Spoiler alert.) How easy it is to embrace certainty in our institutions, beliefs, and systems which, in their purpose or consequence, perpetuate the exploitation of society’s vulnerable.
Tara Westover describes her escape from a reclusive Idaho homestead to the heights of academia. Her escape from the no education scrap heap to academic success at Cambridge and Harvard seems…implausible. Her memoir made me wonder if the author Westover sacrificed truth to make a better story. You can read some of her footnotes and admissions of faulty memory cynically — they make her appear to be a more credible narrator.
Her academic champions were all wise and knowing older men whose almost uncanny discovery of her intellect and potential contrasted starkly with her own father’s simple-minded view of women as either faithful servants of their husbands or whores.
As a critical reader I must question her credibility. When I question her credibility am I being unfair, parochial, misogynistic?
There was in the end something I found very difficult to reconcile. If she is so broken — and her struggle and internal conflict strongly suggest she is still broken — how could she have written the story of her journey with such wisdom, penetrating insight and self-knowledge?
If she has such wisdom, insight and self-knowledge why would she publish this book? It was about her education in its many-layered meanings but it was a huge f*** you to her parents and brother “Shawn.” Once Random House agreed to publish it she must have comprehended at some level the book would be perceived as a very public vindictive act aimed at her parents and brother.
I’m still mad at Chris Carter and Lance Henriksen for letting “Millennium” get cancelled. And at Megan Gallagher for quitting and taking the humanity out of Millennium. And ourusboros. But whenever the snake’s eating its own tail we come full circle back to where it really began, The X Files.
I haven’t seen X-Files Re-opened, the one off reboot for millennials because I’m trying to watch the entire original series — at least until season seven — with my youngest son. And he’s digging it.
The first season I own on DVD is season three and, today, when we reached season three, I proudly popped it in. “O my God,” my son exclaimed. “That looks awful.” And indeed it did.
I tried it in my other DVD player. Same result. It looked like some millennial fired from Trump’s show videotaped original broadcasts on a 19″ television and transferred the videotapes to DVD. I mean, pretty good graphics for circa 1994 if you’re standing outside in the rain watching a stranger’s television through his living room window.
We went back to Netflix where I expected to confirm the worse – the transfer on Netflix streaming wasn’t much better and, in order to get it on widescreen, Netflix panned and scanned.
But not today. Apparently Chris Carter decided in season one to film all of the episodes (except the pilot?) in widescreen although the series was originally broadcast in 4:3. In December 2015 when the entire series was re-released on Blu-ray each show (except the pilot?) was transferred sublimely and lovingly to high definition and an extra 30% or so of footage was added to each frame. OMG there is a Santa Claus in 2016 and it’s Chris Carter.
I’m still mad about Millennium but I’m very happy about my high definition widescreen X-Files. I can think of a worst way to watch X-Files but I can’t think of a more undignified way than a full frame 4:3 low definition transfer.
