Ho Chi Minh City

Today started off with quite an adventure. Dave and I had decided the night before to get a massage in the morning, as it is something which prevalent and cheap here. We weren’t really interested in the ‘special’ massages, so we decided to go to the Vietnamese Institute for Traditional Massage. It was very close to our hotel, and cheap, so it was just up our alley (literally and figuratively). It is run by the Ho Chi Minh City Blind Association and all the masseurs are blind. Se we had another good complimentary breakfast and headed out, Danthemanstan was happy to stay at the hotel and sleep in. Dave said he knew where it was, but we couldn’t find it, so we went back to the hotel, looked again, and again were unsuccessful. Now, Dave has a very good sense of direction and we have done fine on all our trips, but we just couldn’t find this place. So we jumped on the Internet at a café and got the address (or so we thought). We went to the address, which was a hair salon. At this point, I was intent on getting a massage, given all our searching. So I went in, and tried to “charade” a blind massage parlor to them, but this proved fruitless, albeit quite humorous for the ladies at the salon. As we stepped out of the salon, without a clue where to go, we noticed two blind women walking down the street. We decided that there probably weren’t two blind institutes on one street, so we followed them. Yes, the sighted following the blind. We were amazed how they made it through the absolutely crazy traffic, with the help of a few of the street merchants. We felt a little strange, but it worked, and they led us directly to the massage parlor. The massage was the first in my life and I thought it was pretty good, but I tend to think that it might not be quite top notch. But at only $3 for an hour, it was quite the bargain.

We had a great lunch of pho, the national dish, at a restaurant which the hotel receptionist recommended-Danthemanstan had joined us by now. Pho is rice noodles with onions, green onions, and meat. Fresh greens, hot peppers, sprouts, and lime juice are at every table and can be added at the eater’s desire. It is pretty good and it seems the Vietnamese might eat it for all three meals every day. In the afternoon, we took the tour of the ‘Independence’ or ‘Revolution’ Palace, which is where the Viet Minh stormed their tanks to win the Vietnam War. The highlight of our afternoon though, was a visit to the Laotian consulate. Since we are headed there later in our journey, and we walked right by it, we figured we would inquire about our visas. We showed the guard our passports and entered a very nice set of buildings. We went into the building and all the lights were off. The sign said “open”, but no one was in sight. We hollered hello, and went into the hallway and eventually a few men came out to help us. We partially filled out the forms, but didn’t have any photos. No problem for the Laotians, they just made copies from our passport pictures. We waited awhile, and just like that had visas. Apparently our shoddy paperwork (we weren’t sure of our date of arrival, place of arrival, or final destination in Laos) was good enough for Laos (we think the $50 visa fee was the only important part). The staff at the consulate weren’t exactly in ‘consul’ clothes, but instead board shorts and pastel beach shirts.

An additional highlight of the day was dinner with Tho, the hotel receptionist. She eagerly accepted our invitation to dinner, and showed us to a delicious pho restaurant (big surprise). After dinner, we were off on another journey. We had purchased “sleeper” bus tickets to Nha Trang, a town on the southeastern coast. The bus we loaded didn’t really seem like a sleeper. The seats reclined a lot, so it wasn’t horrible. On the other hand, we had paid for a sleeper bus, and this was not conducive to sleeping. We picked up some other people at stops around town, and the crawled through Ho Chi Minh City traffic for a while. The bus was all about change; it changed from hot to cold and lit to dark at the driver’s (or someone else’s) whim. Then, for the kicker on the unpleasant trip, at about 2 in the morning, the bus stopped. This was customary, but at this stop we all had to get out. Apparently, we were getting on to a real sleeper bus. The second bus was much more comfortable, but of course took over an hour to load, with some less fortunate passengers stuck sleeping on the floor. I did my best to sleep, but it was a pretty poor night’s sleep, even by transportation standards.