We spent the long Hariraya weekend in Ho Chi Minh Ville (or Saigon, not to be confused with Hanoi). I hadn't been since 1994 and this trip made me realise that Vietnam will always be my "madeleine" (ref to Proust) in Asia. It was the first country I ever visited and I will probably never experience quite the same thrill again. (I will post some pictures of that 1994 trip at a later date).
Enough nostalgia! It was kind of weird going to HCMC for the weekend, I guess I am still getting used to living in Singapore. We got a great deal to stay in the grande dame of hotels, the Hotel Continental (meeting place for journalists in the 70s and seen in the 1992 film Indochine). Very well situated with a beautiful facade just opposite the renovated opera, it is a leftover of the French rule, along with the town hall, various churches and markets. We spent our first afternoon finding our bearings and ended up having dinner at the Ben Thanh market where street restaurants sprout up every evening at nightfall. It is popular with visitors and locals alike apparently and was arguably our best meal of the weekend. I can't tell you the name of the stall we stopped at but it was the busiest one.
The next day we wandered a bit further visiting Notre Dame, the "reunification palace" that hasn't been touched since 1975 apparently and a few museums. It is ironic that the Vietnamese government devotes most of its museums to their wars of independence and the horrors that the country endured as the only people who visit are foreign tourists and the majority of the country is now too young to either remember or care about it.
We took a day trip to visit the infamous Cu Chi tunnels (seeing how it has become a major tourist attraction is pretty mind boggling) and the main Cao Dai temple (a religion with about 2 million devotees it takes a bit of something from all other religions and venerates Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and Victor Hugo is a saint which made this religion very popular with the French rulers way back when). The rest of the time was spent walking the streets, crossing the streets without getting run over by the swarms of motorcycles (helmets were only made compulsory a couple of years ago...), shopping and eating! The centre of HCMC is very pleasant to wander around in thanks to the tree planted sidewalks. It is actually quite green with a number of parks.
I have fallen in love with the Pho soup and with Pho 24 a local restaurant chain. It is a noodle soup (all Asian countries have one) the distinction is that it is made in a beef broth (most other Asian countries don't raise beef) and complemented with thin slices of raw beef that cook in the steaming hot broth. It is delicious and as for all these noodle dishes the secret is in the broth and is generally much too much effort to make at home.
Vietnam also has an authentic coffee house culture. They drink it very strong, are big producers and have the equivalent of cafes all over the place. They are very big on ice cream too.
Another great weekend, very exotic compared to Singapore. It is also fun to be in a city where people's living conditions have so massively improved over the past 15 years. We saw several international private schools... Next time Hanoi!
I had the pleasure of discovering the work of JG Farrell through his excellent Siege of Krishnapur, a fictionalised account of the life of a British community during the Indian Rebellion in the mid 19th century. His last published novel before a premature death was The Singapore Grip which "completed" his colonial trilogy - his first novel Troubles being situated in Ireland during its war of independence.
does not mean no crime. However Singapore has one of the lowest crime rates in the world (will keep a discussion about crime&punishment for another post) and compared to Paris I am becoming very lazy about paying attention to my belongings.... An accident waiting to happen when I visit back home.
June is a pretty important month in Singapore. It is the summer holidays for schoolchildren, it is the hottest month of the year and it's the month of the Great Singapore Sale. I assume it was originally set up to attract even more tourists to Singapore, so they would actually come into town when on their way to Bali, Thailand etc. The first weekend of the sale is pretty hectic with coupons and fliers for deals being handed out at virtually all street corners.
