On our last full day of this vacation, we did a "let's see everything we can in HCMC in a single day" tour. (Note: HCMC has the same population as NYC but it covers a smaller area - but my point is, it's a big city). I was absolutely not in the mood for this extravaganza, so I did not take many pictures. But I'll recap as best I can.
To start, we stayed at the Caravelle hotel while in HCMC. It was very nice - it had the nicest fitness center I've seen in a hotel. But it was a really big hotel so there were a lot of people there - meaning breakfast was crowded and I do hate when people are in my way at breakfast. But, as I said, a very nice hotel. Here's a partial view from our 20th-floor room:
Our one dinner on our own, for our last night of vacation and our last night in Vietnam, was at a restaurant called Hoa Tuc. We both ordered fish and both dishes were excellent. Highly recommend.
Okay, so, our full-day tour recap. We started out at the Notre Dame cathedral. Built by the french, using materials all imported from France, in the late 1800's when Vietnam was ruled by France.
Then moved on to the post office. Also built by the French.
Then the Independence Palace, aka Reunification Palace, built in the 60's:
Where you could see amazing 70's color combinations like these:
Then our guide made us stop for a coffee (I had a mango smoothie, naturally). Here we had to wait for the coffee to slowly drip into the glass.
Then, because the day wasn't full enough already, Martin requested that we visit some sort of art shop so we could buy some art. This took 2 hours while we wandered around trying to decide what we liked. They had a lot of beautiful things at this shop where they use paint but also duck egg shells and mother of pearl to enhance the paintings. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the artwork but go check it out if you're in HCMC.
Then we were hungry, so we went to a hole-in-the-wall place to get some Pho for lunch. My chicken Pho was *amazing*. It had these little bits of caramelized onions in it, which I'd never had in Pho before, and the broth just had so much flavor. I mean, my Pho that I get in Germany is good, but this was way better.
Then we went to visit a house where ammunition was hidden in the basement during the Tet Offensive. It was never discovered. Here's a picture of the stuff in the basement. Oh and me going down into the basement through the small hole in the floor.
Next on the agenda - markets! Not many pictures here, we started out just wandering out from the secret munitions house through markets where they sold mostly fruit and veg but also some clothes or spices or anything, really. Kind of like how we'd go to the grocery store or to CVS to grab something before or after work, here people go to these street markets where they sell basically everything.
Then we went to chinatown and wandered around there for awhile. There were a lot of textiles for sale there, and rice, and assorted kitschy items. It was drizzly and we were tired and we were walking on busy traffic-filled streets ... so really just a few sub-par pictures:
After we wandered through markets it was time to go to the 52nd floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city, the Bitexco Tower, to have a drink and enjoy the (cloudy, rainy) view. We weren't in the mood for cocktails as it was only 4pm so I ordered an apple raspberry crumble smoothie and it was basically the best thing I've ever had to drink.
Our guide tried to take pictures of us but all were failures.
Some pics of the view:
And thus our big HCMC-in-one-day tour came to an end. Phew.
The next day we had to fly back to Germany but we managed to fit in a cooking class before we left. We made fresh spring rolls with pork and shrimp, a really tasty chicken dish with ginger and lots of yummy spices, beef Pho (the chef helped a lot with this as it has to simmer 24 hours before you do a million other things to it - turns out really good pho is super complicated), and then we didn't help make dessert but we were served some super-gross coconut-watery gelatinous mush. It was a fun time and the other people in the course were pretty fun as well.
This is the dessert. Nobody ate it but we all tried it at least.
No comments:
Post a Comment