Sai Gon

Fri 4th. May 2018.

Our tourist guide, Nam, said Sai gon means "little town". Here the word is spelt in 2 parts, sai and gon, not the usual one word practice.

We left KLIA 2 on Sunday 29th. April, and returned Thursday afternoon, 3rd. May. There was Kak Long and her brood, no daddy (somebody has to look after the family's hotel back in Bangi), and there were us, yours truly and Idah. This was our second trip together, after Bandung, this time minus Bal. She had to be with her kak long, giving birth to her second offspring in Kuching. Of course we made sure we sent her as many photos and videos of Sai Gon as possible, just to make her sore ! She was, too !

The many pictures of Sai Gon, or the politically "correct" name Ho Chi Minh City, I'd seen before do not do justice to the town. Yes, the teeming motorcycles were there, in real life even more than imagined.  But otherwise Sai Gon seems like any modern town we see anywhere else. There are large well-appointed shops and nicely-designed buildings, both old and new. Old because of the early French occupation, and new with the post-Vietnam war period rebulding.

A big surprise was that in all the shops we went into, everybody spoke fairly good Malay, complete with the gen Y idioms like "murah gila"!  And they not only accepted Malaysian ringgit, they preferred it to their own Vietnamese dong. Our own tourist guide cracked jokes in Malay !

I enjoyed the drives out of town to the country side, to the River Mekong and one of the islands, and took walks away from the group to see as much of the local sights as time allowed. The ladies, of course, enjoyed the shopping more. Saigon is apparently great shopping for Malaysians. This explains the expertise in Malay and accepting the ringgit. In fact in many of the outlets our guide took us to, they were literally jammed with Malaysian women, with the men, like me, resigned to patiently wait outside. And the shopkeepers seemed to know this, because they put a lot of those little chairs outside. As I said, mostly I walked around the block, just looking around and watching the people.

Kak Long secured a nice apartment for our stay, right on the 24th floor of the 25-storey building, the "Icon 56". The place looked new, and the 3-room apartment was comfortable, with a well-equipped kitchen, a furnished combined sitting & dining room, and 2 well-supplied bathrooms. The wi-fi gadget made our mobile phones communicable, and the tv sets in each room carried many English-speaking channels beside the Vietnamese ones. This home-away-from-home made our stay that much more pleasant. Good for you, Kak Long. Or maybe it was Wani. Anyway, I made full use of the kitchen. I'd brought along some coffee, powdered goat's milk, and mee-maggi. I bought eggs and bread and jam from the store on the ground floor. Presto ! my breakfast for 4 days was accounted for, because, unlike in Bandung, this meal wasn't included in the tour arrangement, whereas lunch and dinner were.

Road traffic was something else.

Motorcycles rule Saigon streets. The place swarms with these two-wheelers, coming in many types and sizes, carrying people and everything else imagineable right up to breaking point. The honking is constant, from the motorcycles trying to clear the way, to the motorcars, vans, trucks and buses to warn the motorcycles weaving in thick droves around them. This is unlike Bandung, where there's hardly any honking at all. But like Bandung, I didn't see a single accident and any sign of bad tempers. How they manage not to crash into each other confounds me. You have to see it to believe it. The roads are wide enough, and round-abouts and pavements are clearly marked, and there's even a sprinkling of operational traffic lights, not many but they exist, and they change colours appropriately red-orange-green. But nobody follows them. And yet nobody crash. Amazing.

We went to the War Museum. This should be a must stop for all. It's a Vietnam War Museum, the 17-year war fought with the Americans. By comparison, WWII and the Korean War were each for 3 years. The hundreds of photos on display are truly moving, so moving I saw a young white guy quietly crying, standing in front of a picture. The atrocities committed by young American draftees are legend, and here we see plenty of them in horrific photos, with gruesome pictures of women and children killed by American teenaged soldiers in the name of fighting for democracy! The many white visitors I saw spoke American accented English and other European tongues, with familiar French and Russian sounds. Maybe some relatives, or someone they know fought in Vietnam. I wonder what went through their minds.

We took the 10.25 a.m. flight, this time to KLIA 1. We landed on schedule at 1.25 local, with the 1-hour difference in time. Dekna was late, although she herself said in her whatsapp I'd reminded her about 15 times.

That night I'd plan to attend the "Pakatan Harapan's" campaign at Kampong Kerinchi. GE14 is in full throttle. I want to watch Fahmy play.

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