Chinatown

The plan for Monday was language class, a city tour and then a trip to a market in Chinatown, followed by dinner there. Language class was the usual, we about got caught up on everything we needed to bargain at the market. The first stop on our tour was the reunification palace, which used to be the presidential palace of South Vietnam. It was actually really cool. They kept it laid out the same way as it was before the country was unified.

This is the palace. To my back is a gate, that in a famous photograph a tank smashed through. The event was symbolic to North Vietnam as the end of the war. 

These are some of the old meeting rooms. There were plenty of them. Definitely would be no scheduling conflicts if two groups wanted to have meetings at the same time. 

This tree was pretty cool looking. 'Twas enormous. 

Here's a view from the top of the palace. You can see the gate I spoke of. Between this and the consulate, being at the same places that the war took place was pretty spooky. 

After this, we stopped at the post office, which was near the Notre Dame Cathedral, so it was quite a great place to take photos. Naturally, I didn't take any. The sun had been beating badly on me all day at the palace, so all I wanted to do was nap. The post office was cool though, even though the souvenirs were pretty much the same as Ben Thanh, just more expensive. 

After the post office, we got lunch at the hotel and went to Chinatown. 

Before we went to the market there, we stopped at a Buddhist pagoda. The round things in the picture are incense. 

The market was an overwhelming experience. It was hot, busy, crowded, and not very geared to tourists. The only things being sold were day-to-day items, like clothes and food (which didn't look like it would meet FDA approval). After a rather short time, my group decided to duck out of the market and walk around Chinatown, but we didn't find anything we liked at the stores there. These remarks were my first impression. After reflecting a bit, my thoughts changed a little. It was interesting to see life in a much more raw form. Many of the people we saw were deformed or missing limbs, likely from Agent Orange. As Americans, that was especially important to see. I could never imagine the life those people lived, but they seemed perfectly content. Without the Agent Orange part, it seemed like a life people had been living for many generations. American culture doesn't have anything that is like looking into a time machine, so this was interesting.

My first reaction was pretty similar to that of the group, so the response prompted the market trip to be ended early. This also led to dinner being cancelled. We ended up at another French restaurant and I thought this one was way better. Ti Ti I think it was called. I had a beef steak and loved it. Almost ordered a second. 

Market day was a pretty important realization in that I think I'll always be a tourist in my travels. Perhaps I could ease my way into it, but such a dramatic culture shock isn't something I'm totally interested in. There are some places I'll never be able to live the lives of the locals.