Oh - the weather outside is frightful...
...but the air conditioning is delightful! Yes, we've arrived safely in balmy Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), also known as Saigon -- our last leg of the trip. And while it's less humid than Hoi An or Nha Trang, it's a lot warmer. It was 94 degrees with 80+% humidity today. We now have keen eyes for water vendors and ice cream shops. Our ice cream stop today was at 11:00 a.m. and we had no shame in that - we're already planning to get more this afternoon.
We're staying at the Majestic Hotel - cool place that was renovated back to its original charm a few years back; and right on the river. Today we saw the Museum of War Remnants - mostly a collection of photographs, but by far the most even-handed display about the war decades. We tried to visit the old Presidential Palace - the one in the famous photo from the fall of Saigon with the N. Vietnamese tanks crashing through the iron gates, but it was closed for an official reception. We also walked by the old US Embassy - which is now the current US Consulate. Couldn't see too much because it's completely walled off.
After all that, we were pretty hot so we cabbed it back to the hotel and took a dip in the pool until we recalibrated to a normal body temp. One oddity is that the streets in this district are totally decked out for the holidays. Our hotel has two different trees in the lobby, a fake snow scene on the front door, and a mock fireplace with a gingerbread house on the mock mantel. Most of the hotels and many stores and restaurants also have similar decorations. The ice cream shop this morning had little snowmen suspended all around the windows. It struck us as extremely surreal to see snowmen in a country this hot! We'll write more later...
We're staying at the Majestic Hotel - cool place that was renovated back to its original charm a few years back; and right on the river. Today we saw the Museum of War Remnants - mostly a collection of photographs, but by far the most even-handed display about the war decades. We tried to visit the old Presidential Palace - the one in the famous photo from the fall of Saigon with the N. Vietnamese tanks crashing through the iron gates, but it was closed for an official reception. We also walked by the old US Embassy - which is now the current US Consulate. Couldn't see too much because it's completely walled off.
After all that, we were pretty hot so we cabbed it back to the hotel and took a dip in the pool until we recalibrated to a normal body temp. One oddity is that the streets in this district are totally decked out for the holidays. Our hotel has two different trees in the lobby, a fake snow scene on the front door, and a mock fireplace with a gingerbread house on the mock mantel. Most of the hotels and many stores and restaurants also have similar decorations. The ice cream shop this morning had little snowmen suspended all around the windows. It struck us as extremely surreal to see snowmen in a country this hot! We'll write more later...
posted by ToddV at
3:56 PM
