Ho Chi Minh City Part 3

On Day 2, we visited HCMC's Chinatown which didn't turn out to be anything special; rows of weary-looking shophouses running along the roads and a central market selling the same things we could have found in Ben Thahn Market, which was 10 minutes away from where we stayed. The most Chinatown-y thing about their Chinatown was a temple here and there, and that's about it. Not to say that I expected thousands of pigtailed slant-eyes running around pulling rickshaws and eating noodles while squatting by the road but I won't be giving that place a priority visit anytime soon.



A typical scene at Chinatown. Or Ho Chi Minh City District 1, where we stayed in. Or the area surrounding Ben Thahn Market. As you can see, the weather didn't get any cooler on my second day there and neither did the amount of motobais get any lesser.

Speaking of which, here's how the traffic works in HCMC:



The scooters and motorbikes, being the nimble little bastards they are, weave in and out of the larger vehicles which are always caught in jams. This photo was only made possible because I stood right in the middle of the road with the camera up for more than ten minu — Okay seriously, what am I talking about, I would have shat my pants so hard that the stream of shit will create the second Mekong River. The traffic there is downright scary and there's no way to take a head-on shot of it.



The main reason why we risk being roadkill: The promise of good food. This is called the Bun Thit Nuong and despite sounding like a tasty mish-mash of ass and breasts, it's not because it's actually a light and cool vermicelli dish, perfect for staving off the heat. It's like cold Soba noodles with herbs for an added layer of fragrance and taste, and a lot cheaper as well, this bowl (plus the seasoned meat thingy) cost me less than $1.50.



Okay, I don't know what this is called because I think I ordered this by pointing around wildly and hoping for the best but this isn't too bad, vermicelli in a warm broth which tasted like chicken stock and herbs, can't go wrong. Except for the radish. I fucking hate radish.



The famous Vietnamese fresh spring rolls, they're the kind of food which taste like how they look and in this case, it's a good thing. Like the colours suggest, they taste refreshing, sweet and snappy. One thing about these spring rolls that amazed me was the thinness of the skin and how tightly they are wrapped around the fillings. Bouncy, taut skin and wrapped tightly, like how I like my women. There's also the sweet dip which tasted too complex for me to correctly describe so just visit the wikipedia hyperlink instead.



This is the guy whom we bought the food from and after successfully managing to converse with him in Mandarin, he's a Mr. Lau (Or Liu). See, speaking Hua Yu is cool! And I didn't even need an awkward government-backed campaign to tell me so! But seriously, it was really comforting to be able to have a natural conversation with a hawker there after having to finger around like a dumb tourist who's afraid of anarchic traffic. Pay attention in your Chinese lessons, kids, it's more than just something to appease your future Chinese overlords in the year 2040.



After the meal, we bought coffee powder. This is the most boring photo ever, why did I even capture and upload it? I don't know. I tried speaking Chinese to the shop-owners again but they could only speak dialect, resulting in a confusing minute or two and a slightly-reduced appreciation for my Mother Tongue.

As mentioned many times, it was scorching in Ho Chi Minh City so whenever we found a stall selling cold dessert, we bought it.



It costs less than 20 cents.

The ice cream costs around the same as well.



My fourth glass of iced coffee in two days, this one was at one of the many Trung Nguyen coffeehouses, which is the Vietnamese equivalent of Starbucks but they actually sell, you know, coffee. There's even an outlet in Singapore Polytechnic but I don't remember liking it because it was quite expensive, about three to four times more so than in Vietnam.

When it was presented to me, I had no idea what to do because I have never received more than a plastic cup, ice and coffee when I ordered iced coffee. I had to call the waitress for help and turns out that I had to wait for the filter to stop dripping and then pour the mixture of coffee and condensed milk into the glass of ice. Such complexity, I must have looked like a red-nosed Einstein. Anyway, it was from the air pollution which did a decent job of making me want to rub my nose off from irritation.

Next update: The War Remnants Museum, effects of Agent Orange, victims of bomb raids and other hilarities!