Day 2 in Saigon (3/3/14)

My first task today was to get the bike round the corner to the mechanics by 8am for him to service the forks and sort the rattling front panels. I was told to come back at 11 to pick it up which meant it wasn't worth going anywhere far to see any sites as I'd have to leave almost straight away to come back and pick the bike up. So I spent the morning checking if anyone had responded to my advert for the bike on Craig's list and the rest of the time poring over my lonely planet book planning which places I would be able to see in the time I had left. There were 3 places of interest in the city that I wanted to tick off. The first was the War Remnants Museum, the second was the Notre Dame Cathedral (no I'm not going mad) and the third was the Saigon Skydeck at the Bitexco Financial Tower. They were all walkable and so I got a map from the hostel to work out the best route to do all three. My day was timed and mapped out perfectly. What could possibly go wrong? At 11 I went to pick the bike up and everything was fine with that. I wasn't convinced that the seals would get replaced and I thought they would try and just re-fill the forks with oil, but the forks no longer bottomed out with a loud clonk when braking so accepted that however they'd achieved that was good enough. And the front dash surround no longer rattled. All good. I returned the bike to the hostel and picked up my bits for the day. I walked to the museum checking my map as I went to make sure I was on the right road. I got to the museum entrance at about 12.15, which was just after they'd closed for lunch. Really? Who closes for lunch these days? So it would seem that opening times were going to be the things that could go wrong. My plans had been a waste of time then. It wasn't worth me going on to do the other two sites as they were about a half hour walk away and the museum was due to open in just over an hour so I decided to have a long lunch at a nearby restaurant and stay there as long as possible without overstaying my welcome. I checked out two restaurants near each other and was surprised to find they had exactly the same menu but thought nothing of it and figured they probably got them printed at the same place. One of them was nearly full the other empty. I chose the empty one thinking that they wouldn't hurry me along once I'd finished my meal as they wouldn't need the table for the next customer. I settled in and spent ages looking at the menu and eventually ordered my food. Then after about 15 minutes the waiter disappeared out the front of the restaurant. It wasn't until he returned with my food that the penny dropped. They WERE the same restaurant. But there was about 50 metres between them with trees and bushes filling the void. Weird. So why was the other one busy and this one empty? I didn't want to linger on that answer. I ate my seafood pasta very slowly, which was very tasty and I delayed my dessert order as long as I felt was acceptable. I eventually ordered some traditional New Zealand ice cream wondering if it was actually from there. I would be able to find out in a few months when I go there and so memorised the name. I delayed asking for the bill until the absolute last minute and filled the time with playing games on my phone and jumping on the internet and checking the other opening times of my planned visits in the lonely planet so as not to cock up there as well. By the time I'd asked for the bill and paid, the hour and a quarter was up. I'd done it! Back to the museum I strode triumphant in the knowledge I had the skill to blend in and not to overstay my welcome in a public place. If only there was a certificate for that. I could be a spy. Being distinctly average definitely has its advantages. I'm thinking too much again. At the museum entrance I bought my ticket and walked around the american war vehicles in the grounds for a while before going inside. The ground floor was filled mainly with propaganda posters from the war with a few information boards too. From the outset it was apparent that this museum was weighted heavily in the Vietnamese' favour, depicting the Americans as cruel and evil. And why not, it was in their country. A similar one probably exists in America depicting the Vietnamese in the same way. I took it as best I could with a pinch of salt. But nothing could prepare me for the photos I would see on the next 2 floors. I've been to war museums before and seen loads of memorabilia and bombs and guns and facts but this museum had so many more photos from the war grounds than any of the others. And again I took the description of what the photo showed with a pinch of salt as any photo can be looked at in two ways but they don't lie. The detail in some of them and the ability and skill with which they'd been restored was jaw dropping. They couldn't lie and simply showed the horrific and heartbreaking nature of war and it's aftermath. Up till now I've just accepted that war happens and heard about it on the news but these photos had a massive impact on my thoughts of at least the Vietnamese war. It was brutal. They showed bombs exploding, soldiers hiding in trenches, the effects of agent orange, areas of Vietnam before and after, injured soldiers, tons of vehicles setting off on sorties, everything. The first one that really caught my attention was of a Vietnamese man looking scared and cowering away from an American soldier. I don't know why it had such an impact but it really made me stop and stare. I spent a long time here taking everything in and was surprised by the effect it had on me. I really wasn't prepared for that. I left the museum after a couple of hours and made my way to the Notre Dame cathedral passing by the Reunification Palace on the way. I would have loved to go inside to see it properly but just didn't have time so settled for a photo from outside. The lonely planet says "The palace was built in 1966 to serve as South Vietnam's Presidential palace. The first communist tanks in Saigon crashed through the gates of this building on the morning of 30 April 1975 when Saigon surrendered to the North. The building is a time warp, having been left just as it looked on that momentous day." I arrived at the Notre Dane cathedral and was amused by how completely out of character it is for Vietnam. It sits in the heart of the government quarter surrounded by big modern office blocks and banks and "looks like it's been beamed in directly from Normandy" as the lonely planet describes it. That wasn't untrue. HCM really is a city similar to London. Although I wasn't necessarily missing England or London, I do like HCM for its similarities. On to the Bitexco Financial Tower. The tower is 262m high and dwarfs all other buildings around it and because of its unique architecture is recognisable from afar. On the 49th floor is the Saigon Skydeck which is a floor with glass windows all around it from which you get an all round view of HCM. Again it is massively similar to The Shard in London both from its architecture and its interior design. The difference is the gift shop is much more reasonably priced. And as a result I was tempted by a souvenir in the form of a block of glass inside which was engraved a 3D image of the tower. Sad and touristy I know but for 6 quid I really couldn't argue. That in London would be about 36 quid! The view was stunning with the river sweeping by in a big arch on one side and the city rising high on the other. I even found a mini version of Piccadilly Circus with all the billboards on the corner of a building. After a few walks round with many photo's taken I decided it was time to head back to the hostel. It was now about 4pm and I wanted to try and catch up with the bloke, who's name was Huy, I'd met on the bus from Hanoi airport to Hanoi town centre when I'd arrived in Vietnam. I'd already emailed him and we had arranged to meet at a coffee shop he owned in a road near the museum where I'd been earlier. The address he'd sent me was very confusing but I managed to get a road name from it. I am aware how dodgy this sounds but I promise you he's married and perfectly legit! On the way back to the hostel I passed HCM motorbikes and the owner, Ben, a non censored swearing machine from Liverpool, was in this time so I had a chat with him about the bike I had for sale. He asked me to bring it round for him to have a look at to see if he could better his colleagues quote. I went and collected the bike and rode back to the shop. He gave it a once over and we spent a while chatting about the price and where I'd been on it when a passer by, who noticed the 'for sale' sign on it, stopped and asked who was selling it. Ben pointed him in my direction and told me to do my salesman bit on him. This guy was a little under 6' and was a well built typical looking Harley rider. At a guess he was late 40's maybe early 50's. During our chat I found out his name was Gary and he was from Sydney and he intended to do the reverse trip of mine with his dad. The bike was basically what he was looking for and I told him I would part with it for $250 best price. He said he'd pay that and could I bring it round the next morning at 8am to his hotel about 30 seconds from HCM motorbikes. I agreed, happy knowing I had a sale. Ben said it was a good price and his commission was a pint of beer when I was next in, I thanked him and headed back to the hostel. It was now about 5pm and knowing I wanted to visit the Cu Chi tunnels tomorrow I asked at the reception if it was too late to book on the hostels excursion. They said no and the trip would leave at 8am and get back about 3pm. This would clash with my bike sale so I got changed quickly and dashed round to Gary's hotel to try and rearrange the meeting time. But after a check of his room the manager said he wasn't in so I left a message with my email address for him to let me know if sooner was possible. After the stories about muggings in HCM I decided to leave my phone and wallet at the hostel heading out with just a little cash so I would have to wait till I returned to the hostel later to check my emails. I'd arranged to meet Huy at around 6pm at the coffee shop and was now running late so I risked taking an xe om which is a scooter taxi. They're renowned for taking the long way round and overcharging so I was sure to agree a price after a little haggling before leaving. I got to the road about 6.20 and I paid the rider the agreed fee which he surprisingly stuck to and started looking for the coffee shop. The buildings around me started at number 1 and as his building, from memory from the email, was 3b it couldn't be that far. I looked for the name of the shop but couldn't see it anywhere. I started walking up the road and after about a 20 minute walk was standing outside building 75. This couldn't be right so I headed back to the start of the road and started looking again. After about 10 minutes and as it was now getting dark I gave up and walked back to the hostel. It was about a 45 minute walk back. It was actually quite interesting seeing the different parts of HCM that I walked through by night, I stuck to the main roads and didn't encounter any problems at all despite what I'd been told, not even a threatening look. As I got nearer the main part of town I passed a night market so stopped by to take a look but there was nothing that I hadn't seen before. I got the usual "hello you buy from me?" questions to which I chuckled and said "no thank you". I was soon on my way again and arrived at the backpacker street of bars a little while later. As I was walking down it back to the hostel I passed Gary going the other way so got his attention and asked if he'd got my message. He had and he'd sent me an email reply saying he could meet me at 6 instead. That was seriously early but probably for the best so I wasn't late for the bus to the tunnels tomorrow morning. I said that was fine and left him and got back to the hostel about 8pm. Mikkel and Stefan were in the room and about to head out and they invited me along, so after emailing Huy to apologise, we headed to the backpacker street for some food and drinks. There were a lot of people, mostly women, out trying to get you into their bar and we accepted one invite and sat down at a table outside on the street. Within seconds we were surrounded by Vietnamese women who worked there. They weren't really saying much just standing there looking pretty. The three of us laughed and we said we were just here for a beer and didn't need the company. This was a perfectly normal looking bar nothing strip clubby about it at all and not even a pole inside so we were a little surprised. A couple of beers later we moved on to another completely normal bar and got the same response. We expected it this time so pre empted the harem arrival and settled down with our beers. We chatted and laughed about anything and everything including the endless barrage of people hawking their goods while we drank and I told them where I'd been today and the places they might like to visit as they were heading out around town tomorrow. We hit a few more bars and necked quite a few more beers before I'd had my fill and left them about midnight knowing I would need to be up at stupid o'clock to sell the bike. I got back to the hostel fine and settled into bed. The other people in the room had left that day so it was just us three left in it and I soon fell asleep with no one else there to disturb me. Until about 4am when Stefan and Mikkel returned home and woke me up. I jokingly gave them the shush of a disapproving parent whilst grinning before falling asleep knowing I'd be up too soon anyway.