Wow, this is an intense city. Very loud: people honk here more than in New York City - much more. Honking is how you part the sea of motorbikes to press forward, let everyone know that you taking a right turn from the left (I would say lane, but the notion doesn’t hold much weight), or just say, “I’m here”. People do use their signals more consistently than anywhere else I’ve noticed.

The people are mostly quite friendly, although you get the occasional staring person who makes you think you’re committing some atrocity of etiquette, but I’m pretty sure they are just staring.

It would have been nice to have been in a hotel that was more in the thick of things - ours was on this huge street mostly filled with embassies. The livelier areas (like the market) are much better for walking, more interesting, and more welcoming. We did however, walk to some museums and the “botanical gardens” which were quite funny.

Our visit to the botanical gardens came after a disappointing rejection at the water puppet show. After we had paid to get in to the museum where the theatre was, we were told (at the theatre) that they were only doing shows for private tour groups (all the old people in white hats being herded around with numbered paddles) and the next public show would be on Monday. D’oh! We’ll be gone by then, bummer.

Anyway, the gardens were disappointing, too. There were some trees with labels nailed into them (and of course numbered, like every other tree in Saigon), but mostly there was “World of Wonders”. This consisted of badly manufactured replicas of manmade landmarks, several of which were accompanied by badly manufactured dinosaurs. For example there was the Empire State Building with King Kong on top, and a T-Rex below. The Easter Island Statues were amidst a variety of dinosaurs. There was a leaning tower of Pisa made of dishes. It was comical and absurd.

What was more genuinely enjoyable was the market, where we picked up some long overdue wedding gifts (but not all of them, so don’t everyone get their hopes up). We also enjoyed wandering the neighborhood around the market and ate at a vegetarian restaurant call “The Original Bodhi Tree”. Apparently it used to be call the bodhi tree and was popular enough that others popped up around them with the same name.

Suprisingly, there is an open wifi connection at the airport here in Hanoi, so I’m posting from here. We don’t know if we’ll find connectivity in Laos, so it may be awhile before the next one comes. Anyway, we’re sure to get some nice pictures during out boat trip up the Mekong. Also, I have pictures from Ho Chi Minh City, but they are not uploading very well so they might not make it.

I’ll do retroactive posts about Hong Kong and Hoi An, but right now I want to write about this very interesting first night in Saigon.

So far in every place we’ve visited, we’ve had the luxury of taking the steps into the location’s shallow end and walking to as deep as we wanted, checking that out, and wandering back to safety. It takes some time to get the feel of any new place you go, and until you get that feel, it’s not quite comfortable. When we haven’t had friends to show us around, we’ve had a guide or at least a sense of where we were and where we were going - oh, and plenty of English speakers around that are used to dealing with foreigners.

In Saigon, we are staying in another ridiculously fancy Thai travel agent arranged hotel. So the defenses are a bit down, and we just traveled here so are a bit tired. Both of us were on the fence about how much to venture out for dinner - we were willing to just eat at the hotel and be lame. “We’ll still have two other nights here” was the sentiment that, when we found ourselves thinking it, drove us to get out. I mean, we’ll only have two nights after tonight! Better make the most of it.

Rather than take a cab to one of the vegetarian restaurants we know about, we decide to ask the concierge if there’s a place in walking distance. He tells us that there’s nothing in walking distance but he knows a good place we can take a taxi to. So, rather than taking stock of the situation and considering going to a place that we know something about, we get in a cab for this place.

The taxi dropped us off at the restaurant and this was when we realized that we had been pushed into the deep end of the pool. We made our way into the open air, street level restaurant by squeaking past a row of motorbikes to be a bit lost once we got in. Eventually someone who seemed like they knew what was going on pushed open some space for us at the end of a table. We were handed menus that were in Vietnamese. We recognized 7up and colacola. Sup probably meant soup. Other than that there was no English, and no indication that anybody could speak English. Our words were met by gawking faces and a bit of staring. At least we knew everything was vegetarian, so if worse came to worse we could just point at something random on the menu. We had been caught off guard - we didn’t even have our phrase book (hadn’t needed it before and barely expected to leave he hotel).

Once our complete ineptitude was abundantly apparent (we only know how to say “thank you”) someone who knew a little English came over. “Tofu” and “noodles” were words we could communicate, so that’s what we got. It was good, but a little strange as an old woman sitting next to us was just staring and staring. No smile or attempt at non-verbal communication seemed to have any effect. Just staring. We ate our food and sat around thinking about how we could ask for the bill (it seemed unlikely that the signing gesture had the same meaning here). Fortunately we got the check, paid, and left.

All in all, it was a good learning experience, but it was indeed a shock. A culture shock, yes, but also a shock about our unpreparedness. All the fanciness and touristiness had made us soft and this experience made suddenly clear how manufactured our Vietnam experience had been thus far.