Day 20, Summer in Asia, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
There’s a lobby sleepover that happens in our hotel, not just tonight, but every night. At 4 am I went in search of the elusive better wifi since it was still taking 15-20 minutes to download one stinking photo, so I wandered down to the lobby. Instead of finding good wifi, I found a dark room, with the lobby chairs pushed together to make mini beds, and a little too much cheekage. Don’t think that thin, petite people can’t snore, because that would be racist and downright wrong.
After breakfast but before the sun was serious, we walked over to the Vinh Nghiem Pagoda, the first one built in The country with a traditional Vietamese architectural style. While we walked around this little gem of national pride, there was a Chinese tourist following us around, purposely creating an audience for his criticisms, saying, “In China we have big ones, not so little. This, mini.” He encouraged us to go to China if we wanted to see legit pagodas. That didn’t keep him from wanting a photo of him and the dollhouse pagoda to show his friends. By taking his photo I felt like we were enabling an Asian superiority complex, so I made my passive aggressive contribution by keeping him out of focus.
Here in Southeast Asia, so many factors and conflicts have been at play. First there have been various territorial disputes between China, Japan, Korea and many others. Add to that history the European colonial powers such as France, Spain and others. Issues here can go back many hundreds of years.
There is a man who sits in the alleyway entrance to our hotel and arranges flowers. Sometimes I watch him for a while. Here are some of his finished products and how they’re delivered.
Next, we took an Uber way across town, for under $2, to Siagon Center, a large shopping mall. We passed the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica, which seemed rather out of place in this mainly Buddhist culture. But the French had boots down in Vietnam dating back to the 17th century with a more significant presence during the 19 century. Vietnam was colonized as French Indochina in 1887 until the First Indochina War when Vietnam declared its independence in 1954. Between the French, Americans, and Chinese, Vietnam has been messed with for hundreds of years. The pink Catholic Churches and Notre-Dame Basilicas are lovely structures, but rather symbolic of the mucking around that’s gone on here historically.
After eating, we went in search for dessert. We found a number of French bakery options, but Cali wanted ice cream so we ended up at the familiar Baskin Robbins, where mint chocolate chip is a sure thing.
We didn’t stay out late, and Ubered home. The flower man was still going strong.
