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How many ways can you use the phrase "come on"?
At least 4 that I know of:
- Come on... - incredulous disbelief
- Come on? - a lite, airy question
- Come on - a command or request for someone to follow you, like a wife or daughter
- Come on - (Coom Uun) Vietnamese for thank you
The most useful phrase on the streets of Vietnam and in the market = "No Coom Uun". Its not the actual way of saying no thank you, but its extremely effective.
Today is a leisure day around Saigon (I'm not going to refer to it as Ho Chi Minh City since that's the socialist name for it and many of the locals, especially the ones from South Vietnam still think of it and refer to it as Saigon). So no rush to get out of bed, we make it to breakfast around 9am...and oh boy what a mistake that was...why don't they have fans all over this open air, rooftop breakfast area? The view is awesome looking directly East at the rising sun over the Saigon River, but with no breeze and no fans, I literally went to change my shirt 3 times during breakfast because I was so miserably hot. Heather can't even eat her breakfast because she is so hot, so its not long before we're out of there and back in the AC of our hotel room.
With stroller and backpack readied we hit the streets for some sightseeing and market browsing. Just a few hundred feet down the street Heather spot a children's clothing store so we swing in to establish the market prices. I can tell after the first dress price that this place is not going to do us any justice on gauging the market...they wanted $20 for a dress that in the US you could get for $7. Thanks but no thanks. 2 stored down Heather is beside herself to find a _____(high end shoe designer name)_____ store. "What?!? What is this doing here? Are you serious?" Of course she makes fast friends with the 2 gay workers and tries on a couple pair of shoes for the fun of it...or is she seriously considering buying these with that look she is giving me? Thankfully she comes to her own conclusion that she's not buying $800 shoes even if they are on sale from $1400 and we hit the street again. The next shop is on the corner and the conical rice hats catch Heather's eye, so negotiate 1 for her and 1 for MD for $1.
The Vietnamese people along the street are interested in Maclaren, but not nearly like the Chinese were yesterday, almost everyone takes a look in the stroller, most smile, a lot of the women reach out to touch her leg or pat her cheek, and just about every time we pause to look at something a small group gathers to look at her.
A few blocks later we see an artist doing a charcoal sketch of a Vietnamese woman sitting on a stool in front of him. His little sign says 150,000 Dong for a sketch. He's almost done with his current model and its a pretty good representation of her so we decide to get MD and Heather done. So for the next 30 minutes we 3 sat there, Heather striking a pose, me holding my phone which is playing a cartoon movie out near the artist's head so Maclaren will look at him, and Maclaren mostly whining that she wants out of the stroller. While I think the artist is talented with his charcoal, he is obviously much better at drawing Vietnamese people than Americans because he drew Maclaren looking like a 5 year old and I'm not sure what women he was using as a model to draw Heather because it wasn't even close. However, it was a good time so we paid him anyway, took our drawing, and continued our journey.
There isn't an over abundance of things to see in Saigon, so the walking tour is pretty short; some French colonial buildings that now serve as the city hall and mayors office, Rex Hotel, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the some buildings that played a significant part in the Vietnam War. After getting a few pictures at the cathedral I turned us towards the high end shopping district and right into the Louis Vitton store, in keeping with tradition of visiting (and usually purchasing) every Louis Vitton store where we travel. Luckily there is nothing eye catching even though we were directed to the 'secret' upstairs showroom. Onto the Dior store, where we are the only shoppers and Heather has the undivided attention of the 4 gay asian sales associates with their one black glove, "Oh hunny, sit down, enjoy yourself. Try this one. You look gorgeous hunny." Meanwhile, Maclaren wants nothing to do with sitting in a stroller or even acting civilized inside the Dior store, so her and I go ride the escalators up and down continuously for the next 30 minutes. Heather's anniversary present is a pair of Dior rose earrings and she claims the Dior necklace is for Maclaren when she is big enough, but momma will look after i until then!
"Oh hunny, its too hot to go to the market, you'll melt," is what we hear from the sales dudes when we tell them we are headed over to the market. "No, no, we'll be ok." Yea right! It's so hot outside we barely make it to the market area without dying of heat exhaustion, so we see this clean open air restaurant so we swing in and plop down in front of a fan, 2 actually. There's no one else in the restaurant but its about 2pm so it doesn't strike us as odd, the 8 or so workers in the back of the restaurant don't jump up to come wait on us, so after a minute I waived one of them over. Odd but ok. A couple of beers, the thinnest, hardest, no tasting rice cake I've ever had, a couple plates of noodles, black pepper beef, and Maclaren passed out in her stroller in front of a fan...a great way to spend an afternoon watching people walk by on the street. About every 20 minutes I waive to our waiter from across the restaurant for 2 more beers...we drink all of their Tiger beer and have to switch to Larue. Maclaren wakes up starving so I call the waiter over to order some food for her, and although there are 5 beef choices he tells me they are all same same; huh, go figure, 5 dishes with 5 different names and totally different ingredients (at least according to the menu). So we end up with another peppered beef. About that time the waiters who have been standing around for the last hour plus all start moving about and setting the tables with place mats, candles, seat cushions, etc. "Are you closed?", " yes, we open at 4"...well I guess that explains why we were the only people I the place for the last 2 hours!
Walking the rest of the block to the market we stopped at a little store to pick up 2 more beers and a water for inside the market...there's an old lady getting a pedicure on the street in front of the store with some dirty water and rusty tools, "Heather , you want to be next?" Lol!
First time in the market, we need to establish the prices, never buy from the first stall! Unless you work your way back around to the first stall, which is exactly what we ended up doing so Heather could buy a small jade bracelet that fit Maclaren...the only one we could find in the whole market! I haggled with a couple different vendors on masks and buffalo horn carvings, but nothing that I couldn't live without, especially for the prices they were asking and their lack of willingness to negotiate much below their starting prices. We didn't hang around too long, we weren't haven't much fun...our negotiating skills were a little rusty, it was hot, and MD was a terror (and daddy wasn't having anything to do with "you break, you buy")!
You experience a lot more walking the streets than you do riding in a car, so when possible, skip the taxi! One of the things you miss in a car are the smells; aromatic meat grilling on open charcoal flames, spicy incense drifting out from an open store front, pungent water slinking down the curb side, tannic body odors, sweet waffle mix baking in an iron skillet, the slightly metallic taste of motorcycle exhaust, and a hundred other smells to flood your senses and help you experience the real. We came out the backside of the market to take the long way back to our hotel, and along the way we met a few locals; a fat shirtless tuk tuk driver, 2 old men on the single person bicycle tuk tuks that followed us for 2 blocks, a beautiful old woman who I paid a dollar to to take her picture, a beautiful little 7 year old girl who we gave $5 to ($1 for the fan and $4 for hope), the gay tailor shop worker standing at the front door, the 'not willing to negotiate' waffle woman, and a man who needed a couple bucks more than we did. Then we came to a ridiculously busy street intersection where we just paused and stared for a few minutes at the madness happening in the street...the driving!
The stop lights only have 2 colors, green and red, but they have count down clocks, and from what we can tell, only the middle 25 seconds actually count of the total 45...the first 10 and last 10 are more like yellow lights, which doesn't mean slow down and be prepared to stop, it means the 100 crazy people from the other direction just took off and now you have cross traffic to dodge, watch out!!!
While standing at the corner, I notice an ice cream shop across the intersection totally packed with people, most of whom look to be watching the traffic too...ok, lets go over there and join them. Walk decisively across the street at an even pace, don't try to dodge the motorcycles, they'll miss you. While splitting a sundae, we decide that those waffles were totally worth the non-negotiation so I ran back down the street and bought another batch from the lady.
Back to the hotel for a rinse and a change of clothing and we're back on the streets again, on the way to Dior to pick up our package. Unfortunately the gay guys that helped Heather during the day weren't working, but the ladies on duty for the evening shift were just as friendly. The paying process, actually the VAT refund paperwork process, is no short affair and I'm pretty sure I saw Heather trying on more jewelry while I was paying! I want to take Heather to this restaurant called Good Morning Vietnam, so I brought my guide book and map with me to hopefully get some good directions; however, it seems that the Vietnamese people don't have any real use for street names because the 7 workers in the store couldn't give me any better directions than "go across the street, take a right, and ask for more directions over there". Luckily for us, the streets are well signed so I was able to figure out where we were when we went across the street. Unluckily for us, the buildings are not well numbered, so it was 3 blocks before we found our first building number and 2 more until we found the 2nd. Another block later we found the 3rd number and decide that we're something like 23 blocks away and these blocks aren't like US blocks, there is no consistency to there distances, it may be 3 miles away. So we make the decision that its not worth getting a taxi, lets just stop at the next decent looking place we find.
Alright, this in an enticing looking place, Maya, looks like a Mayan temple theme and is clean. We step inside to a long, wide corridor with some low couches against the side, and ask to eat dinner, "ok, follow me." We go about 6 steps and he points to the last set of couches...ok, we're a bit confused, what's down the rest of the corridor? Where are the rest of the people? Is this place that popular that all they have left is these couches? No...not at all, after placing our drink order Heather walks through the rest of the place and there's not a soul there...oh, and this place is a dance club, not a restaurant! Oops, looks like twice in the same day we imposed ourselves on a Vietnamese restaurant. Oh well, lets make the best of this...after all, we have a private dining experience going on!
- comments
Lorna This is a really cool picture! Looks like it could be a scene in a James Bond movie...hope Heather actually got to box one of those fine pieces up.