Vietnam 30: Fine Art Museum

The Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum, maybe a fifteen minute walk from Ben Thanh Market, has never had more than six to eight other visitors any time I have been there. The place is a quick visit, and, to be honest, the draw is as much the building as it is the politically-motivated art within it. The first time I went, I walked out thinking that I had seen exactly what I might have expected to see had I thought about it. Representations of an ancient golden age. Of struggle. And more struggle. (The Chinese occupied Vietnam for a thousand years, the Japanese for a few after World War II, the French for a hundred, and the Americans....well, depending on how you count, maybe between ten to twenty years.)

But part of the beauty of Ho Chi Minh City--despite its not being known for its architecture the way parts of Hanoi are, for instance--is its rapidly vanishing urban-renewed architecture. Progress sometimes means more destruction than what some of us would like to see. Why go to Ho Chi Minh City if it looks like everyplace else? Perhaps the locals-in-power do not fully comprehend the beauty of what their city already possesses. (And to the Fine Arts Museum's credit, it was designed with windows and more windows, even if the air is notably hot.)

And to the locals, it makes complete sense that there is a fence and a gate around the museum, even if it can be easily climbed (or so I imagine). Schools, playgrounds, museums, other enterprises: there is also almost always a guard at the gate, and if it is not a museum, you are supposed to be a "member" if you want to get in...for whatever reason.

VN 29: Everything for Sale (Make Your Own Shade)

If you can't transport it, you can't sell it, even when your place on the street or sidewalk is going to have to compete with whatever skyscraper is being built.

And it is important, of you are a woman, that your skin be as white as possible. In any shop there are shelves of skin whiteners. (I believe they are primarily Korean brands, but I could be wrong.) This is not for medical reasons but for vanity: if you are a woman, lighter is better. No sunscreen but a non-la (conical hat), long sleeves and gloves worthy of the opera. Sandals but also socks. 

And yes, the face mask, now helpful because of pollution, but originally to protect from the sun. 

No, no sunscreen, or, as a friend characterized it with some disdain, "chemicals".

And, truth be told, sunscreen does melt off after about fifteen minutes in the tropical sun and heat.

VN 28: Kids

  These three kids happened to be connected to a private mini-hotel on Nguyen Trung Truc Street in Rach Gia, Kien Giang Province. (Go to Ho Chi Minh City and go west to the Bay of Thailand.) During the American War, the Americans had a prison on Phu Quoc Island, now Kien Giang Province's premiere tourist destination, a tropical paradise that not just has modest privately owned mini-hotels like Tropicana Resort but also (of course) Saigontourist (state run) hotels but also, say, these days lots of places like decidedly upscale Phu Quoc Eco Beach Resort. (Let's hope the local pepper farmers and people who in the past, before the tourist boom, worked in the nuoc mam factories still have jobs or traded upward as the tourist infrastructure grew and grew. It is very unlikely that many Phu Quoc locals would be able to so much as set foot in the local expensive  resorts as guests.)

This hotel on the main street of Rach Gia ceased to be after I stayed there. (Remineder: Rach Gia is a city of 200,000 where I was one of 3-4 Westerners: a teacher sponsored by Princeton in Asia; a French woman married to a Vietnamese; and supposedly an Australian woman working in a water quality project) Why did the hotel vanish? Well, the building is still there, but the rumor I heard was that the mini-hotel had been underwritten by American relatives of the locals and somehow because of a dispute, the Americans branch had pulled out. This hotel in Rach Gia was notable because it also offered food.

The children were fortunate because they had family who tended to them--they were not sent out to sell lottery tickets on the street, for instance. Their English was limited to "Hello. What's your name?" And their response was to giggle and run away after I told them my name and asked them theirs.

Another hotel story. I once stayed in a hotel much closer to the beach ("lan bien") that, typical of small family-run hotels, had no restaurant. Initially, I thought the hotel was a good 3-4 very long blocks (sometimes in 100 degree heat)  from any local restaurants (and not every restaurant kept regular hours that I could discern). But it turned out that nearby there was a new place called Saigon Pho which, it turned out, was started by a Vietnamese-American who had returned and then opened one of the first restaurant/catering facilities I knew of in the city.

The Vietnamese-American  found me the first time I walked in and said "an com" ("Eat rice," or, "I'd like to eat.") He knew an American when he saw one, he made sure I got enough to eat during that visit, and he gave me the short version: he had left this country as a boat person right after the war, done well enough in the US, and had decided to return here--where he had started--since he had retired. He wanted to help his country. His spoken English was as good as mine.

When I told someone local about him, someone who had even met him, I got a different story: surely he had failed in the US so he had to return to Vietnam.

I know which story I believe.

VN 27: Laundry

A view from a Ho Chi Minh City hotel onto the neighborhood.

A friend once said that she thought washers and dryers would not be good for clothes compared to washing them by hand, and although I see her point, washing machines and dryers are far more common than they used to be. Even so, polyester (sometimes called "Vietnamese silk") is common, and that makes sense since, like tile and plastic, it is easy to wash and it dries comparatively quickly.

Still, how the clothes hung out to dry in the daily soaking humidity ever completely dry I have never understood, but they do appear to. 

Or you can hang them in front of the air conditioner over night.

If you have an air conditioner.

VN 26: Foot and Fish Massage

I once met an American who regularly did business in Vietnam and claimed to get rid of jet lag from his flight from Seattle by having a shower, a massage and a sauna (in some order) as soon as he arrived.

Showers help. But a sauna? Vietnam is a sauna. Why pay for one that is indoors? Walk outdoor and you are in a sauna. 

A massage might help, but usually I save that for right before I leave, after I have been in cars and on motorbikes that may or may not need new shock absorbers. I once went to a place recommended by the hotel I was staying at: the place offering massages  was next to the hotel, upstairs and at the back of a bar. The masseuse walked on my back and I lived to tell about it, but since then I have chosen to go to the spa at the Ho Chi Minh City Sheraton which--no surprise!--has Western city prices and standards of cleanliness. Appropriately, it is on Dong Khoi, basically Ho Chi Minh City's Fifth Avenue, and as far as I can see, the place offers a range of standard good-for-your health massages, not what some apparently do call "happy massage".

But next to my usual hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Lan Lan 2, is  Kelly Hotel, a place that I imagine  is much like Lan Lan 2, give or take, with forty or so dollar rooms, including breakfast. But at the door to Kelly Hotel--in essence, downstairs  from reception  and at street level--used to be a Foot and Fish Massage place. 

Did I go? No. First, even the modest foot massage as part of a basic pedicure makes my feet twitch. Second, although I like the idea of little fish nibbling the callouses and dead skin off my feet--I mean, it does seem environmentally sound--I had to wonder how often the water is changed and what diseases (parasites?) the cute little fishies could transmit as they munch away--and what human-to-human diseases might be lurking in the water as well.

Fish are for eating.

Finally: fish are for eating.

VN 25: From Thatch to Skyscraper

Someone explained to me once that there was a time (and there is no doubt still a place) in Vietnam when material wealth was indicated by the material of your house: the movement was from thatch to galvanized tin to concrete. Trees. Pleasantly seedy (sometimes) and dark and cool (if damp) concrete.

Not so much in the cities any more. Urbanization in the form of glass and concrete has arrived.

In the sweltering and blanching noontime heat, here is a representative street in Ho Chi Minh City, a couple stories, a combination of home and shop, with the newish Bitexco Financial Tower in the background. Sixty-eight storeys, three basements, the fourth tallest building in Vietnam, the tallest (for a while) in Ho Chi Minh City. A multi-use building with office space, food court, restaurants, movie theatres, restaurants, night clubs, and the Saigon Skydeck offering 360 degree view of Ho Chi Minh City for a ten dollar fee.

A heliport.

Rather than echo the local French architecture, the inspiration for the Bitexco Tower's shape was Vietnam's national flower, the lotus, but I have yet to understand that inspiration. What part looks like a lotus?

VN 24: Behind Ben Thanh Market

Moving from the market to the neighborhood: more shops, more traffic, French architecture, and life on the sidewalk. Places where people live.

Everything is for sale, and even though it looks like everything is one big rush, really it isn't.