6 foot prop blades...10.30 am
Everyone woke up late today. We had a long day yesterday and this time around, the noises from the streets below our guesthouse couldn’t wake any of us up.
11.30 am
When you visit HCMC, a place that you must checkout is the Ben Than market located at the heart of the city. Ben Than is like a wet and dry market under one roof. You could find almost everything that you need there.
We walked around to look for some t-shirts and most of the shops do charge quite a bit because of the tourists walking around. We basically had to shop around for the best bargain before we found a suitable store.
At one corner of the Ben Than market right beside the side entrance we found a shop that was run by a fluent Malay speaking local. We bought Vietnamese silk cloth for about RM30.00 for 4 meters. That’s the standard length to make the baju kurung back home.
On the opposite side of the shop, we managed to negotiate a good price for t-shirts. Maybe the combination of a lot of t-shirts plus the assistance from the previous lady at the shop helped us get 5 t-shirts for just USD4.00. A bargain of course compared to the other shops. Can you imagine most settle for the supposed cheap price of USD2.00 or USD3.00 for just 1 t-shirt?
1.00 pm
1.00 pm
Thanks to the shop owner who spoke fluent bahasa, we managed to locate the famous shop that sells “tudungs” in HCMC. Despite the posh looking layout of the shop, we were quite surprised by the relatively cheap price of the items. Most were handmade from Vietnamese silk and we almost cleared the entire shop!
We hung out at the shop and had a chat with its owner. She had been running the business for almost 25 years but had only recently moved to this location about 5 years ago. If you want to know how famous the shop is, there were pictures hung on the wall showing the Raja Permaisuri Agong/Queen and also Dr. Siti Hasmah visiting the premises.
3.00 pm
The shop owner which we “cleared” our wallets at was kind enough to guide us to a few halal restaurants around the city. HCMC is not really an easy place to find such restaurants so any help that we could get was more than appreciated.
We decided to take her advice and hired a taxi in search of a restaurant that sold satay in HCMC. Sadly however, just like our quest to locate Saigon’s HRC, the place was unfortunately under renovation.
3.30 pm
Realizing that we’re running out of time, we made our way to another of HCMC’s tourist attraction, the war museum. Though it wasn’t the biggest nor well maintained, it was still an eye-opening experience. We “gawked” at the size of the war planes, tanks, guns, choppers and the bombs used during the war. The size that these stuff came in almost defy believe as it doesn’t look so big when you watch it in the movies. It must’ve been terrible for those living during that period.
Pictures taken during the war proved to be worse than what we expected. The things done to the Vietnamese people by the American GI’s were barbaric and paganistic. All this done by a country which calls itself the symbol of modernization, democracy and advocate for human rights. No one was spared from the torture during the war, men, women and sadly even children were victimized against their will and freedom in their own country.
We shuddered at the pictures of those affected by the mass killings, public executions, be-headings and torture. We had never seen what the biological weapons used by the Americans and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The war may have been over for more than 25 years but we could see that Vietnam has yet to recover and has the scars to prove it.
I would never advocate war for ANY reason but I have a lot of respect for those who fought for their freedom during the war.
6.00 pm
With the tour over, we walked to HCMC’s bus station located in the center of town. Sadly, it only served routes throughout HCMC and its surrounding suburbs and not cross-border busses. After walking back to the guesthouse, we found a travel agent that has a bus that would take us from HCMC to Phnom Phen and finally to Seam Reap. The cost was only USD22.00 and we were told that it was going to be an almost 12 hour journey covering more than 500km.
Tomorrow promises to be a long day indeed.
8.00 pm
We had dinner at a kebab restaurant situated about 5 minutes walk from our guesthouse. The price was reasonable and the taste was good enough to keep us from hunger. It was our first proper meal of the day so taste wasn’t the most important thing.
After dinner, we continued to do more last minute shopping around the shops in the area. We mostly looked for souvenirs before proceeding to Lily’s to chill out. With lots of packing to be done and an early day tomorrow, the day ended early as we retired to the guesthouse by 1.00am
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