Ho Chi Mihn City

The last few days of our Christmas/New Years trip was spent in Ho Chi Mihn City. I can honestly say I loved this town. It was big and bustling, but it still felt homey and friendly. I would go back here in a heartbeat. 

Our first order of business was to find some pho. After scouring a few blogs, we found this place, a pho cafe that had been open for decades making the same family recipe. Whenever a place has this many locals inside, we know we've hit on something great. This place definitely didn't let us down! 

This was probably the best pho I have ever had! The secret is in the broth, and this stuff was fantastic. 

After pho we went over to the old headquarters of South Vietnam from during the War. I am so glad we went here. It was incredibly interesting, both to see the building itself, and to see how the current government portrays history.

The ground floor had three massive conference rooms. This yellow one was used for state dinners. The golden decor was to achieve a look of opulence.

This green room was for large scale meetings and negotiations. The green decor was to inspire calmness.

This was the largest room in the building, used for large conferences etc. Funny that they currently display both their national flag (red with gold star) and the flag of communism, the hammer and sickle. The Soviet Union used that symbol on their flag back in the 60s-80s time frame. Now they have returned to the traditional Russian flag of three broad stripes of white, blue, and red. Why does a country need to so publicly declare what kind of state they are? I googled "flag of democracy" and all I could find was that there was a punk band called that in the 80s. Huh.

This was a really cool strategy room, where every spare inch of wall space had a map of some sort.

There were also several smaller meeting rooms on the 2nd floor for one function or another, including the President's private office with a staircase directly down into the bomb shelters. This really was a huge building.

Apparently this was the wives' meeting room. So while the men were downstairs discussing the war, the women were upstairs staring at flowers? I'm sure they were waging their own war amongst themselves.

The roof here had its own helicopter landing pad. This part was really amazing. Apparently towards the end of the war, one of the fighter pilots of Southern Vietnam was actually a spy, and one dark night he took his fighter jet and flew on a secret mission to drop 2 bombs on this very building. He succeeded, but luckily the president wasn't killed. There were so many plaques about the place commemorating this spy fighter pilot as a war hero, saying how brave he was etc. They even outlined on the roof where exactly the bombs fell. If the war had turned out differently, this guy would have a war criminal and called dishonorable and a coward. Interesting. 

The third floor was the fun zone. There was an old school stage for shows and movies, including the oldest looking film projectors I have ever seen.

There was also an old school game room and bar, including a mahjong table, and hysterical 70s decor.

We then headed downstairs into the bottom of the building, to see the bomb shelters. There was a first level bomb shelter made to withstand a medium sized blast, then an even deeper one (which we didn't go into) for a super large blast. Talk about low ceiling and feeling claustrophobic... But there was lots of cool stuff down here, including more strategy rooms, radio rooms, correspondence rooms etc. 

At the ground floor there was the coolest industrial kitchen I have ever seen! Look at the size of that stand mixer!It was taller than I was.

Everything was stainless steel and humongous. It must have been state of the art in its day.

The basement even had a shooting range. 

After touring the Southern Vietnam government building, we went on to explore the rest of the city. This included the local market, always a must see.

I've seen lots of elaborate flower displays since living in Hong Kong, but I've never seen once made primarily out of orchids. This must have cost a small fortune.

This market also was selling coffee instead of tea! Did you know Vietnam is the second largest grower of coffee in the world, behind Brazil? So there were cafes everywhere throughout the city, and it made the feel very relaxed and cool. After Vietnam comes Indonesia, and then finally Colombia. Who knew. 

This is one of the more modern buildings in HCMC. There were still lots of cool French colonial buildings around, but I'm sure a ton were destroyed in the war.

However, one of the best colonial buildings remaining is the old post office. What a gorgeous building! 

Putting the cherry on this old French colony is its own mini version of the Notre Dame.

Hoi An

After New Years, we spent the first few days of 2015 touring around Hoi An. Hoi An is a delightful little town near Da Nang, and, since it was declared a Unesco world heritage site, not alot has changed about it since the 1800s. It is a great example of a South Asian trading port and has beautiful, charming architecture along with a love for pervasive yellow paint. Essentially, we just spent two days walking around, stopping at cafes, and eating some the renowned dishes. 

This is the very famous Japanese Bridge built in 16th-17th century. This bridge separated the Japanese settlement from the local Vietnamese and Chinese. This bridge is so famous, it's even printed on one of their bills. 

The city also has the Thu Bon River running through it, with lots of lovely bridges crossing over it. 

Nowadays, there is little of the original trading shops left. Instead, most places cater to the loads of tourists that come to see the architecture, hence the endless number of restaurants and cafes. There are also loads and loads of tailor shops, more than I've ever seen in one place. All of the store fronts were selling the exact same things. This picture below shows not one of the store fronts, but instead one of the workshops where the stuff is actually made. This feels like a measure never, cut often kind of place. But, I bet the place where Drew's Shenzhen suits are made probably doesn't look much better.

One of the biggest highlights in Hoi An was, not surprisingly, the food. We serendipitously ran into one of Drew's coworkers and his wife on the street in Hoi An, (small world I know) and they gave us some food recommendations, including one of the best street food dishes, in my opinion, of all of SE Asia. It's called a Bahn Mi, essentially a sandwich on a baguette filled with all sorts of crazy things, including pate, and topped with a hot sauce. It was absolutely fantastic, so good, in fact, that we went back for lunch two days in a row. The baguette and pate is obviously a French influence, as Vietnam was a French colony for a long time. But, most of the other ingredients, including a whopping amount of cilantro (which I love) is purely SE Asian. Drew is in awe. They also served the sandwich in a bag, as there was so much goodness in there that was liable to fall out. That didn't stop Drew from making a mess, however.

The best part about the Bahn Mi is that it is made from scratch by this tiny little old Vietnamese lady, who has probably been making these for decades.

And the baguettes are kept warm and crispy over a charcoal fire!

For our next dish, we wandered into the main market area of town, and found our way to the cooked food section. 

There, courtesy of Anthony Bourdain-Vietnam and his show "No Reservations", we found a place selling Cao Lau, a traditional noodle dish only found in Hoi An. It was scrumptious. 

I'm pretty sure these things drying on mats are the crispies that were put on top of our cao lau above. But that's just an educated guess. 

The last dish we had to try were White Roses, or, in other words, shrimp dumplings wrapped up to look like a flower. I think they look more like morning glories than roses, but whatever. 

The charm of the town was undeniable. So laid back and peaceful. Yeah it was sort of a Disney Land for adults, but we enjoyed it by finding our own hidden treasures.

One of the touristy things you could do was hire these cyclists to push you around for an hour. We didn't do this ourselves, but we had fun watching an entire Korean family hire a whole fleet of cyclists. They made a little parade going down the street!

At night, thousands of lanterns all over the city are lit, making it even more picturesque. Lovely, again, to just stroll around. There are also loads of girls trying to sell you a paper lantern boat which you again float out on the river and make a wish. It looks pretty, but I hope they go around and pick up the old ones every day, or else there is going to be alot of soppy wishes clogging the waterway.

Finally Hoi An, more so than most other SE Asian towns we've been to, seemed overrun by cute, smaller than average sized dogs. So, in addition to the Hoi An architectural tour, Drew and I went on the Hoi An puppy tour, stopping seemingly every few feet to pet a new adorable puppy. Perhaps, by this point in the trip, we were missing Trig just a little too much.