Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City

 So, I'm a bit confused about whether locals call it HCMC or Saigon, but the tour operators were calling it Saigon, so I guess I'll go with that. 

In the afternoon I headed to city center, about 30 minutes from my hotel, to do a bit of wandering around on the main street before my tour at 5:15. It was really beautifully decorated for the lunar new year with giant dragons and lights and it was really cool. I'm still in awe of all the motorbikes, I saw someone driving with a lunar new year bush which is like a 4-5ft sparely leaved tree covered in dangling red envelopes. They held it in one hand while driving at full speed in the other. Truly it appears anything can be carried on a motorbike. I hadn't ridden a motorbike yet at that point, and was shocked. I've since decided that I'm willing to take the motorbike taxis for a ride if its a short ride, but I'm willing to shell out the double the price for an actual car when I am going across town. When I say 'shell out the price' its because the price for a ride in a car is about double that of a motorbike. That being said, during a busy time of day, 30 minutes in the car comes out to about $3... so I think I can splurge a little. I knew coming to Vietnam that things would be cheap, but its truly astounding the affordability of things here from a western lens. 

I met up with my guide in front of the opera house and since we were both early she took me around a bit more before we met up with the tour. The tour is a 4.5 hour food tour on motorbike, it is a women run motorbike company, and it was really impressive. Firstly, its interesting because while you are in a tour group, its essentially a private tour because your driver is taking you around the whole time and telling you about the sites while you are on the back of the bike. It's truly incredible being on the back of the bike, you see the world so much closer than in a car, and the flow of traffic is so impressive. People really have a sense of where they are related to everyone else on the road, and despite the hundreds of fast moving vehicles nobody seems to get road-rage or frustrated. They just move along and go with the flow. 

It was really interesting to talk to my guide, V. She is a senior at the university here studying tourism, like many of the guides. She said it was really helpful having a job where she speaks English all day because she's been able to improve her English immensely. She told me a lot about life in Vietnam over the course of the tour, which I thought was really interesting. Most people here live in multigenerational housing, when you get married the woman generally (although now it can go either way depending on the size of the family) moves in with the husband's family. All the generations live in the same home together, and she seemed genuinely confused about why people would want to live alone. She currently has 6 roommates at university, and she will move back with her parents when she finishes school. Because of the multigenerational homes, dating is quite difficult, and there are parts of the city which have double wide lounge chairs that people buy a coffee and privacy for to meet up with their dates. When you buy a drink a operator ensures that people to not come up to the area. She said that this is considered quite normal and not very taboo, which I found interesting. 

Anyway, our first stop was for Boeh Bun Hue, which is beef noodle soup. Boeh is beef, Bun is noodle, and Hue is the region it is from. There I met the 9 other members of my tour and the tour leader Gang (pronounced Yang). It was delicious. The broth was so flavorful and it had slices of beef, a crab sausage, and a pork sausage in it as well as some good veggies including stem of morning glory, which is apparently really common here. I was surprised that I was the youngest person on my tour by probably 20 years. The other guests were a mix of Australian, Americans, and Canadians. All really nice, and it was great having this shared experience together and chatting with everyone else. 

Our next stop was a wet market in China town. We took our bikes across town and ended up at the market. One aisle was full of animals, both live and not, including chickens, pigeons, fish, eels, snails, crabs, etc. The other aisle was full of tropical fruits. Many that I had maybe tried once or twice, but also many that I had never seen before. V walked me down the aisles and told me about all the fruits and meats and how they were usually eaten and which she liked. She said that while there are some grocery stores around, most locals just shop in the markets and get their food directly from the growers. Everything depends on what is in season. 

Next we went for our next food stop at a local bbq place. We had beer (I just had half a one, I'm not a big beer fan, but as beer goes, it was pretty good and not very hoppy) as well as marinated goat breast which they grilled at the table and dipped in a fermented tofu sauce. We also had morning glory stems grilled and marinated in peanuts and soy sauce. I'm learning that peanuts are really prevalent in Vietnamese cuisine. We also had a marinated beef steak grilled and dipped in a kumquat pepper sauce, grilled shrimp, and radishes with rice crackers. We also had milk apple which is a really delicious fruit with black pits, and a white milky flesh that was creamy and sweet, as well as loganberry which taste like lycee.

Next we went to district 7, which is the rich district and Gang told us a bit about the financial struggles of Vietnam. She was telling us about the difficulty of owning property in Vietnam due to the floating mortgage rates, foreign investment, no property taxes and extreme inflation. Since foreign currency is so strong here, many foreigners buy land as an investment and not to live in. Real estate goes up 25-30% in value every year, so people buy it and just keep it to resell years down the line. In this neighborhood you could see that of the hundreds-thousands of apartments maybe 5-10% had lights on. A fairly strong indicator of how many people are actually living in the area. A luxury apartment there is said to be about $600/month. Unfortunately, this has resulted in most people who live in the area not being about to afford to buy property. She said as an example her mother bought a home a few years back and the interest rate was 9%, but then last year it jumped to 12% and she was no longer able to afford it, luckily family came in to help, but obviously that is not the case for many. Real estate is a problem the world over right now, but it was really interesting to hear about it here.

Next we went to a park where little kids learn to motorbike. There are light up rentals shapes like trains and lions and bears and more and the kids have a blocked off area where they can drive around and run into eachother and play. Teaching them the dos and don't of driving for their future. It was really cute to watch. 

V and I talked about family life in Vietnam and she said that most families only have 2 children. They hope to have one boy and one girl, typically the boy first, which I found interesting. She was saying that her parents waited exactly 10 years between having her and her younger sister because they followed all these beliefs in how to have a boy and one is that you have to have them 10 years apart, as well as a bunch of other lifestyle choices they made to try to have a boy. I suspect that having 2 children is also culturally impacted by the fact that you can't really fit more than 2 adults and 2 kids on a motorbike and most families don't own more than one motorbike. 

One of the reasons why cars are unpopular here in favor of motorbikes, is not only that cars are more expensive upfront, but apparently the tax on a car is based on the type of motor, and most city cars have a 40-60% tax on top of the price of the car, and even more for a luxury car. Vietnam is listed as one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a car because of the taxing policies here. 

Our final stop was in the seafood district. There we had crab meat in a brown pepper, clam soup, beef spring rolls, chicken thighs, and my favorite of the night scallops in the shell. The scallops had green onion and peanuts on them and you drizzled them in a light oily sweet sauce. It was absolutely delicious. I ate an incredible amount of scallops. It was so so good. For dessert we had a sweet tofu dessert and cream puffs.

The entire trip was absolutely brilliant, I learned so much about the city and the culture and the food, and had the chance to try so many different foods I wouldn't have known to order otherwise. It was such a great experience.