Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam - Day 3

So today I took a city tour consisting of: two temples, the presidential palace (extremely 70’s and rather dilapidated for a palace), the Vietnam War museum, market place (amazing foods and spices), Notre Dame Cathedral, and the post office.

The most interesting stop on the tour was the war museum…which wasn’t referred to as the “Vietnam” war museum but the “American” war museum. It’s interesting to see Vietnam’s perspective on the American war. The pictures and videos of the bombing, torturing, and murdering that went on by the American army was horrific and ghastly. You could easily identify the Americans in the museum by their somber demeanor and saucer-wide eyes. I guess the atrocities of war are never fun to discuss but just like so many other countries that have wronged another (Germans and the Nazis, Chinese and Tiananmen Sq, and Japanese and Nanjing) the history is often glossed over in school and in the history books…until you see and talk to the affected parties…and then a whole different story comes out…

On a more positive note…I almost got ripped off…again…by a girl…who couldn’t have been more than 11 years old. I saw a girl selling miniature grilled rice cakes on the side of the road and figured that they would be between 4,000 and 8,000 dong (25-50 cents) or perhaps 16,000 dong (1 dollar) at the most. When I asked her the price, she said 200,000 dong (12 dollars). My jaw dropped when I realized she had marked it up nearly 25x the going rate. I thought perhaps I heard her wrong; maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt. So I pulled two 100,000 dong bills out of my wallet and confirmed the price with her…she just smiled and nodded…wow…well I guess to a budding entrepreneur its better to sell one rice cake for 200,000 dong to a sucker than 25 rice cakes at 8,000 dong apiece. If she sells two of them, she can probably close down shop and head home for the day. But wow, tourists pricing is taken to a whole new level here.

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam - Day 3