Most times there will be a language barrier but this shouldn’t stop you from trying food carts. At first, we would move cautiously up to the food cart, looking at each other, whispering ‘do you think it’s safe to eat? What is that?’ and then point to something asking ‘how much?’ If you do ask how much, it may cause the street vendor to stop, think, and decide to tell you an inflated price. We now confidently walk up to the cart, have a look, put two fingers up, nod, hold out some cash, and hope for change. Just pretend you know what you’re doing! At times you will need…
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Ho Chi Minh’s Body
Today we went to see Vietnam’s most famed deceased person, Mr. Ho Chi Minh. Yes, deceased. Dead. Ho Chi Minh, more affectionately known as Uncle Ho, is the man who is famed for unifying Vietnam and fighting the Japanese, the French and then the Americans. And he’s dead. Since 1969 actually. Against his wishes, the Vietnamese government decided to embalm him so that he could be with the people forever. And it’s pretty cool. We got to the mausoleum around 9.30am – it’s only open from 8am to 11am, and despite the large crowd of people, the line moved swiftly and orderly. We got into a bit of a fight…
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Go to the Cinemas in Ho Chi Minh – Check!
Went for a walk along the riverside before we got rained out. Wearing our ridiculous ponchos we wandered into the Bitexco Financial Building, the highest building in Ho Chi Minh City at 262 meters. It provided shelter from the rain, air-conditioning from the humidity and when we stumbled upon the cinema inside, we were so excited! Ended up watching Brad Pitt’s World War Z which was very entertaining. I found that Vietnamese audiences are pretty loud; they talk a lot during the film, phones were ringing constantly and they were really responsive, someone yelled ‘ooo, shit’ loudly when a zombie popped up. Prices were cheap too. As it was a…
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Being Blind in a Foreign Country
So as Lionel would tell you, I’ve been bitching and moaning about my glasses in the last few weeks. For some unknown reason the left lens in my glasses was scratched beyond belief. Not just one scratch or two, but as if someone had used a sandpaper and rubbed my lens with it. The result was this huge smudge which would distort my vision, especially at night when the lights would catch in the scratches and make this huge strobe light effect in my left eye, ONLY. It was really annoying and I just couldn’t see properly. So I decided to look up some opticians and stores in Ho Chi…
