July 28th, 2018
All the touristy stuff…..July 28th, 2018
This hotel is AMAZING. We are staying at the Renaissance Riverside for our three days in Ho Chi Min. I booked it with points from a credit card! It’s really outrageously over the top nice and is definitely out of my budget! We normally stay in smaller boutique hotels that are full of local character, decor and staff. When I’m in this room, I would not know I wasn’t in any big hotel in North America. There are no signs of SE Asia at all. Everything is English, artwork is benign, everything is modern. Anyway, it’s really nice but I am not going to get used to it. The view is spectacular and the room is really big, there’s a VERY comfortable bed (without a doubt the most comfortable bed we have ever had in 10 years here) and the service is of course above and beyond. This first photo is inside the hotel looking up.
This one is the center looking down into a lounge.
Haha! The TP is embossed …..
Our view!!!!
Landon and Ritchie met us at our hotel around 10:15am and we set off in search of breakfast. On our way we saw this establishment.
We didn’t stop to eat there but it was sure nice to see my flag flying. Guessing some Canadian ownership here!
We did have a great breakfast at this place. Huge basket of artisans breads and three kinds of jam and Nutella. It was a Nutella day for me! Then our breakfasts came. The boys each had “English breakfast”, with our Brit Ritchie ordering extra beans! I had the best French toast I’ve ever had. And a Vietnamese iced coffee!
Then it was time for us to tackle some of those things that one must do when one visits a big city for the first time. The Vietnam war museum being one. I’m somewhat prepared for this very difficult visit knowing it will potentially be presented as one side of a very troubling time in our history. (As in ‘anti American’). This was true when we visited the Killing Fields and S21 in Cambodia and other war memorials in Laos over the years.
The visit started with a part of the museum where they displayed hundreds of letters, pictures, posters and other kinds of support for Vietnam in ending the war. There was even this:in case you can’t read it. It’s a photo of a protest against the US invasion of IndoChina (Ottawa, Canada in 1966)
I really didn’t take any other photos as it was was the most disturbing and upsetting visit to any museum ever. War History in whatever form it is presented, is always gruesome but this really took the cake. I can’t believe what little regard there was for Human life for the duration of this war, the ways they tormented and tortured innocent civilians and it ending with the agent orange exhibits showing the effects of that? It’s still an issue today, the clean up of the contaminated soil and the birth defects still happening! ‘Birth defects’ doesn’t even really describe it. It’s way worse than that. And people did that to other people, innocent people…..
As we walked around the city, there were many nice parks and buildings. This us actually a huge but not offensive city….whoever thought I would say that???!
There was a people’s protest here a few weeks ago over some things the government was doing with land (if I understand it correctly) and the barriers the police (or maybe military?) used to cried control are still scattered across the intersections in the area. I can’t imagine any police force in NA being allowed to use these to control protests? If you can’t see well, they are barbed wire.
Next stop was the Independence Palace (also known as Reunification Palace). I am starting to see things more clearly now. This whole ‘reunification’ thing is just a spin on the north winning the war. The railway from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Min in the south is called the Reunification railway too. It’s a total spin to make the south feel like they weren’t taken over by the communist north Vietnam. But they were, despite the atrocities committed during the war, they still lost and when that army tank drove through the palace gates in April 1975, the then president of south Vietnam had fled and the war was over.
Interesting to see how the president(s) of Vietnam lived in the mid 60s to early 70s. Very much could see the era come through in the decor.
We ended the evening by catching a cab over to Ritchie and Vanna’s apartment where Vanna made burgers and fries and we hung out on their rooftop watching the sun go down on another busy day!
