My Vietnam

Christmas this year we stayed in Ho Chi Minh City, and, though that isn’t new we have done it before, this year we took the scooter into district one also know as Saigon, or downtown. We were looking for somewhere to eat our Christmas dinner a restaurant or something.

The original plan was to take a taxi downtown so we didn’t have to worry about parking the scooter, but with the taxi came quite a surprise, because when we told him we wanted to go downtown he looked at us and shook his head, no way was he going to drive us in there, way too crowded already he said and gone he was again.

Mary started to cry because she thought we weren’t going after all and we stopped a second to think about what we should do; we could wait for another taxi or we could take the scooter… and so we did. On with the helmets, preparing Mary’s chair and off we went downtown.

Well there were a lot of motorbikes already in the streets, but hey what can you expect, it was rush hour around five o’clock in a big city, it didn’t seem so bad! As we got closer and closer to district one the traffic got more and more dense, but still nothing special.

Driving down Nam Kì Khởi Nghĩa street we got stuck really stuck for the first time, 4 buses were trying to get through one of the street crosses each of them with motorbikes driving by like small mosquitoes around some big elephants. Anyway it’s nothing special, the traffic is crazy and that was what could be expected.

So the rest of the trip into the Notre Dame Cathedral went a bit slower because of all the motorbikes and as we arrived we decided spontaneously to go for some ice cream at a nice looking café on Hàn Thuyên street just behind the Cathedral, my wife had been there before and recommended their ice cream (New Zealand, good quality ice cream).

We got a table outside so we could enjoy the view of the park area and the motorbikes driving by. Once we got seated my wife was already hungry, so we had our Christmas dinner right there, lucky for us they also served some decent sandwiches for the kids, a good tenderloin for my wife and lamb cods for me. The waiter told us that we had to finish before 19 because someone had rented the café for an evening party, but no problem we had plenty of time.

Despite the very untraditional Christmas dinner it was pretty nice and we even had time to finish off with some scoops of ice cream, not bad. I was extremely full when we left the café (I had to finish my wife’s and Nhi’s ice cream too) and despite having been a little down over the Christmas time I felt very good with a full stomach.

We got the scooter, and one of my wife’s nieces, Trang, got the other motorbike and our plan was to continue down Đồng Khởi street. On the way into district one Trang’s motorbike had stopped several times already, and it didn’t seem to get any better. We had just got past the corner driving up alongside the Cathedral and there were a lot of motorbikes now, and a lot of people outside the Cathedral. It was almost impossible to see the street for motorbikes, and around 100 meters from Đồng Khởi people were stuck and of course Trang’s motorbike decided to make trouble again.

I thought it would be too much of a risk to continue down that street, so we turned left on Nguyễn Du street wanting to go back home. The trip home went pretty fast and I think we were home around 20:00. We hadn’t been home for more than 30 minutes when my wife asked me if I wanted to go into town again! I had to consider that for a minute, but thought “what the heck it is Christmas let’s do it the Vietnamese way!” because that is what they normally do on Christmas eve; take the motorbike and drive around downtown.

Back on the scooter again, and Mary sitting in her chair in front of me seemed to enjoy the opportunity to get an extra ride on the same day, I think she sang all the way into town. We didn’t want to risk anything with Trang’s bike so my wife took our other scooter. The trip downtown was more troublesome this time and when we reached the end of Nguyễn Văn Trỗi we were in trouble already, there were so many motorbikes now, all of them heading downtown. Did I mention all of them were of course wearing their shiny new helmet and it almost looked like a carpet of Christmas glass balls had been spread all over the street.

We followed the same route as the first time heading towards the Notre Dame Cathedral this time our intention was to drive down Đồng Khởi street, but of course that was rather naive to imagine that this would be possible. When we reached the cross between Nam Kì Khởi Nghĩa street and Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai street there were so many bikes that it was impossible to move more than around 25 cm at a time.

The streets were pure chaos, everyone trying to get before others and the addition of pedestrians jaywalking in the streets didn’t help anything at all. after spending around 15 – 20 minutes driving less than 100 meters we decided to drive up Alexander D. Rhode street, away from the main traffic chaos, but there were still a lot of motorbikes, people, smoke and dust from the motorbikes.

I could see that it would be impossible to get down Đồng Khởi, so we decided to get to Nguyễn Du street again and try to see if there were fewer people near Bến Thành market. When we got closer to the Cathedral we saw more and more pedestrians and they were running around in the middle of the street in groups of 5 to 10 spraying fake snow at each other and at the motorbikes.

There were joy and laughter everywhere and even though there were chaos, it was fun to watch and kind of nice. I wish I had brought my camera this second time so I could have taken a picture to show how the young people ran around. But on the other hand it could be risky too to take pictures because of thieves, which would easily get away on foot among the myriads of people.

Finally we got down Nguyễn Du street and it was possible to breath a little bit again. I don’t think it took us that long to get to Bến Thành market, but unfortunately the guys at the parking spot was afraid somebody would steal our light bulbs while the scooter was parked there, so they didn’t want us to enter. The worst part is that they were probably right, if we left our scooter there we could end up with a set of old scratched light bulbs, we have tried that once already!

I suggested to my wife that we headed home again, the second trip around the Cathedral was pretty tough and she was tired too so we headed home again for the second time this evening. I suggested that we stopped for a glass of ice coffee on the way home and we ended up eating ice cream once more, and continued with a bowl of phở bò (noodle soup) afterwards, and finally we were home again. Mary was so easy to get to sleep when we put her to bed obviously also very tired. We were home again at around midnight, I had one last thing to do which were to call home to my mother in Denmark to wish her a merry Christmas.

This was my Christmas eve in Vietnam, it was a very very interesting experience, next year I think we will settle for a nice dinner at home or perhaps we will go to Denmark again for Christmas, that is if I can persuade my wife to go in the cold and dark season, because Christmas wouldn’t be the same if it was held in the summertime.

Merry Christmas from Vietnam!