The outside of the theater.  It seated several hundred people.

The puppeteers stood behind the green curtains, waist-deep in water.  I can only assume they controlled the puppets through horizontal rods attached to the puppets’ lower ends.  Each little skit portrayed some aspect of traditional Vietnamese life and was accompanied by live music (the musicians sat to the left and right, just off the edges of the picture).  This one was about ploughing the fields with oxen.

At first it surprised me that the water was so dirty.  But I think they did that on purpose so the audience couldn’t see into it.  That way, it functioned almost like another curtain – the puppets could disappear into and rise from the water as well as swimming in it and seeming to walk on its surface.

This skit was entitled “Two Unicorns Playing with a Ball”.  Obviously the Vietnamese idea of a unicorn is very different from the Western kind!

This cute skit was called “Fishing”.

At the end, the puppeteers all came out to take a bow.

Click here to read my post about arrival in Ho Chi Minh and our hotel, the Golden Dragon

… or my blog post about seeing the sights in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

… or the one about my boat tour of the Mekong Delta

… or the Cu Chi Tunnels (from the Vietnam War)

We saw a number of these bomb craters in the area.

One of the guides showed us this secret entrance to an underground tunnel.  The “lid” was well camouflaged!

Guerrilla fighters created many hidden traps like this one to catch and kill enemy soldiers.

Notice the sharp spikes inside!

We got to see and even climb in an old American tank.

The guide explains a series of recreated traps that the guerrillas set for American soldiers in the forest.   Every one was ingeniously designed – and horrible to imagine falling into.

At last we got to actually explore one of the tunnels.  That was my favorite part of the tour! It wasn’t nearly as big as it looks in the picture – definitely not for the claustrophobic! (Several people in our tour group chose not to go in.)

The tunnel got even lower and narrower than this!   Needless to say, it was pretty dark (though the camera flash lit it up nicely). It was hard to imagine villagers living in these tunnels for so many years.

Looking up toward an exit from inside one of the tunnels.

The water was the color of chocolate milk and had all sorts of things floating in it.  Houses and small businesses were clustered along the bank, leaning over the water on stilts.

Some of them were less sturdy than others!

This was a fueling station for boats.

Many of the buildings had stairs going down to the water for easy boat access.

This was part of the Mekong Delta’s famous “Floating Market”.  Vendors fill their boats with produce from their farms and then live out on the delta for a couple weeks at a time until they’ve sold it all (to customers in other boats).

Most of the boats sported a tall bamboo pole that served as an advertisement.  Near the top of the pole, they would tie a few samples of whatever vegetable or fruit they were selling.

The vendors sleep in hammocks on their boats and do their cooking and laundry onboard with river water.  The guide assured us that they don’t get sick because supposedly their immune systems are used to it.  Considering what the water looked like, I find that difficult to believe!

Closeup of a boat full of fruit for sale.  The proprietor gave us a few free samples!

This lady was selling iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk in it from her boat.  I bought a cupful – it was the strongest coffee I’ve ever had!

As part of the tour package, our guide also brought along free fruit for us to munch on the boat.  The red spiny ones are called rambutan.  Delicious!

Our tour guide also provided us with fresh coconuts.  He cut holes in the tops and stuck straws in for us to drink the coconut water.

This is where he had been storing the drinking straws we used: up in the rafters of the boat’s ceiling.

We stopped and got out at several different places along the bank.  This was a bee farm.  They have hundreds of these boxes where the bees have made their hives.

At the bee farm, we were served jasmine tea with fresh honey and kumquat squeezed in.  Yum!

Besides honey and bee pollen, the bee farm sold royal jelly by the jar.  Here a man was mixing some with honey for us to try.

Later, we got off the boat for another activity: a short bike ride down a path near the delta.

Amazing.  Rickety little houses perched on stilts at the water’s edge – with satellite dishes!

After the bike ride, we watched a traditional skit/dance with musical accompaniment.

The musician in black is playing a single-stringed instrument called a monochord.

We were given tea and more fresh fruit to eat while we watched the show.  Rambutan, longan, guava, mini bananas, and jackfruit.

Eventually we switched to a smaller boat and took a ride down one of the many little canals beside the delta.

This was our guide for the day, Kahn (sp?).  He spoke great English and was very knowledgeable about Vietnam’s history, geography, culture, and folklore.

There were lots of little homes along the canal.  Many of them had homemade docks with boats moored there, like this one.  Note the poles that keep it from drifting away.

Later we got out at a “historic house” for lunch.

The house is open to tourists to look around in and provides a set meal for lunch.

However, a family actually lives there.  Though the living room and some of the other areas were as clean and fancy as though they were part of a museum, bedroom doors were open, and we could look inside to see that the place is very lived-in!

The main course at lunch.

It was quite tasty – not as scary as it looked!

Vegetable and lotus seed soup.

These wraps were good, too.  The ones at the right and left were made from some kind of flower, stuffed with fish and then deep-fried.  My favorite part of the meal!

Another of our stops on the boat ride was at a small factory where we got to watch rice paper being made.

Here it was being spread out to dry.

We also got to see people making popped rice (sort of like popcorn, but, well, with rice instead of corn).

Packaging the popped rice snacks.  These are popular in Taiwan, where I live, too.

At another little factory, we watched coconut candy being made.

Coconut candy spread out to dry before being cut into pieces and packaged.  There were lots of free samples available.  I thought it tasted good, but the toffee-like consistency was too thick and sticky for me.

 Click here to read my post about arrival in Ho Chi Minh and our hotel, the Golden Dragon

… or my blog post about seeing the sights in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

… or the Cu Chi Tunnels (from the Vietnam War)

… or a water puppet show!

The Reunification Palace.  The guard wouldn’t let us in since it was about to close, so I took this picture through the fence.

Notre Dame Cathedral.  You can definitely see the French influence in the architecture (as well as the name!).

Another view of Notre Dame.

A little room inside the cathedral.

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral.  The fence was to separate tourist wanting to take pictures from worshippers there to pray or attend a service.

Another little room inside the cathedral.

The Saigon Post Office, right across from the cathedral, is another famous building in Ho Chi Minh.

As you can see, it really is a functioning post office.  It was quite busy inside.

This is the Saigon Opera House.  My friend and I were thinking of going to see a show there, but it didn’t quite work out.  (Plus it was really expensive!)

A fountain right by the opera house.

A random neighborhood in Ho Chi Minh.

Downtown area.  The skyscraper you see has a helicopter landing pad.

Ho Chi Minh traffic.  Notice all the motorbikes.  We were told that Ho Chi Minh has ten million people – and six million motorbikes!

A barge on one of the many canals.

Click here to read my post about arrival in Ho Chi Minh and our hotel, the Golden Dragon.

… or the one about my boat tour of the Mekong Delta

… or the Cu Chi Tunnels (from the Vietnam War)

… or a water puppet show!

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh for my little vacation late Wednesday morning.  My friend Leslie was to meet me there that evening, so I was on my own for the afternoon.  It was exciting!  I elected to take the bus from the airport, instead of getting a taxi, just for the adventure of it.  My online research paid off, and I found Bus 152 just to the right as I exited the terminal, directly across from Burger King.  It cost me 5,000 dong for the ticket and another 5,000 for my suitcase.  (The exchange rate is 21,000 dong to 1 US dollar).  The ride was 25 minutes long, and soon it was standing room only as the bus kept stopping to let people on in the city.  

I got off at the Ben Thanh Market bus station, which according to my research was about a ten-minute walk from my hotel.  It took my wheeled suitcase and me more like half an hour trundling along the sidewalks, but that was because I missed the hotel, went way too far, and had to turn around and come back.  At least there were good sidewalks for dragging a suitcase on!  

Along the way I stopped to buy a snack from the woman in the picture.  The items on the left side of her cart are cooked, breaded bananas.  She cut them up into a disposable container for me and added a few scoops of sweet coconut sauce and a sprinkle of sesame seeds.  It was delicious, especially eaten warm.

The Dragon Palace Hotel is so narrow that it’s easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention to the numbers on the buildings.  If only I had realized that it’s located right between a Subway and a Baskin Robbins!  Looking for those landmarks would have been much easier than looking for the name of the hotel (which was hard to see on that side of the street).

I arrived at 1:45, and my room wasn’t quite ready (the website had said it would be ready by 1:00 p.m.).  That was a little frustrating, but I only had to wait five or ten minutes.  (The website also said that checkout time was noon, but at the hotel we found out it was really 11 a.m.  However, they were glad to keep our suitcases for us between when we checked out and when we were ready to leave for the airport.)

The purple and red that you see (above right) are tables and chairs at a little outdoor restaurant right across the street from the hotel.  As you see in the picture to the left, we ate lunch there a few days later – it was good!  (Don’t ask me why I have such a weird look on my face.)  We really enjoyed this chicken and pineapple fried rice served in a pineapple!

Anyway, our room in the Dragon Palace Hotel was pretty nice.  I mean, it’s a 3-star hotel, so we didn’t expect luxury, but it was clean and had everything we really needed.  The free wireless internet was great!  I had done a little research beforehand and discovered that the voltage in Vietnam is 127/220, with sockets for two-prong plugs, so fortunately I had brought a converter and was able to charge my laptop and camera.  

I took the picture to the right as we were on our way down to check out – it was neater when we first came in! 

 
To the left is the bathroom (again, as we were leaving).  No tub, but there was plenty of hot water in the shower.  The shower did leak onto the bathroom floor, but the hotel provided flip flops, so it didn’t really bother us.

I didn’t get a picture of the breakfast area, but that was one of the best parts.  They had a variety of both Western and Asian items to choose from each morning, including fruit, bread, bacon, sandwiches, noodles, kebabs, etc.  There was even a lady behind the counter who would cook eggs for you any way you wanted them done.  The only trouble was, breakfast didn’t start till 7 a.m., and one morning we had arranged a tour for which we had to leave right at 7:00.  But when we told the front desk about it the day before, they assured us they would pack us a breakfast to take along.  And they did; we each got a sub-style sandwich on a tasty baguette, hard-boiled egg, banana, and two plain slices of bread.  More than sufficient. 

The people at the front desk were very helpful in other ways, too.  My first afternoon there without Leslie, I asked them if they had any recommendations for what I could do in the area.  They volunteered to call a tour guide who would take me around on her motorbike and show me the sights.  In retrospect, I probably should have bargained for a lower price.  I paid $50 US for a three-hour tour, which included admission to one museum and a good pho (noodle soup) dinner, as well as a lot of stops by interesting buildings and other sights.  The guide was knowledgeable and friendly and happy to take lots of pictures for me everywhere we stopped.  I’m not sorry I did it, but I don’t think it was quite worth as much as I paid.

The hotel people also helped us book tickets at the Water Puppets Show, and even went to pick up the tickets for us early in the day.  At our request, they called a van service for us to take us back to the airport the day we were leaving (since the bus timetable didn’t fit our schedule well that day – apparently the one going to the airport only comes by once every hour, and not at an exact time).  We had booked a couple of tours (of the Mekong River Delta and the Cu Chi Tunnels) ahead of time online, but it turns out that we could easily have arranged them when we got there, through the front desk at the Dragon Palace.  (Actually, I passed lots of places between the bus station and the hotel advertising the same tours, plus others as well.)  

Anyway, the Dragon Palace Hotel suited our purposes very well, and as long as you’re not the type who has to live in luxury, I recommend it.  The staff were friendly, professional, and spoke great English, and they definitely helped make our stay pleasant and memorable.

Click here to read my blog post about seeing the sights in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

… or the one about my boat tour of the Mekong Delta

… or the Cu Chi Tunnels (from the Vietnam War)

… or a water puppet show!