May 17, 2005 Archives
I am flying for Guilin on Thursday night, and probably will be going to Singapore sometime before returning home. Either the week starting May 26th (Thursday), or the one starting June 1st (Wednesday). I need to juggle visiting the Mainland and Macau in between. I can't think of other places I could afford going. It could be South Korea, or Taiwan, but I'm not so interested in other modern cities.
I want to see Singapore because I've friends there (and some who might not even be there when I go -_-), and it's one of those really "special" cities, in its obsessional cleanliness and reputation as a tightly-controlled city-state. I want to see how true it is. If HK is Chinese-run, and Singapore is also Chinese-run, how similar are they?
After insisting, my cousin managed to drag me up the Sheraton, and into the lounge, which, after everything, we didn't need to pay for to get in. I can be that stubborn/stupid sometimes. Made for some beautiful pics, until my camera battery died.
No Day 2, because it would've involved me taking pictures of the bathroom, etc. So Day 3, I crawled out of the bed (a mattress in the living room), and walked around a rainy Saigon.
Stephane and me, unboard a cab.
The best taxi company is Mai Linh (they took me to the airport, and my aunt swears by them). They've got free newspapers unboard!
House where my mother grew up in. It was renovated and made into a municipal government office with something to do with transit.
Lotus, and a lot of it.
Ducks or geese (more like geese), in a cage. Yum?
Central Market. With a lot of foreigners (buying) and ethnic Chinese (selling).
Central Post Office, from the colonial era.
Statue and HSBC building in backdrop.
A guillotine, brought by the colonial leaders straight from France, and freely used to instill fear in the local population. Kept at the War Remnants museum, the very graphic and gruesome attraction among Western tourists who haven't already read enough about the Vietnam War.
Day 1 in Saigon is actually Day 5 in Vietnam. We came back from the Bao Loc province to the North in the late evening of Sunday, and these pics were the first (full) daylight ones I took of Saigon.
A cathedral that looks like the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Built during the colonial era, I believe.
Diamond Plaza, Saigon's classiest shopping mall. It's got all the brand names, and almost feels like one of our shopping malls in the West. They wouldn't let me take pics/vids inside. More security guards than sales clerks. T_T
My cousin Stephane! After living most of his life in Canada (was born in France), he decided to move to Vietnam to be reunited with his parents. I think the change did him a lot of good. He's learnt Vietnamese, and contributes to humanitarian causes (teaching English in a famous public high school in Saigon, the 15 May School).
The cheesecake of death. Baked by Stephane's friend working at Highland Coffee. Culturally different from my definition of "cheesecake", as it probably doesn't contain an ounce of cheese. And it's so sweet, it can kill an ant colony. My aunt says I probably got my food poisoning there (from semi-cooked ingredients, etc)...
Highland Coffee. One of the big local coffee chains in Vietnam. Starbucks is still inexistant there, but Highland's the closest thing they got (to me, it's a Starbucks painted red and crossed with Nike - too much space between the tables, methinks).
The 15 May School in central Saigon, where my cousin works. I wrote most of my postcards in this schoolyard.
It doesn't look so, but I took this pic *while* riding on my bike, among motorcycles. The experience likens navigating on a river (rapids) infested with crocodiles, if possible.