Spectrum of the Seas Review: Day 11 – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamfeatured

Our Spectrum of the Seas sailed the smooth seas over night, deftly bringing us into port as the sun rose.

I always sleep next to the window and as I was rubbing the last bit of sleep from my eyes, I saw all of these groves of trees or high grass start to take shape outside our balcony. We were pulling into our first port of call for this cruise, Phú Mÿ, the gateway to Ho Chi Minh City. I resisted the urge to run onto the balcony and shout GOOD MORNING, VIETNAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM as loud as I could because, you know, I don’t think the neighbors would have appreciated it.

We were booked on an excursion through the ship, Colonial Saigon, which promised to take us through the city’s highlights, for an authentic lunch and give us some free time in the afternoon. And in typical fashion, we had a meeting time bright and early at 8:00 AM, which meant we were up early and we were rushing through our morning routines. Thankfully, we’d packed up our bags and narrowed down our outfit choices before we went to bed, which made things a little less frenetic. No less frenetic, though, was the Windjammer when we got upstairs for breakfast. The Spectrum isn’t Royal Caribbean’s biggest ship, but it is large and it carries a hefty passenger load. We were quickly coming to realize that the Windjammer was far too small to accommodate the number of passengers it carries. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, finding a table and getting food took a real effort and a lot of patience, neither of which we were prepared for when we were hoping for a quick breakfast on our way to meet our excursion group downstairs.

Our tickets had an 8:00 AM meeting time at Two70 and we got downstairs a few minutes early just in case. We flashed our tickets and got stickers that correlated to our tour group (31) and took a seat. And we waited. And waited. The excursion staff was incredibly transparent – there was an issue at the port and while all of the tour buses were waiting caravan-style to get into the port, the port authority was only letting a few in at a time, and wouldn’t let any new ones in until the old ones departed. This created an insane traffic jam and backlog of tours that took nearly 45 minutes to resolve. There’s nothing we could have done. It’s one of those things that you have to chalk up to These things happen. All we could do is cross our fingers and hope that our tour didn’t get cut short as a result. Our time in these ports was so limited that every hour was planned for, and we didn’t want to miss anything!

Around 8:45 AM, our bus finally got in and we were led down to disembark on deck two. We carried our immigration card with us as instructed, but we were never asked for it or did anything with it. Outside, we found our bus and met Tre, our tour guide for the day, and began the drive to Ho Chi Minh City.

As we pulled out of the port, Tre gave us a run down of our itinerary for the day: we’d start at the Reunification Palace, where we’d have 45 minutes to tour before departing for the State Museum, where we’d have a quick 30 minute stop. We’d do a photo stop at the city center to see the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica and the Saigon Central Post Office before visiting a local restaurant for a buffet lunch. We’d get about an hour and a half of free time to shop, grab coffee or walk around before we’d get back on the bus for one last stop at the Jade Emperor Pagoda, a Daoist slash Buddhist temple, before beginning the drive back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was a lot to see in a short span of time, but we were so excited to be there and very much up for the challenge.

The drive from Phú Mÿ to Ho Chi Minh City would take about an hour and a half each way, first on the old highway through Phú Mÿ and then on a newer highway. I was surprised driving through how busy and bustling Phú Mÿ was. In my experience, port towns are a little sleepier, but Phú Mÿ was crowded and busy.

Tre took great advantage of the long drive into the city, telling us all about the city, it’s culture and its customs. A few highlights:

• Vietnam is the center of Indochina and is considered the Pearl of Asia. That’s a pretty nickname, isn’t it?
• Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City (and in Vietnam, in general) is scary. Really scary. Around 30 people die in traffic accidents daily. If you extrapolate that out, it doesn’t seem that significant until you realize that HCMC (and Vietnam) are moderately sized (11 million inhabitants and 95 million inhabitants, respectively), and watching the motor bikes whiz by, many with two, three, even four people riding a single bike, I was actually surprised the daily fatality rate wasn’t higher. Tre said that if you put your hand up as you cross a street, the motor bikes won’t stop, but they’ll drive around you. Long story short, motorbikes are a big thing and they’re crazy scary. Proceed with caution.
• Buddhism is the dominant religion, but with the heavy French influence across the city, Catholicism is also very prevalent.
• The official currency is the Vietnamese Dong. The new paper money has those plastic film bits on it. If you get change that doesn’t have those plastic bits, give it back and ask for other change – the old paper money is being phased out and won’t do anyone any good because most places (including banks) won’t accept it.
• On that, many vendors will accept US dollars. Go figure. For what it’s worth, we brought about $50 each in Vietnamese Dong that we ordered from Travelex before we left and didn’t use a single bit because every place in HCMC we went to accepted credit cards.
• Agriculture is the main standard of industry here, particularly rice. We drove past a number of rice fields on our trek to the city. Black pepper and lotus roots are also big exports, and if you like cashew nuts, you can thank Vietnamese agriculture there, too – they’re the biggest exporter of them in the world!
• Rainy season runs from May through October, but the rain showers only last a half hour or so. We’d been forecasted for rain, but didn’t see a single drop fall while we were in port. It was so hot, though, at some points I was praying for rain just to get a little relief while we were outside. Air conditioning wasn’t as prevalent in Vietnam as it had been in Malaysia or Singapore. More on that later.
• Tap water is NOT SAFE to drink in Vietnam. Tre gave us bottled water and told us that even the locals won’t drink the tap water here.

It was fascinating learning all these little facts about this country that I knew so little about other than what I read in my high school history books. Outside the bus, as we moved from the old highway to the new highway, we saw so many lily ponds and they were so pretty!

As we moved closer to the city, we started to see skyscrapers and tall condominium buildings. HCMC doesn’t have a skyline per se, but it does have distinctive structures that stretch sky high (including one that was designed to take the shape of bamboo and reminded me a little bit of the Sears Tower back home!). It was more modern that I had thought It would be.

Once we reached the city, Tre mentioned to us that we would see and feel a lot of French influences throughout the city, a result of six decades of French colonialism in Vietnam. We’d see it in the tree-lined plazas and streets, in some of the churches and structures and even in the cuisine.

The bus came to a stop in front of Reunification Hall, our first stop. Reunification Hall is where the President of South Vietnam lived and worked, and was the site that marked the end of the Vietnam War when a North Vietnam tank crashed through its gates. As Tre described it, Reunification Hall was like the White House of Vietnam and headquarters for the government until 1975. He led us inside, where he gave everyone a quick bathroom break before pointing out our meeting point (should anyone want to tour on their own) and beginning an abbreviated tour.

Since we only had 45 minutes, we just followed Tre instead of touring on our own. It was hard to keep up with the commentary for two main reasons: one, it was incredibly crowded and two, it was mind numbingly hot. Reunification Hall is not air conditioned, and it was well above 95 degrees outside (probably another ten degrees warmer inside the building). I read the signs with each room to keep up as best I could, but really, without air conditioning or any kind of relief, it was like some version of hell, and the best moment came when we got to get back on the bus purely because the AC was on blast. If we ever come back, I’ll have a handheld fan.

Our next stop was at the City Museum. It was a quick one – only 30 minutes, but the museum was tiny and easy to navigate in the short time frame. We looked at a couple of exhibits but without more time or any kind of guide, it was basically a photo stop. They did have some real jets and military planes and that was kind of cool, but watching people climb on them and pose with them smiling, it felt a little off. Like I get it. People pose with stuff and it’s human nature to smile for photos, but for me, in the back of my head, all I could think of was that these helicopters and jets dropped bombs that probably killed people. It doesn’t feel right to pose and smile next to that. For me, anyways. Your mileage may vary.

After the museum was a photo stop at Paris Square, where the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica and the Saigon Central Post Office were. We had a half hour to walk around and take pictures (Tre encouraged us to go inside the post office, where the interior was influenced by the Eiffel Tower), but Stephanie and I peeped a McDonalds next door and we decided to snap a couple quick pics and then hit up McD’s for some cool drinks and a snack, just in case we didn’t like the lunch buffet.

We love hitting up McDonald’s in other countries because items like cheeseburgers taste just like home and after a week and a half away, we craved a taste of home, but each country’s McDonald’s has something different and unique to the food culture of that country. Here, it was matcha and lychee items. In Malaysia, it was the Nasi McD, the McDonald’s take on Nasi Lemak, the national dish of Malaysia. It’s weird, I know, but it’s our thing.

After our snack, we took a couple more photos before hopping back into the air conditioned wunderbus that would transport us to our next location in cool, air flowing bliss. I popped inside the post office and it felt like a big souvenir market, so I didn’t feel I missed anything skipping time there for a cheeseburger and a McMatcha Frappe.

The ride to lunch was only five minutes or so down the road, to Hoang Yen Vietnamese Cuisine, a local buffet. I’m skittish when it comes to buffets and even more so in foreign countries, so I was glad to have at least had a snack before lunch so I wasn’t famished with nothing I’d eat. I’m picky. I’ve gotten better as I’ve gotten older, but I think I’ll always be a bit of a picky eater.

The buffet we went to was huge, with tons of tour groups, school kids on lunch break and locals alike. There were different stations from a grill to a Pho station to sushi and even an ice cream machine. There were exotic items (like Balut and frog legs) and more basic items, like spring rolls and wontons. We had an hour and the food was good enough, but if I couldn’t clearly tell what was in it, I didn’t eat it. Everything I did eat tasted good, though. And I tried a local beer! Still gave me scrunch face, but I tried it!

After lunch, Tre led us down the street for an hour and a half of free time. Stephanie and I had wanted to do some shopping, but even higher on the list was getting some Vietnamese coffee, so we walked a few blocks until we found a coffee shop that looked nice from the outside and indulged in some creamy iced coffee and green tea cake.

Coffee culture is big in Vietnam and we didn’t give enough credit to how long it takes. Our little coffee siesta took nearly an hour of our free time, so after we settled the check ($13 – the dollar goes far in Vietnam, too!), we did some quick shopping in a couple of boutiques, picking up embroidered handkerchiefs and engraved jewelry boxes made out of cinnamon wood.

The bus picked us up right on time and took us to our final stop at the Emperor Jade Pagoda. The Emperor Jade Pagoda was built in the early 1900s, in honor of Ngoc Hoang, a Taoist God known as the King of Heaven. The temple is also colloquially known as the Tortoise Pagoda because there’s a pond full of tortoises! Outside the temple are incense you can light and say a prayer with. Inside the temple are these ornate rooms, each dedicated to a different deity. It was so fascinating observing how people worshipped, the rituals they went through, even the sacrifices left on the different alters. I find so much fulfillment in these moments where I can be privy to the ways of life outside of my own and the cultures of the world.

After our visit to the pagoda, we began the long drive back to the port. Tre handed out another round of water bottles and I watched the motorbikes out the window in rapt fascination. They were terrifying and exhilarating all at once. It was certainly a different life out here, but one I appreciated getting to know, if only for a few hours on one day.

We said goodbye to Tre at the port and re-embarked the ship. We stopped at the room to drop off our bags and found a note on the bed saying guest services was still missing our flight information for Shanghai and if we didn’t provide it, we’d risk getting removed from the ship in Vietnam or Hong Kong. We’d provided physical proof of our departure from Shanghai at embarkation, but I guess that got lost in the shuffle somewhere? Either way, we came with plenty of copies and brought another one with us to take to guest services after dinner.

Originally, we had reservations at Sichuan Red for dinner, but we weren’t sure how we felt about the menu so we cancelled them earlier in the day and decided to just do the main dining room for dinner.

We dropped off our flight itinerary to clear Shanghai immigration at guest services and then stopped upstairs at the Windjammer for some coffee and ice cream. It was so packed that it took us two laps to find an open table.

Afterwards, we headed down to the Royal Theater to see Mo5aic, an acapella group headlining the evening’s entertainment. Royal Caribbean really excels at Headliners and throughout the week, the nightly entertainment options were really fantastic.

We ended up meandering around after the show. That’s just what we do. We walked around the promenade. We watched the colorful cocktails getting shaken at the Bionic Bar. After such a full day, we ended up back in the room, back on the balcony, watching the lights of the city pass by as we floated along to our next stop in Nha Trang.