Christmas Eve – Lights, Camera, Traffic, Action

After the excitement of yesterday we decided to have a quiet, moochy, touristy sort of day, which we’d round off by going into the city centre to see the Christmas Lights (and as it turned out, the Christmas Traffic).

So we had a lazy morning and a wander round to the local shops and market near my flat, and managed to find the bakery, patisserie and restaurant that a French charity run to train disabled and disadvantaged kids in the hospitality industry (Sesame – look it up, it’s listed in Lonely Planet). Then after lunch we set off on our latest adventure.

Which initially was as much of an adventure for our taxi driver as it was for us. The trouble with getting taxis and xe oms everywhere when you’re trying to sightsee is that often, despite being armed with maps and guide books, without a decent translation into Vietnamese, the people you ask have genuinely no idea where it is you want to go. One of my students the other week when we were doing giving directions pointed to Notre Dame Cathedral on the map and asked me what it was called in English. He said he often got asked for directions to it by tourists but couldn’t help them because he honestly didn’t understand the name. Of course, he knew it in Vietnamese but… Come on Lonely Planet, provide translations.

Anyway, with a little bit of consultation and regular referrals to our map our taxi driver did get us to the Jade Emperor Pagoda quite efficiently. He seemed as pleased as us when we found it. In fact, it was fair enough that he didn’t know where we wanted to go. Although Lonely Planet gives it a fairly big write up, and the Dorling Kindersley map I’m using places it as a big block of green on a street corner, it is actually quite small. Very nice but definitely smaller than I expected. It’s much more of a little local neighbourhood temple, and very much still in use with Vietnamese people coming in all the time to pray and light incense.

After half an hour or so enjoying the peace and quiet there, we headed back out into the heat of the street and walked a few blocks to the Museum of Vietnamese History. Located in a beautiful Chinese-style building by the entrance to the zoo and botanical gardens, it was another oasis of calm amidst the heat and chaos outside. I do tend to get a little bored in traditional museums with labelled exhibits locked away in cabinets. But I managed to entertain myself here by reading the French captioning and then comparing it with the English. Not surprisingly, given Vietnam’s colonial past, the French generally made more sense.

Rachel wanted to go into the botanical gardens too, but I convinced her that paying to enter somewhere that was heaving with kids visiting the ‘Winter Wonderland’ attraction was not a good idea, so we got a taxi down to Backpackerville where Rachel wanted to make enquiries about going up to Hoi An for a couple of days, and I wanted to do some Christmas shopping – specifically shopping for Rachel’s Christmas present. We were also pretty keen to get out of the heat and sample our newly-discovered favourite soft drink – Lime Ice Blended – from the Highlands Coffee Shop chain.

Enquiries made, shopping done, and Lime Ice sipped it was time to venture out to see the Christmas Lights. I had been warned to expect traffic jams like never before. A warning not misplaced. The traffic cops at Ben Thanh roundabout were just standing, watching bemused. Another one further up Le Loi Street was frankly lucky to be alive, if not plain foolhardy attempting to direct the traffic. Le Loi Street itself was pretty well stationary, which is not to say trying to cross it was any easier than usual. It was still terrifying.

And as for the crowds outside the brilliantly named Tax Department Store – crossing the road was probably safer than trying to walk down the pavement. Students were chasing each other with cans of squirty confetti stuff. Small children were getting elbowed in the face, and trampled underfoot. Proud dad’s used enormous SLR cameras as lethal weapons to muscle through to the window displays and take photos of their Little Darlings posing next to a Snowman. Having your photo taken posing next to shop and hotel Christmas decorations is apparently THE thing to do here. And when I say posing, I mean the real full-on Vietnam’s Next Top Model kind of pose.
 

But the lights and decorations were lovely, and did go someway to making this sweltering city feel a bit Christmassy.

Eventually the crowds began to thin out and we made it onto Le Thanh Ton Street, which is fast becoming my favourite place in the city. It’s the nearest part of the CBD to my flat (within 5 minutes walk in fact) and my end of it contains Little Tokyo with loads of Japanese shops and restaurants.

Rachel had been perusing the Lonely Planet and had come up with a couple of restaurants around Le Thanh Ton that sounded promising. And so it was that we found ourselves in a very posh Vietnamese restaurant called Hoi An, politely refusing the proffered Christmas Set Menus (starting price $60 per person) and delicately picking our way through the only slightly less expensive à la carte menu. Rachel seemed quite sanguine about it whereas I (knowing how much there was in my purse) sat there gently rocking and wondering how and when it would be politic to make a bolt for the ATM machine across the road.

But the bill did get paid not only without incident but quite willingly, and with a mental note to come back again for special ‘let’s-impress-people’ occasions. The atmosphere was lovely, the staff attentive and the food was spectacular – Drunken Shrimps cooked at the table by a waiter who threw ladle after ladle-full of unidentified alcohol into the bowl and then set light to it, and a beef stew served inside a coconut shell which also arrived at the table in flames. All this and Santa and two angels distributing gifts! 

 

Yay! Merry Christmas!