So, imagine my surprise that the Odyssey's visit to Ho Chi Minh City earned a place on my list of top experiences on this journey!
A hotel stay for line dancing
It started with the fact that we got off the ship and stayed in a local hotel. Some people do this at most every port. We do not. This port was different because our line dancing group was getting together with a local line dancing group early in the morning (the dancing will be outside and it's hot!) It's nearly an hour from the ship to downtown, so we went in the night before and stayed 2 nights for $65 😮
I think I've already written in here about how special the line dancing had become for me, and when we meet with local dancing groups, it ups the ante even higher, and the Saigon (yes, they call it that) group was the best yet. The leader of the group, a man named Tam Van, met us at a brewery the night before. Using Google translate, we got to chat with him a bit. We learned that his name, Tam, is Vietnamese for 8, and he is the 8th child in his family. I didn't ask if his siblings were named 1-7 😂
Line Dancing in Ho Chi Minh City
On the morning of dancing, we walked from our hotel to the Nguyen Hue Walking street. This is not a street that gets blocked off from traffic occasionally, it is a permanent park-like median. The view in the background included a fountain, a statue of Ho Chi Minh, and the People's Committee building (City Hall.)
The weather was great, although still quite hot even at 7am. The Vietnamese dancers wore those wonderful side-slit dresses with pants underneath, the ship dancers wore our street clothes but added a multicolored flowered lei to identify us. We danced for a bit over an hour - and they were all dances we knew! As opposed to the 4 hours of dancing and list of 50 dances in our last place - Singapore. Jim went live on YouTube during the dancing.
It was wonderful fun and we took breaks for lots of photos and lots of hugs. We gave them gifts of earrings in the Vietnamese colors of orange and yellow, they gave us the very practical gifts of fans! You can learn more about the Vietnamese group on their facebook page.
Learning about Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh city
In the afternoon, Jim and I took the Hop On Hop Off bus for an overview of the city. I loved learning that:
If China is the factory of the world and India is the office of the world, then Vietnam is the kitchen of the world.
We also learned that HCMC has the highest concentration of motorbikes in the world with a count of 8.5 million. We experienced this first hand whenever we had to cross a street! Very few intersections have traffic lights, the instructions for crossing streets is to just walk - but walk 'confidently' and the scooters and cars will drive around you. Juuusst a bit scary, but it does work. I almost got confident with it until we wanted to cross a 6 lane road that was jam-packed with cars and scooters. We watched for a while, then looked at each other and said, "nah" and turned around.
Electric Motor Scooter charging stations. 😊
Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens
Rotary Clubs around the World
Another opportunity for cultural exchange was with our Rotary Club on board. As club secretary, Jim had contacted the Saigon Rotary Club and arranged to meet up. The only member of their club that was available was Grace who is the secretary.
Jim is secretary of our Odyssey Rotary Club. Here he's chatting with Grace who is secretary of the Saigon Rotary Club. Don't let her youthful appearance fool you, Grace is a Corporate Attorney here.
The traditional exchange of flags between clubs. Our Rotary president, Paul Montoya.
Using Google Maps
I don't know how people traveled before Google Maps! I took the opportunity of a real-life use of walking directions to make #1008 of our Tutorial Videos - GeeksOnTour.com/1008:
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