DEAR GOBO: Sightseeing in Chinatown

When Steven got home, we decided to do a little sight-seeing in Cholon, which is Saigon's China Town, a neighborhood with an enormous amount of history, of which we live just on the fringe.

We walked down Nguyen Tri Phuong to the next block at Nguyen Trai and took a right. We walked about four blocks before we came to our first temple and then seemed to pass one every other block. I have not yet learned to distinguish one temple in Vietnam from another. Unlike in Thailand where the majority of the temples, or wats, are very distinctly Thai Buddhist, the temples in Vietnam could be Taoist, Cao Dai, Buddhist, Hindu, or a combination of any of the above with traditional animist beliefs, but they are all fascinating to see, both inside and out.

After visiting a few temples, we wandered through Cholon's traditional herb market where storefronts overflowed with burlap sacks filled with various dried herbs, mushrooms and other contents indistinguishable to the untrained eye. As we walked further on, we found shops selling dried snakes, pickled snakes, snake skins, alligators skins, various horns, teeth and other body parts along with entire bodies of animals we could not identify, both in jars and dried.

After we had walked past the herb market, we came upon some more modern shops and markets on the street where we purchased another umbrella for me, since I'd been using Steven's and he'd been getting wet, a map of Vietnam for our wall, batteries for the camera, some coffee and tea and a mosquito zapper shaped like a tennis racket that Steven had been wanting.

We walked back as the sunlight began to fade, tired and hungry, but satisfied with our excursion. We stopped into Ga Ran Kentucky for some soft serve ice cream, which to our delight, and my surprise, was very tasty soft serve ice cream, and walked the rest of the way home munching on our cones.

A village scene carved out of the top of a temple in Cholon, Saigon's China Town.