Since it was around midday and we had just found a Chatime we found a park and ate our lunch in the shade under a bandstand. We then headed to the Jade Emperor pagoda, initially you might be concerned as when you walk up there are people selling live fish and turtles (hatchlings to teens). Calm the pagoda is a turtle sanctuary and you buy them to then release them into the ponds inside. They get fed well by all the visitors and appear to be happy, the was one big turtle that I'd guess to be about 70cm long (nose to tail), he seemed grumpy and tired.
Inside there is a thick haze of incense throughout the entire building. There are beautiful carved wood trims and statues, the air is full of people praying and waving their incense and red candles. The statues in the main altars had incredible detailing and were covered in rich cloths and flowers. I'm pretty sure that the facial hair on them was human or something similar, it didn't look like wool. I felt it would be rude to take pictures while people were praying but I will say that there is a lot of golden colours around and so much incense. It's the smell I will associate with Vietnam now.
From there we walked to the history museum a few blocks away. This reminded me a little of the British museum, with it's layout and systematic ordering of artifacts. The museum follows the earliest pre-history artifacts to the modern day period.
Some of the early finds look almost Aztec/Babylonian/Khmer in their stylings and carvings. The detail is amazing considering the tools of the time. The carvings and finds become more refined and detailed as the centuries add on. There was a mummy found in district 5, turns out she (60yo) was an aristocrat as her preservation used a red tinged embalming fluid and she was dressed in high quality clothing. Nicola said she had heard of a similar mummy being found somewhere in china from around the same period.
Interestingly the couple who had put together the collection under the French government in Saigon then bequeathed it to the government upon their death. They had an entire section for the different ethnic groups of the country, it was interesting how they had gone through and gathered information on all of them to be able to group them by language. They had some Polynesian based groups, so the examples of culture looked familiar.
We wandered home via a market, nothing special to report there. But we did go via an amazing mochi place called 'Mochi Sweets' they have plenty of flavours but I got green tea and Sakura blossom while Nicola got mango mouse (there's a cream version as well). I've only eaten the green tea one so far and it was wonderful. I'm very happy that I bought them. Once we got back to the unification square Nicola wanted to check out a place that she had seen, my impressions of it would be that it wouldn't look out of place in Paddington. It's a shop selling clothes and accessories with a cafe/bar upstairs, bit pricy but the glasses are decently sized, they also bring around glasses of iced water after awhile. I think it was called L'Usine, it's near the opera house.
Dinner was at an obscure place that Nicola found while she was here earlier, it's a small place designed by a local architect to serve food like his grandmother used to cook. Its called Cuc Gach Quán, 92 Thanch Thi, Thanh. There is no menu, you turn up and are seated and they serve enough food for the number of people eating, it's 70,000d a head. The meal changes every night but my god was it good.
It was wonderfully laid out, we had sauces, rice, small bowl of Pho, steamed okra (which isn't too bad, but it needs soy sauce), pan fried bean sprouts and baby spring onions, pork bits on the bone (bit spicy) and an odd dish that I can only describe as a kind of spiced pork meatloaf wrapped in a skin if tofu and cooked, the sauce over it was tomato based so my initial association was to my mums meatloaf (she uses a tomato chutney on top to stop it from drying out). Desert was, what nicola called a wax apple, I thought it was capsicum at first glance but it's nice but the taste and texture are familiar but I can't place it. You also had glasses of never ending chilled green tea, I would definitely go back here. It's a lovely place and you can eat till your hearts content or your plates are empty. Fair warning though the guy who will seat you doesn't speak a word of English.
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