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So, apart from eating, what is there to do at night in Ho Chi Minh City? There are plenty of clubs and bars to visit. We did seek out the Saigon Hard Rock Cafe as Jodie collects the Hard Rock badges. Well, if this is a proper franchise, then I will give you the money myself. We only stayed long enough for Jodie to buy a badge.
There are plenty of good restaurants and we found what I like, a western style place. We ate there three times so it couldn't have been that bad and I managed to find some decent Californian and Australian red wine there.
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Sascha suggested going to the Opera House on the Wednesday night to see an opera and ballet performance celebrating Uncle Ho's birthday.
The Vietnamese hold Uncle Ho in high reverence and I can quite understand why. In their eyes he spent his life fighting the foreign invaders so the Vietnamese could eventually live "free."
We all thought the performance could prove interesting - and so it did.
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Now, I ask you. Scalpers in a communist country and for a celebration of Uncle Ho? You better believe it. As the ticket office wasn't very well signposted we we visited during the day, we had arrived without tickets.
We only had to walk up the steps for a ticket tour to appear and try and flog us some tickets for row F. As I was too dumb to work out how far that was from the front, I asked him where it was? He kindly led us to the seating display above the ticket office.
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Unfortunately for the scalper, we had now found what we had been looking for - the ticket office.
We paid £4 for row B seats, end of isle. Perfect. Especially when we discovered the seats in front of us were empty. The turnout was disappointing, but I guess for the average wage earner, the ticket price was still a lot of money.
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The performances were wonderful and I did actually say that you will never find better value anywhere in the world for quality at that low price.
We obviously didn't understand what was sung and spoken, but that didn't detract from the beautiful music and outstanding dancing. |