LION is a creature better left to sleep

Sunday, June 13, 1999

Typically, so am I. This is the day we go to the Saigon Zoo, though. (Hardly any non-government person in Vietnam calls Saigon by its now-official name, Ho Chi Minh City, more out of tradition than anything else.)

We didn't wake up TOO early that morning, but the weird thing about waking up was the song used to do so. I just listened to Aqua's "I'm A Barbie Girl" sung in Vietnamese. It's a very odd experience being half-asleep and hearing a song one knows being sung in a language one barely knows... I thought it was a dream at first.

Anyways, all the kids and everyone gets loaded up onto Uncle Minh's boat - it's actually fairly roomy, even with the 13 or so of us riding along. Boats in Vietnam are pretty neat - they're usually made out of wood and not all that big. For propulsion, there's a propellor blade attached to a REALLY long pole, which is mounted on a universal joint on the back of the boat. The pole extends a little bit past that, and a two-cylinder engine is then mounted on the pole to drive the propellor. The pole then becomes the steering. I got to drive for a little bit, and it's not too much different in that respect from any other boat I got to steer, except for being a bit bigger.

The trip to the zoo was a bit longer than we expected it to be. Even though it only takes about 45 minutes or so by van, it would have taken about two hours by boat. Unfortunately, there's a little shortcut canal which that two-hour estimate was relying upon, and it was closed off for some crazy reason. (I later heard that it was where the government navy admirals had houses and wanted personal docks only, or something...) As a result, we had to take a one-hour diversion around - one hour later, we looked back through the shortcut canal and saw the point we had just been.

Once we got to the tributary which led from the Saigon River to the zoo, there was another giant boat blocking our path. We had to wait about an hour or so for the boat to get out of the way and let us by. Afterwards, we found a little place underneath a bridge to park the boat and we all disembarked. I'm not sure if we were -supposed- to park there, and apparently the others weren't either because Uncle Minh and some of the boys stayed with the boat to keep it safe.

The zoo was just over the bridge. It was nothing like the zoo in Asheboro NC, mainly because there were cages around the animals here, and there aren't (many) in Asheboro. Other than that, it was pretty much the same - animals still walking about minding their own business while people scramble around to take pictures. That's where the sleeping lions come in; the others woul throw stuff at the lion trying to get him to wake up. I'm still not sure if that was a wise idea... I still felt like I was one of the animals, though, just like in Japan, because people would be looking at me instead of the exhibits...

There was a little aquarium for us to blow money on inside the zoo. It wasn't really worth it for me and mom, since we'd seen so many aquariums before. It was a neat building, though. It was in the shape of a dragon - you had to walk through the mouth of the dragon to get inside.

There were dinosaur statues set up near the main entrance for us to take pictures of. Uncle Minh's son Co climbed up onto just about every dinosaur there to fulfill his Kodak Moment(tm) quota for the day, while my aunts typically shied away from the camera. We had to head out after two hours in order to make it home during daylight, so we piled back up onto the boat and went home.

And we didn't do much else that night, except sleep. Had to get up early tomorrow since we're going on vacation!