03-19-2026 Walk

First time using the Blogger app, I hope it's a much better experience than the website, which is quite poor on the phone. Woke up early-ish, had a shower and light breakfast, then walked over to the War Remnants Museum. This was memorable, a significant reminder that humans are eminently capable of extreme cruelty to other humans, and Americans are no exception. War is a terrible business, it degrades the human spirit. I thought the presentation was fair in its portrayal of the wars as ways to claim dominance over a people and their cultural mores. Spent a little over two hours there, not much joy in this museum. I walked from there to a cafe to meet Ann for an egg cream coffee. It was really delicious, a rare treat. We walked from there to the HCMC central post office, which apparently was designed by Gustav Eiffel. Close to Notre Dame Cathedral, which was closed for renovation both inside and out. From there we walked to a central market area, lots of food, clothes, shoes, and souvenirs. May go there tomorrow and buy some things. Then we headed back to the Airbnb, found a Mexican food restaurant on the way, and stopped for lunch. Nobody in the restaurant knew how to make a margarita, which was a little sad. Food was okay but could have been replaced with another cuisine without difficulty. Somewhere near here, I came across a major street corner where two people were doing scooter repairs, I clouding having one scooter extensively disassembled (when we walked by this corner in the evening all evidence of the pop-up repair shop was gone except for the grease on the sidewalk) Back to the flat from there, and a rest break in the afternoon. Made spaghetti for dinner, that sauce was pretty bad. We watched a Netflix show before going to an area of HCMC, Bui Vien, known as a party scene, similar to Beer Street in Hanoi. It was busy but not super crowded, sa a couple of fire breathers, sat at a place across the street from  Vietnamese cover band, listened to their music (definitely not great), and people-watched. Lots of scooter traffic, a surprising number of scooter families with small kids. We walked back to the flat after this and settled down for the evening.