Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - Day 2, Part 1

This morning, Heather and I got up and planned our second day in Ho Chi Minh.  Our first stop was the Zoo, Botanical Gardens and History Museum, which are all located by each other.  It was a mile long walk, but it felt like nothing because of everything we were seeing for the first time.  There was a major corporation just outside the parks that had a modern, metal sculpture of the world with flowing water underneath.  Of course we had to get a picture of the US.

          We walked into the zoo, expecting to see the area of the zoo and gardens separated, but they were on in the same.  As you walked through the zoo, you could see all different kinds of plants that were native and non-native to Vietnam.    They did have a completely different building set aside where they kept orchids and cacti.  Weird combination. 

          While walking through, we stopped at a butterfly exhibit.  You walked through an area full of flowers and trees with butterflies just flying around you.  There was not a huge variety of them, but that was alright.  Next we stopped at the lion exhibit, and it was very sad.  The lions were basically skin and bone.  It was horrible to see majestic animals like that.  You could tell they were not taken care of.  There was also a black bear sitting outside in the hot sun just panting to cool down.  In the middle of the zoo, they had a monkey exhibit.  There were two types of monkeys and they were swinging from vine to vine.  There were no cages around the monkeys, so I hope they had an electric fence or something.   The whole time I was afraid they were going to swing around and out of their area onto visitors.  Next we stopped to see a tiger, and this was also sad.  It didn’t look as bad as the lions, but it was laying upside underneath the door where its food comes from.  It was upside down and had a paw on the door like it was waiting to eat.  We didn’t want to stay at the zoo anymore; we just didn’t like to see the animals like that.

          The next stop was the history museum.  We only stayed on the first floor, because everything was in Vietnamese, so we could not understand it.  We did get to see traditional outfits of the Vietnamese men and women, along with pottery that was made a while ago.   They also had a stone carving of Buddha’s head on exhibit.

          By this time, Heather and I were ready for lunch, so we walked back to the center of town, and stopped at a shopping mall.  It had tons of sales going on for Valentine’s Day.  We tried to find clothing that we liked, but again to no avail.  We stopped and got some fast food so that we could continue our day.