Today we dock in Phu My, the port for Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). It’s a 2 hour drive to the city, and we’ve pretty much covered all we want to cover in Saigon on our previous visits, so we’ve signed up with Paul and Sheila on Cruise Critic for a private tour through Vung Tau, the seaside city about 45 minutes from the port.
We have a great small group today, 7 total, which makes for a comfy van ride during the day. Our guide, San, and driver, Zwee, await us as we disembark, and we drive off to our first stop, the Nui Nho mountain, with the Statue of Jesus 900 stair steps above us. We had looked at this on the tour explanation and originally said no way we’re doing 900 stairs. Those 272 in Bali virtually killed us, so we figured we’d just hang out at the base of the mountain somewhere while the others climbed. But once we arrived, we figured, what the heck? If everyone else is game – and they were - we’ll go too. So off we climbed – beginning with the Santa and Sleigh at the bottom entrance (Christmas decorations are still up everywhere we’ve been – guess they enjoy the holidays a lot over here) and the first section of stairs – which turn out to be not so steep and relatively easy to climb.
Plus, there are lots of places to stop to rest. A marble statuary that replicates the Jesus statue, a picturesque landing with flowering plants and the obligatory Asian girl posing for pictures, an overlook patio and then some odd little fountain like area with figurines perched beside a pagoda.
And all the way up, there were little signs embedded in the stairs taunting you with the number of steps you have climbed – forcing you to do the math on just how far up you still had to go.
Halfway! Yay. We finally make a turn in the steps and get our first good glimpse of the statue. It’s really huge and magnificent up there on the top of the mountain. Looking back you can see how high we’ve come already.
The last few steps up to the statue aren’t so bad now – but we get to the top and realize we’ve only climbed 750 steps. Oh, ok, so the rest of the steps are inside the statue – where we will climb up to reach the arms which have viewing platforms for a view point across the city. That makes it a bit easier to take…
..until we take off our shoes, leave our bags with San, and realize we have to climb up this spiral type staircase that keeps getting narrower and narrower – making it very uncomfortable to pass anyone (and the people passing are mostly Asian and small, so you can imagine how tight it is in there!)…
…Half the time I’m pressed up against the wall hoping people can squeeze by. There’s a good reason we couldn’t take our big bags in here – there is barely enough room for our bodies let alone our bags. But the end result is worth it: an incredible 360 degree view over Vung Tau.
Very cool, if not for the claustrophobic steps. And while I’d love to tell you that coming down was easier – it wasn’t. It was way harder. Going up you were against the wall, which made it easier to compress yourself, going down you were against the handrail and the spindles, which meant I constantly hit the spindles with my knees when trying to squeeze past others – eventually I realized that if I went down the steps sort of sideways, I’d miss the spindles – but that was only after a lot of painful experimentation.
Back on the ground, we all breathed a big sigh of relief, and started our trek back down the mountain stairs. That downward climb was in fact easier, and we all made it without incident, even running into another couple on the cruise who were taking the tour privately with the same company. We stopped and chatted for a while, then headed off to our next stop: The White Palace.
This was the summer home of Bao Dai, the last Emperor of Vietnam, and subsequently used by the French once they occupied Vietnam. It is now a museum which displays how the Emperor would have lived here in his time. All the furniture is period specific, and may have been original, but I’m not 100% certain of that. We toured the entrance halls which now house a display of porcelain and items that were salvaged from a shipwreck off the coast – or as San put it – “brought in from the sea.” Upstairs the furniture is lovely and features mother of pearl inlay as well as the dragon design on the arms of the chairs (which has some special royal connotation that of course I’ve completely forgotten), and a nice view out to the ocean.
We wander about the exterior gardens for a bit,
then make our way to the Lying Buddha pagoda.
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