Saigon Or Ho Chi Minh City ?

Trip Start May 02, 2006
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Trip End Mar 02, 2007

Flag of Vietnam  ,
Saturday, January 27, 2007

Hello from Ho Chi Minh City - or Saigon as it was known before the Vietnam war and what we prefer to call it.

Saigon seems to run a continuous soundtrack loop and it isn't from Apocalypse Now. It's mobile phones ringing, horns honking, screeching metal doors signaling the beginning of another day and annoying hawkers selling hammocks, books and other assorted garbage. The non stop river of chaotic traffic finally slows in the early hours and soup steams from street side cauldrons all day and all night. Certainly an atmosphere that feeds all your senses at once.

It seems Saigon is booming, with new hotels and businesses opening daily. Somewhat stylish western bars and clubs are filled with ambitious young expatriates knocking back too many cheap whiskeys, down and out backpackers slumming it in sidewalk bars and dirty old bastards with gorgeous young Vietnamese women draped all over them. Yes Saigon has it all, including dodgy guys continually trying to sell me dope, in fact since I started growing the first beard back in Eastern Europe dodgy characters have been trying to sell me drugs, porn and all sorts of other contraband. And just yesterday I got called Osama Bin Laden by a moto driver here in Saigon. Wish I was, I'd turn myself in for the US$25,000,000.00 reward and live it up in Guantanamo Bay.

Anyways, we spent a couple of days in and around Saigon. We visited the War Remnants Museum which provides an an alternative perspective on the Vietnam war from the viewpoint of the victors which is a disturbing counterpoint to that of official western history and countless Rambo and Chuck Norris movies. We lunched at the Rex hotel which is famous for have being the meeting point for all the war correspondents during the Vietnam war.

Otherwise that's about all for Saigon.

Next Pod - Cu Chi Tunnels, Vietnam.

Love,

Nath and Kat.
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