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Here I go again on my own...
Entry 11 of 20 | show all | print this entry |
Leaving my parents the second time wasn't quite as dramatic as the first. I'd survived India - they wern't as worried about the rest. We said goodbye as they dropped me off at the Sydney airport at 5 am. They had one more day before their flights home to Denver. It was certainly hard leaving Sydney behind - it was truly an incredible city. I also left behind a family budget and family planning. I'm back again to "pennies" a day and needing my wits about me all the time!
Saigon is quite a beautiful city, and not entirely what I expected. I honestly didn't quite know what to expect from this country with "The American War" behind it (as the Vietnamese call it). Would they be hostile or rude to me because I was an American? Quite the contrary. The Vietnamese are just about the friendliest people I've met on my travels. (Bute the Aussies and Kiwis were really great too. And the Balinese.) Everyone greets you with a smile and a wave, as long as you greet them with a smile. The kids are cute and interested in foreigners - much like every country I've visited. The city is safe and traveler-friendly.
There were even more surprises from Saigion. It's quite clean. It's quite organized. Traffic is a blur of motos, thousands coming at you at once, but they magically part when you step into the road (which you must do, since they never stop otherwise). There's incredibly tasty and cheap food. There's also large, international hotels - and all the Italian fashion stores. Viet Nam has opened up - slowly - to the Western world of capitalism. Yet it is still - quite visibly - a communist, one-party state. In all, its comfortable and an easy place to visit. Like my second cousin Cameo (the Aussie travel agent) said, the hardest (which would clearly refer to India) is behind me.
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