We caught a taxi up to the Da Nang from Hoi An.  We rode on a Vietnam Airline jet here to Saigon (the commies named it Ho Chi Minh City after they took over in 1975 after the American war here, but no one seems to use that name).  The jet was one of those wide bodies and must have had 350 people on it.  The flight took less than an hour.  Saigon is the economic center of Vietnam and a tons of people gravitate here form all over Vietnam and the world for various reasons.  Saigon is a beast un-and-to itself.  Hotels, restaurants, and shops of every size and shape are ubiquitous.  Depending on how one counts this is my fifth trip to the city.  Things and places I used for references are quickly torn down to make way for fast food restaurants and 20 story hotels. 


 
 - Photo by Heide Keith -

The Colonel and his damn chicken are everywhere here in Saigon.  So much for the bird flu. While Hue and Hanoi start to roll up their side walks at 8:00 p.m., Saigon shifts into its night life gear. I checked, and the Apocalypse Now Bar is still alive and well.  It does not even open until 9:00 p.m., long after the comrades in Hanoi are tucked in there beds.  


 - Photo by Heide Keith -

I found the two scooter taxi dudes we have used in the past to shuttle us around town.  Saigon seems to beg scooter use more than car taxis.  Heide mentioned the din of noise that goes on here 24 hours from the scooters, trucks and buses.  There is a discotheque and theater next to the hotel we use here and they add to the noise and Orwellian aura of this odd city.  Next to the disco people live down an alley in one room cubicles and sleep on the floor on bamboo mats.  If you have never been to Saigon, and want a slight feeling for the absurdity of the place rent the movie Blade Runner (science fiction flick) and note the city scenes.  The only thing missing here from that movie is the big blimp shouting out advertising over head.  If the Vietnamese could figure out how to do that there would be marketing blimps here too.  Actually, the movies Cyclo and Three Seasons are filmed in Vietnam and have some great city scenes. They are also about real Vietnamese issues.  They are readily available in U.S. video stores or for sure, Amazon. 

We found the damnest bar and restaurant down from our hotel that was not here last year.  It is called Saloon 17 or something close to that.  It is a knock-off of The Texas Tumble Weed steak house style places.  The waitresses all wear American flag tops, they have six-gun holsters but with their order pads and pens inserted instead of pistols.  There are ten gallon cowboy hats hanging all around the bar, totem poles at the swinging saloon doors, and American flag banners hanging from the ceiling.  There must be twenty flat screen televisions all playing the same hokey 1960s American cowboy movie.  There were so many Asian tourists there Heide and I barely found a seat.  Naturally, there was not one European face in the joint.  Out side on the sidewalk the conical hat street vendors sell their jerky squid and pho (soup).  In the park across the street is a small carnival for children.  The lights of the rides add to the weirdness of the whole experience.  After all that visual one tends to forget Vietnam is still very much a committee-run hard core, communist country.  Go figure.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Vietnam.  My mission is to wander the market down the street and find some coffee (Vietnam has become a coffee growing nation), some wine from the mountains, and some glass cats.  There is a street market just down from our hotel.  All the times I have stayed here in this neighborhood (Cong Quynh) and I have never gotten a massage from the blind school down the street from my usual hotel.  All the tour books and locals say it is a place to visit for a cheap, excellent, and legitimate massage. I think tomorrow would be as good as any to get one. 

I thought it would be interesting to go back and look at an old email I sent home from my first trip to Saigon in Januray of 2005.  It is as follows:

There is a wild west element to this crazy place.  They run, run, run, and then when they get there they wait or do busy work.  I hope it does not sound too prejudice but it reminds me of a swarm. 

Make no mistake, there are dangers here.  My hotel at least has fire warning and smoke detection equipment all about, but the 64,000 dollar question is does anything work?  There is virtually no handicap facilities even in the most modern buildings.  Safety in the streets is non existent - it is on the honor system.  Holes in the streets and walks, and wires dangling about are common.  I've been trying to take pictures of the ambulances.  I am on a crusade to find where they come from.

Did I give you my first impression list?

scooters - millions
stoplights - few
stoplights obeyed when working - none
traffic circles - many
people - millions
poverty - layers
Americans - only a handful
Western tourists - not smiling much
pollution - don't notice any more
garbage, fish, urine - don't smell it anymore
late evenings - pleasantly cool
day time - punishing hot

Actually, like New Orleans, the cleaning crews are out sweeping the streets - hand sweeping.  People leave little plastic bags of garbage everywhere and they sweepers pick it up in carts and sweep the curbs with bamboo brooms.  So in that respect areas are as clean as the situation will allow.

Don't bring cloths you cherish and love.  Beware of the laundry girls on the balcony - they remind me of my Mom.  Everything is washed to death. My black Harley shirt is now slightly gray with age.  That's ok - they smile all the time and work twelve hours a day on the balcony, I'll cope.  You know the drill, if your worried about good cloths getting roughed up, I have to ask why one would bring them to a third world country any way. 

First impressions are just that. And of course, they can never be anything but first thoughts.  They get tempered with time and I am glad I wrote them down when I had did.