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My corner bar
Note the telephone wires Well, I made it to Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. What a difference from Thailand. Right off the bat, I got ripped off by a taxi driver on the way from the airport. I read about sneaky taxi drivers up here, but after a relaxing month in Thailand, I had my guard down, it was late, I was tired and after arguing with the taxi driver for 5 minutes, I swallowed my pride and paid the extra 10 USD he wanted. I gotta admit this is the first time I get so blatantly overcharged I ended up paying 350 K dong instead of the 150K dong. But it's only about 16 USD total, so wasn't a big deal. But not a good start.
The traffic up here is insane. The number of motor bikes is amazing, very few traffic signals, and about 30 percent of the drivers don't follow the signals anyways. They also honk every time they come to an intersection or whatever other reasons, which seams to be every 30 seconds. I got on a back of a bike taxi today and I kid you not, I thought we were going to crash into someone about 5 times
on a 5 minute ride. I think I'll stick to regular taxis from now on. I wouldn't drive a motor bike up here if you paid me.
Now on to the city. It is not what I expected at all. I mean Vietnam is still a communist country, but the only way you can tell as far as I could see are the red flags everywhere and the young pioneers with red ties around their necks as in the Soviet days of my youth. That's pretty much it. They chose the way of China - capitalism everywhere and it looks like it's working for them. The economy is booming. There is construction everywhere, the center of the city looks like Madison Avenue and people seem to be doing quite well, The transformation is quite remarkable. On one of the tours I took the guide said that when he came to Saigon in 2000, everyone was using a bike to get a round. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to spot one- every one is on a motor scooter.
The weather up here is hot and humid. It's hard walking even a couple of blocks without sweating like a pig, and it's
so humid that the sweat doesn't evaporate but ends up rolling off of you. Very unpleasant. So the first day after I got here, I tried walking to the Reunification palace, which is a former palace of South Vietnamese President. I had a bad map, it was unbearably hot and the lack of sidewalks and the touts finally persuaded me to turn back after about an hour. So this city is not really made for walking. I mean the sidewalks are either very narrow, non-existent or are being used as parking for the motor bikes.
So it's taxis everywhere. Fortunately, they are cheap if you bargain before you get in. So after another failure on my part, I decided to take it easy and acclimate to the city a bit. Which to me means getting a couple of drinks. The city still has a lot of French colonial architecture, so I found a nice cafe and set outside drinking and watching the traffic go by. Proceeded to drink for most of the afternoon - the beer here is a lot weaker than in Thailand. Thai beers are all 6 to 7 percent alcohol content. I was totally bombed after 4
beers. Up here I can down 4 beers and still be fresh as pickle ( It's a Russian saying, I know it makes no sense in English, but bare with me ) To top it off, you drink beers up here with a large chunk of ice in the mug. Very refreshing. So after X number of beers, I met this English girl who lives in London, we started talking, she just spent a month in Thailand, up north, before that she spent a month in India. So the day flew by. The next day she was going to Cu Chi Tunnels. I decided to go with her. During the war, all around Saigon the Viet Kong built 200 km of tunnels where they lived during the day and fought the Americans at night. On the way to the tunnels, the tour stopped at a craft factory set up by the government. Apparently, since the Americans couldn't do much about the tunnels, they proceeded to carpet bomb the whole province using Agent Orange and other chemicals. So the whole are was contaminated, and the villages around have a very high rate of birth defects. So the government set up a
couple of factories tot employ the disabled descends of the villagers. The things they produce are amazing - I really wanted to buy some but the shipping back home was prohibitively expensive.
Now on to the tunnels themselves. It had kind of a carnival atmosphere which I found kind of bizarre. I mean they had mannequins dressed in VC uniforms, animatronics and even a fire cracker to simulate an explosion. Plus there is a shooting range where you can shoot everything from M16 to M60 and AK47. I passed on the shooting, since I've shoot pretty much everything back in the states and they prices were 1 USD a bullet. It's cheaper to shoot in the states 😊
Now like I said, at this point I haven't heard any Anti-Americanism by this point and was starting to wander where it would come in. At the end of the tour - we watched a 20 minute DVD and it was mostly Anti-American propaganda. But I certainly understand their grievances. I mean in my personal opinion, it was a huge mistake for US to get involved themselves either in Korea or Vietnam. In Vietnam in particular, 3 million people died and for
what? Anyways, I am getting ahead of myself. On the way back, we stopped at the War Remnants museum, which houses some left over American Armaments. More of the Anti-American propaganda, this time from the beginning to end. Second floor has a room with Anti-French photos and documents.
As a whole, most of the country was born after the Vietnam war and really like American culture and I very friendly to Americans, which I found to be quite bizarre, as I thought they would justly harbor some animosity to us. A lot of people also have relatives in the West. My mot taxi guy today has a sister in Los Angeles who he visited 4 years ago.
Today, I went to see the Re-Unification Palace - the seat of the former President of South Vietnam. It was left as is after Saigon was overrun in 1975. Very interesting place. I like that they left everything as it was. It's a really beautiful airy place. I wandered through it for a couple of hours. At the same time, there were some kids there in uniforms. Blue uniforms, from one photograph, I saw a mention of youth congress. Maybe some communist organization
after you graduate from pioneers. Anyways, these kids were hilarious. Wherever they were signs like 'Don't tough' or 'Don't sit' - they proceeded to touch everything and sit everywhere they weren't supposed to 😊 Kind of reminded me of myself when I was their age. Afterwords, I walked a couple of blocks to the Cathedral and the Post Office, built by the French.
Tomorrow, I am taking a two day tour of the Mekong Delta, which will drop me off at the Phu Quoc Island - an Island in the Gulf of Thailand. Some people say it's what Phuket was before it was discovered by package tourists. I am hoping for some relaxed beach time, as I miss the beach greatly.
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richie
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Ho Chi Minh
During WW2, Ho Chi Minh fought with Amer.Special forces to oust the Japs. He had so must resepect for them that after the war he had a huge parade in their honor. All he wanted was his independence from France. But of course France said No. and the UN stood by France. The rest is History.