Ho Chi Minh City

---

Friday, April 13. Nautica entered to mouth of the Mekong delta this morning at about 5am. On a prominent ridge facing the sea was a giant, white statue of Christ with arms extended. It is very similar to Christo Redemtor statue in Rio de Janiero that I saw last winter. Vietnam, though officially an atheist Communist country, it remains very Catholic. There are Catholic churches every where, some just down the street from Buddhist temples. The government here has obviously bowed to reality in many significant ways. Religion appears to be thriving and business, well that is something you have to be here to see for yourself. There are certainly a good many poor people here, but steaming up the Mekong toward Saigon, the mass of shipping, high rise construction, industrial areas all testify to a booming economy. Saigon’s population is presently just under 10 million. In ten years it is predicted to have more than 20 million souls. The trip up river is 48 kilometers and takes almost 5 hours due to the enormous amount of river traffic that must be steered around. The delta is a mass of small islands and meandering rivers all part of the Mekong. It is a carpet of green. Many small boats are buzzing around apparently either transporting goods or engaged in fishing. As soon as we dock we will be off for a boat tour on the Mekong to a village for lunch.



A bus took us about 45 kilometers into the Mekong delta. We stopped at Vinh Trang Pagoda and then to the river port in a small town. There was a “happy house” provided, which means a toilet. We then boarded a small, traditional Vietnamese boat and headed down river. These boats are exotic to say the least. They would never pass coast guard inspection, but they do the job. Lunch was provided at a small village on an island. It was terrific except perhaps for the old lady who fell into a hole and broke her arm. The foot paths into the village and around the covered eating area can be treacherous if one is not careful. There are quite a few very large, crippled up folks on this cruise, most of them Americans sadly enough. I told Bill I doubt some of them will survive to the end of the cruise.



The food was traditional Vietnamese and was just delicious. We had local beer at the lunch stop, then marched through the jungle to another place to have tea made with local honey, bee pollen and something else I couldn’t identify. It too was good. The next stop was to sample local fruits like banana, guava, grapefruit dipped in salt, papaya, and something called Jak fruit which was very tasty. It grows on trees in the jungle. The last leg was in small canoe-like boats that took six of us at a time on a narrow waterway in dense forest/jungle terrain. The boats were propelled by two women, one at the front and one at the back. They manage to ferry all of us through the water course without incident. At one point an old woman put a very large python around my neck. He was quite a nice character and licked me with his forked tongue. I have a picture to prove it.



Back in Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City but most everyone here still calls it Saigon), Bill and I took a bus into the center of the city in the evening. It is simply a beautiful, beautiful city. The wide boulevards lined with palm trees were laid out by the French in the late 19th century. Many of the buildings built at that time remain and are protected by the government. There are times when one could imagine being in Paris. It is little wonder that Saigon was once known as the Paris of the Orient. Mingled in with the old are many tall new skyscrapers, office towers and beautiful high-end hotels. Bill and I went to the famous Hotel Rex for cocktails on the top, open air deck bar called “Saigon Saigon”. This place was the hangout for big wigs from the United States during the episode the Vietnamese call the “War of Liberation”. I haven’t experienced a single bit of anger over that war. The locals, the vast majority of whole were born after 1975, are very proud of their country and happy to have thrown off foreign domination. They are now focused on moving their country forward and proving that they are modern and progressive. There is every evidence that they are well on the road to that goal.



It is easy to get sticker shock here. I checked out a pair of shoes at a mere 3,990,000 Vietnamese Dong. That’s a lot of dong, but actually only $200 U.S. I saw a painting I liked in a narrow alley. The seller wanted 1,000,000 dong. We agreed on a mere 800,000 and I have it with me now. The ship is just now pulling away from the pier. We are headed to Bangkok. Bill has flown off to Cambodia. More later.

---

Photos

Hotel de Ville
A statue of Ho Chi Minh in front of the Hotel de Ville, Saigon

Saigon
Happy Buddha in Mekong delta

Saigon
heading up the Mekong

Saigon
ferry on the Mekong

Saigon
French style opera house central Saigon

Saigon
Jenohn in a pedicab on a very hot day in Vietnam

Saigon
Hotel Rex central Saigon with roof top bar and restaurant

Saigon
canoe ride in a canal near the Mekong River