Being the Tourist in Saigon

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I am now a true local with proficency taking the bus into downtown Saigon. I could actually walk it in about an hour but the bus is cooler and I am fresh to walk the downtown area . The locals where I live dont look at me so curiously anymore which is a pleasant relief. I was never sure if I was being sized up for the big attack or just looked on as the big white giant.

For a city with over 5 million people there is surprisingly little to see in Saigon. Outside of a few museums that are small and poorly presented, the zoo and botanical gardens and the usual buddhist or religious temples , Saigon is just beginning to attract tourists from abroad and has alot to learn in what the foreigner is looking for. Still, the people are welcoming and learning to navigate and live in a huge ant hill is a daunting task all by itself. I am staying away from the tourist excursions and trying to do everything on my own but keeping an ear open for intersting things to see and do. Everything is very cheap and I mean everything. A good meal around 2 dollars, a two hour motorbike taxi tour around town for 3 dollars are just two good examples. Its a pity I dont know a word of Vietnamese or I could really have some good chats with many people. As it is, just a few words of greetings and pidgeon english is the only form of communication i am getting. A little starved for a decent chat right about now haha .

I visited the "War Museum" yesterday. Considering the traumatic world effect that the American/Vietnamese war had on the world, all that was in the museum were a few pieces of American war machinery captured or left behind and a few hundred pictures most of which were published in the western press over the span of the war. Although sobering and thought provoking i felt alot of meat was missing from the bare skeleton of the war.

I then wandered over to the "Reunification Centre" made famous by the war as the last American helicopters were evacuating Saigon while Viet Cong tanks were smashing down the gates to get in and send the USA in humiliating retreat out of Vietnam. I sat in a park across the road for about an hour and tried to visualize that day in history and capture the feelings the world had at the time.

Then it was down to packpackers alley about an hours walk away. This is where most of the tourists hang out, sleep, eat and congregate to swap stories.

Not alot of westerners in town as compared to Thailand but that could be because the female flesh trade in Saigon is tiny in comparison to Thailand, at least as far as I have seen so far. I had my first proposition of both drugs and female company in this area yesterday and neither was very appealing to me. The buses cease to operate just after sundown around 6 pm ( sun rises at 6 and sets at 6 every day) so the only transportation is by taxi or motorbike taxi after dark and there are plenty of those about for the cost of about a buck to get home as compared to 12 cents by bus.

I am starting to think of side trips now that I have done Saigon so its probably off to the Mekong Delta on a days excursion and then off to an offshore island called Quoc Phu Island for some peace and tranquility of long empty sandy beaches and clear ocean surf.

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