Hello from Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam,

The province is still called Saigon even though the city itself was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the end of the "Chien Tranh Chong My Curu Nuoc" or "The War against the Americans to save the nation." We called it the Vietnam War. During my three days in the city I never heard anyone refer to the city by its official name. I did see several Ho Chi Minh monuments around the city, though. Saigon still is sin city; I never failed to be approached by prostitutes offering "some company" on any of my walks around town from dawn 'til late evening. Here they don't even bother to euphemistically describe their services as massage. Still, the streets felt quite safe and I encountered few hustlers other than hookers and the ubiquitous "moto" and "cyclo" drivers looking for fares. After a seven hour nerve racking drive our little van with the cute tootle-tootle-tootle horn arrived around 5PM. After such a harrowing experience on the road I decided to take the first even acceptable hotel I could find; that turned out to be the $16 Thang Long Hotel. Once settled with my bag stowed I went exploring and discovered the better value $30 Indochina Hotel for the next two nights before leaving on a bus for Nha Trang some eight hours on up the road north.

During my shopping excursions I found several shops selling pirated commercial software CD-ROMs and DVD movies for about a dollar a copy. Cyber cafes I found did not offer air-conditioning and rates of $1.30 to $1.50 were common. At one point I visited the post office to mail home some no longer needed materials. Postal inspectors insisted on carefully examining every item in my package for contraband and informed me that I would need to pay fourteen cents per CD and forty-seven cents per DVD mailed out of Vietnam! Maybe that is how they handle the copyright infringement problem. The censorship reminded me of what I ran into while traveling in Russia a few years ago.

Peace

Fred L Bellomy

 

Saigon Vietnam: Statue of Ho Chi Minh.

Saigon Vietnam: The motos go even when it rains. The rider just ducks under the driver's poncho.

 

 

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