It is day 2 of Saigon and it is sticky and hot and wet and muggy... the rains just came in on schedule, not a downpoor like yesterday, just enough to make it damper and not enough to cool the place down. I have been on the ground in Saigon (for that is what everyone here still calls it despite Uncle Ho's name change) for right on 24 hours and I have to say it seems like a pretty awesome town. It's the right mix of everything for me, history both local and colonial, culture the same, friendly happy people who are used to having foreigners kicking around but also comfortable to run their own place their own way.
The trip from Phnom Penh was painless enough, I decided to go to sleep that night in my scummy overpriced hotel - with a bed made of a single slab of high density foam that I didn't even dent when I jumped on it - and decide what I was doing based on what time I woke up... as it happens I woke in good time to catch a ride to Vietnam and after wandering aimlessly for a while without finding a bus or travel agent I grabbed a tuktuk driver who understood "bus, Vietnam, go now"... he took me to a big travel agent who had a bus going at 0830, which was fine and good, but as we got back in the tuktuk to go to the bus I saw another office with signs for Phnom Penh - Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) and told him to stop... much to his annoyance as he was getting a commission from the other place (as they all do, they take you to whoever they have an "arrangement" with). The second place also had a bus going at 0830 and I just got a better feeling about it so I went with them... as it turned out I saw the first bus, which I would have been on, en route, and it was a double decker packed to the roof with locals and rather miserable looking tourists. Our bus on the other hand was a nice new small bus with good aircon and only about a dozen people on it...
I met a Canadian guy called Rob, since he happened to be in the tuktuk they sent to take me to the bus office, and we got along, so when we got dropped in the city we wandered a couple of budget hotels together (helped by "friendly" locals who grabbed everyone coming off the bus and dragged them to whatever guesthouse was paying them to drag people) and found a pretty good place with a couple of rooms... with the rains coming in and a six hour bus ride behind us we did the only sensible thing and found a bar and drank local beer.
Today I got up pretty early again and started exploring, heading to the War Remnants Museum before the tours got there... it was a predictably disappointing affair with a few tanks and a couple of aircraft and several small buildings with displays of the heroic Vietnamese people fighting off the evil oppressive French and American capitalists... while the war was definitely no fun for anyone, it's certainly interesting to see such a one-eyed perspective, considering how ridiculously pathetically PC all of us western folk are these days. The only redeeming feature was a display of photographs from famous war photographers from both sides, all of whom died during the conflict... but of course yet again, the only attrocities were the ones undertaken by the evil white folk.
That aside the rest of the city was cool, very lively and colourful and interesting. I saw most of the rest of the sights in about six hours of wandering but I can tell it would be a great place to hang around and just chill out. Sadly that is not an option this time around. I have a 29 hour train journey in my not too distant future... Time is ticking and if I want to achieve a few things in Hong Kong and China I will have to skip through Vietnam as I have with everywhere... such is what it is... take care all
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