A day in the BIG city.

Saigon (more correctly Ho Chi Minh City, but no one seems to call it that) was big-city busy.  Rivers of motorbikes from curb to curb, cars with horns honking, construction barricades - you get the picture.  We stayed in a fabulous room at the Continental Hotel, a well preserved antique from 1880.  I stayed there once before in 1972, but it must have been in a smaller room, because I'm sure the memory of a room as opulent as the one we stayed in on this trip would have stuck with me.

We woke up in time to catch the last half inning of the Royals clincher on the ESPN GameCast. Our first stop of the day was at the Cu Chi tunnel complex - a remarkable underground warren of fighting and living areas, built by the Viet Cong guerrillas over a lengthy period from the 1940's to the 1960's. The tunnel system served as a base area close to the US military base at Cu Chi. The tunnels were a little claustrophobic, but mainly they were incredibly hot and humid.

Back in the city, I remembered a few of the downtown Saigon sights, including the Notre Dame Cathedral,

the main post office,

the city hall and the presidential palace,

but most of the center city is new, with high rise office towers and new high-end shopping malls going up on every downtown corner.  That, combined with street closures while they build a new metro, give Saigon the appearance of a prosperous western city that it didn't have in the '70's.

Our last tour stop was a visit to the War Remnants Museum, which used to be called something like "The place for remembering the horrible US war crimes" or something equally tendentious. Some of the exhibits are interesting, including a wonderful collection of war photos by journalists from all sides who were killed during the war, including Robert Capa and Dickey Chapelle from the US. Many of the other exhibits, however, read like 1950's propaganda.  I felt a little like I suppose a Mexican must feel going through an exhibit on the US Army's storming of Chapultepec castle.

The tour through President Thieu's palace was interesting. The building was designed by a Vietnamese architect in the early 60's as a replacement for a french palace that had been partially destroyed in a coup d'état.  The exterior and some of the interior rooms were pretty '60's kitschy, but some of the interior spaces were quite striking.

After the day's tour ended, our guide took us to a fine restaurant, called "Bricks," for another 7 or 8 course meal. Neither of us is sure we can keep up this pace at the dinner table.  Dinner was great, although both of us probably could have done without the deep fried soft shell crab. The Vietnamese don't clean the organs from these small crabs, and I'm not a fan of the crab's innards.

By the time we got back, we, especially Kathy, had OD'd on the war and we were ready to turn in.  Off to the Mekong Delta in the morning