Ho Chi Minh City

I was prepared for just another large, busy, dirty, asian city when we decided to go to Vietnam and start off in Ho Chi Minh City (the city formerly known as Saigon).  I was very surprised when we arrived there and I loved the city.  We started out the first day meeting a friend of Cindy's and wandering around the town.  We saw the cathedral, the post office which has some postwar revolutionary statues out front, and has the old french maps still painted on the walls inside, also they have converted half of the phone booths into ATM booths, maintaining the architectural flair, while continuing to use the space well.  I think this was typical of everywhere we went in Ho Chi Minh city-- artistic, while obviously managed by a communist regime since the war with America.   We also went to a lovely little art museum where the building was obviously French Colonial, but the art was mostly revolutionary in nature.  It had a great old elevator in it as well.

It is obviously a busy crowded city, and the traffic is dominated by motorcycles and scooters. 
We decided to take a vespa tour through the city at night.  Here is Cindy on the back of her ride for the evening. This was one of the hilights of our stay there.  We got to go to several restaurants, a couple of which were "street food", a hidden coffee bar, and a rock and roll bar, all on the back of a vespa.  Jumping chicken (AKA frog) which Cindy said was delicious.
The hilight of the night had to be the hidden coffee bar. The hidden coffee bars are basically unofficial businesses where the locals go to hear good local music, and often have a nice quiet date. This one had a three person band including a singer, not pictured, who sang traditional Vietnamese love ballads among other things. The atmosphere was superb, to get there we went down an alley, fortunately well lit, through someones garage, and up the back stairs into this darkly lit coffee bar upstairs. In the picture you can only see half of the place, there was another room off to the right, similar to this one, also open to the band.

The second day, Cindy and I went to see the Cu Chi tunnels.  I had the morning time to wander the city before the tour while Cindy finished some work she had to do.  Here are more pictures from around town.

Playing something akin to checkers, but the pieces had characters on them so they must have had different abilities, and the pieces were kept covered by bottle caps till after their first move, I couldn't figure it out.

Some Girls who interviewed me about "famous people" for a class project I think.

Elegance on a bike.
The Kitchen and dining area.
A durian vendor taking a snooze at lunch time
and a barber waiting for his next client.


Here are a couple of photos from our trip to the tunnels. It is amazing that people lived underground for months in these very small, but lengthy tunnels. If I remember correctly there are over 250 Kilometers of tunnels, most of which are barely big enough for a man to squeeze through going one way. They also had traps, and rooms for kitchens, sleeping, making ordinance etc.



Next on to Hoi An.
and of course more photos on my flickr...