Saigon: A Visual Smorgasbord

Ho Chi Minh City
Sheraton, 17th Floor


This is my third attempt to post. The other two have gone into the ethers. I began at 4:30 after convincing the desk that I was getting a signal from their wireless service even though they insisted it wasn't so. Finally they issued me a password and I'm plugged in ( Nirvana ) while I sit in bed overlooking the Mekong River which is 3/4 as wide as the Hudson and full of boat traffic day and night.Beautiful in the night since across the river, there are lights far into the distance, some pink some blue that look like ribbons converging to a single point in the dark. Now, as the light increases, the street that parallels the river is filled with hudreds of motorbikes, some tour buses and a few taxis. You can see the current rushing downstream creating a "vee" shape as it passes by my window. I think Saigon is prettier by night with the moon half full and the evening star as backdrop.

It is now 6:30 and I must leave to board a riverboat to head upstream on the Mekong toward Phomn Penh and into Cambodia with the final destination of Seim Reap and the ruins of Angkor Wat. Part of the adrenaline rush of this kind of travel ( five countries and three continents in two days is that your biorhythms are so off that your will says "yes I can" and your body says "no you can't", so I'm bowing to the effects of sleep deprivation and culture jogging!) is taking the time to let the sights and sounds sink in and still not become so romanticized that you forget that you need to check for your passport and money at regular intervals--not to mention the language complication--even w/ English--the accents and dialects especially in Asia in my view, are harder often to dicipher so simple conversations about what kind of eggs you want for breakfast become complex. So much for my rant...
1.The War Museum is sobering albeit over the top w/ propaganda regarding who was right/wrong; won/lost. But quite effective and very interesting to visit with a Vietnamese who was born the year before the Fall of Saigon in the Spring of 1975. He seems ( as has been my experience of other friends here ) to have moved on, focusing on the Vietnam of today and tomorrow. About 50% of the population ( all of who are on the motorbike filled roads ) are under 40 and seem to share his view.
2. I saw a Buddhist burial in progress.The casket, bright red with gold trim was in a hearse followed by a procession on foot of several women wearing sheer linen head pieces ( like the Klan shape but with their faces showing) and identical fabriced robes from neck to ankle. The mourners were joined by a brass band and finally a handful of Buddhist monks. This is the only show of any religious garb I have seen here, primarily because the government is not crazy about religious demonstrations of any kind lest they become powerful and effect the power the military/communist regime have over the people. Forty percent of this countyr is Buddhist, ten percent Christian, and the remainder either Muslim ( more in the south although I heard the call to prayer at dawn from a mosque a block away whose minaret I can see from my aerie ) or animist ( who are no danger because they don't have an organized religion, are largely uneducated and believe that animals are gods. )

I will miss this city of seven million that smells like a mix of gasoline, stagnant water and hot sauce, is humid and sultry enough to make New Orleans take note, and is bustling with commerce and people day and night, an Asian mini New York.

M.C.