Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail or how I miss'd Saigon

Ask anyone what Saigon looks like and you will probably get images of banana trees, metal slated roofs, people in the mandatory white t-shirt and jeans favored by Mao followers throughout Asia. However, the truth is...what is left of Saigon in the old town, which is less than a square mile is a handful of what were once French Colonial High End Hotels and a lot of modern high rise buildings incorporating everything from a hip Spanish Tapas restaurant to cheap shoes and plastic jade dragon venders. On the floors above these somewhat generic tourist fronts, there are banks and investment companies and lots of small capitalist interests that are quietly growing under the veneer of an officially one-party communist land.



Sadly, our hotel, the Continental, which has recieved top reviews feels like something out of a communist country. We enter the institutional-green painted room, complete with white crocheted bed cover, a bathroom and small fridge that looks like they've been bought from the original the odd couple set. We are surprised that there is a beautiful balcony overlooking an enchanting opera house, which still hosts productions of ancient Vietnamese operas as well as European productions. It feels more like a two-star hungarian hotel than a five star Asian...but hotels in the big cities of Vietnam haven't quite caught on to the coastal counterparts, despite embracing the need for tourist dollars.



Exhausted, we eat a piece of complimentary sharon fruit and attempt to fall asleep. The next day, we are awoken to the massive heat that overtakes the city and enjoy a wonderful brunch followed by a self-tour of the town. We hit chinatown, which is mostly a local's indoor market, where I see live fish, dumplings, vietnamese tea sets and strangly plastic knock-offs of every expensive european shoes, most of which are for children, with prices reflect the same as what one might pay for real leather shoes in the west.

We can not take the heat (not to mention mystery smells) of the Ben Than Market, so head on and out to some of the local temples throughout Ho Chi Minh. BTW- Saigon is actually only original name of the center of the city of Ho Chi Minh, rather than the whole city.

We are surprised to find out upon visiting Notre Dame Cathedral (of Saigon), that 70% of Vietnamese are christians and 30% are Buddhist, which might explain why I did not find the Vientnamese, ironically to be very culturally different from Americans (despite the history, etc.). We are also intrigued to see that the Asian love of neon is carried out in every aspect of life including interiors of Churchs, as seen below.


Across the street is the incredibly charming old world Post Office, complete with painted globes, old scales and ofcourse a supersized mandatory painting of Ho Chi Minh. The architecture of this building is lovely and aesthetically inspiring, which I may say is a strong contrast to the Reunion Palace, just 5 minutes walk away and done in a mid-century imposing communist style.


We walk through the Reunion Palace, but as it is hardly furnished and visually uninspiring, we find the most interesting part is the basement or war rooms, which include the room Mr. Minh slept in for 5 years, a couple of radio rooms, telephone rooms, and questioning rooms. The guards still watch us like hawks but are charmed by our daughter, which is very reflective of modern day Vietnam's conflict between ultimately being very human and still wanting to officially appear as a 'communist country' (one which just happens to be doing everything to up trade and tourism-look and learn Cuba).


Exhausted from the heat of the day rather than the amount of walking required, we go home for a shower (a general requirement, it is so much hotter in Ho Chi Minh center than other areas of the country) and head out to the infamous Rex Hotel.

The Rex Hotel hasn't changed a bit since it was a famous watering hole for rather famous journalists, hailing from all over the west and living a strange double life of enjoying colonial style drinks by night and waiting to be hailed into conference rooms at any time of day for breaking big media stories! Tonight, we go to the rooftop terrace and enjoy a cocktail and a view of all the twinkling lights of Asia. I can not recommend it enough.