Communist opulence

Pretty soon it was time to leave Hoi An and we headed up to Da Nang international airport for an internal flight down to Saigon. In around an hour and a half we found ourselves landing, officially it's called "Ho Chi Minh City" these days, at least the airport has this name, but the locals all seem to refer to it still as "Saigon", we went with the latter as it was much less of a mouthful to say!

Saigon is a whole different ball game than the rest of the country, it's a huge city, some 12 million inhabitants and a sprawling footprint that, when viewed from the air, seems to go on forever. In the city itself there are many glorious old French colonial buildings and wide boulevards, it's a strange dichotomy to see such opulent facades with the red communist standard flying above and a statue of Ho Chi Minh in front!

Saigon is also very hot and very humid, it was 38C and 99% humidity when we were there, you can only walk 100yds before sweat starts running down your back, it took a while for us to get used to it and initially it was quite draining until we discovered the places with air-conditioning that we could use to recuperate (pond hopping style) while walking somewhere. The traffic is even more manic than Hanoi however the rules of the road seem to be adhered to a little more seriously here, zebra crossings were a tad more than decoration, as they were up North etc.

The public buildings here are something else, this one (above) is the central post office, it's like something out of a 40s black and white movie, I could imagine Poirot solving a murder case here while sipping cognac and smoking a Gauloises! 

Of course there's more to this place than French colonial va va voom, the Vietnam war had a big impact on the city and it was the scene of many incidents and battles including the final evacuation by rooftop helicopter of the Americans and the storming of the Government palace by Viet Cong tanks, bringing that conflict to an end in 1975; we saw both places! The photo below shows a modern hotel and rooftop bar but back in the sixties this was the headquarters of the CIA, not too shabby a posting!

As we settled into Saigon on that first night we looked forward to the many historical and cultural sights yet to be seen, more to follow!