Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

It’s kinda strange that coming back to Phnom Penh would feel like coming home, but it does. Writing this I am back at the California 2 hotel, and it does feel far more like home than Saigon.

We stayed at the Orient Hotel in Saigon. It’s on a strip that is frequented by the Western backpacker types. The hotel was really quite nice. Meticulously maintained rooms with air conditioning (with good air coming out of them) all for $15.00. There was a café across the street that served fairly good food and beer, so it made a great meeting point. There was a strong nightlife around the area of the hotel. There are at least six bars within a half block of the hotel. It was fun for the first couple of nights, but if you want to go somewhere else you really have to know what’s open. Most of the bars are supposed to close at midnight. Eventually you end up back in that area where we stayed, because they keep those bars open late for the tourist (like me).

I never noticed that the Vietnamese were so loud before. There is a lot of yelling going on over there. It’s not that they’re angry they’re just loud. Not that it’s so wrong, some of my best friends are loud. I don’t know if it’s what they’ve been through as a people or not, but it’s one of my main impressions of them.

Harv and I went to the war museum. It’s a collection of some of the weapons and implements from the war and the French occupation. They also had various displays and photographs from the war. They had a a gruesome lookig guillotine that apparently killed 1900 people. It was all pretty depressing, but also rather one-sided, but hey it’s their country. The name of this city was changed after the war from Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City….If you win the war you get to write the history.

Saigon is a great place for shopping (if you’re into that), but I was happy to leave. Harvey realized that his phone had been stolen from his hotel room this morning. They took the charger too so he knew he hadn’t taken it out and lost it. He reported it stolen to the hotel, and they reviewed the surveillance cameras, and called the police. Lots of police came and arrested the guy who stole it. Harvey had to identify his phone from a whole bunch of stuff this guy was got caught with. All this was happening in the last two hours before we jumped on a plane back Phnom Penh. Yeah, we flew...no more Vietnamese minivans.