Saigon
I wrote this in the Cambodian Foreign Correspondent’s Club. Most countries have them…It’s a good place to get away from the moto taxis, the cyclos and beggars, the heat and to read a current newspaper. Cambodia has the Bangkok Post and the International Herald Tribune. Nobody here in this country that lost tens of thousands in the 70’s and 80’s seem to think the bombing in Bali is a big deal…I don’t even mention 9/11 to anyone.
Anyway I have come here to the “FCC” to write this report on my computer while listening to dirty blues music. You may never know how good this feels to me right at this moment…though you may have had same-same moments. And I’ve got to get the rest of Vietnam out of my head before I can even begin to absorb Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” and the War Museum.
Saigon has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City but no one calls it that. By the mid 1990’s Saigon already had the fastest-growing economy of any major city in Asia…and the web of problems that come with it. My first night in the city I ate from the sidewalk food stall down the street from the hotel because I didn’t have nerves steeled enough to walk slowly and deliberately at intervals into the street and then stand still while looking sideways in both directions to allow what seemed like a sea of motorcycles, cyclos and cars to weave their way around me..trying not to give the finger to the young guys that invariable love to shoot straight for you and then turn their sexy Dream Hondas at the last possible moment…which is the only way you get across a street in Asia.
Tags: Saigon, Viet Nam
Zoe