Saigon

About the pictures

View from top of Rex hotel in center of Saigon. Probably the most famous among a cluster of older hotels in this area. It is very popular with local crowd on weekend. This area is however abound with pickpockets, hustlers and professional beggars preying on unsuspecting affluent tourists.

Front view of the city hall, which can also be seen in the previous picture. This is one of many buildings in this area that has a definite French architectural influence.

Central post office in the first district, another immense relic from the past, surrounded by street vendors. Packaged to be on the run, they are often chased by police since by law, they are not allowed to operate.

This is Le Quy Don high-school, formely named Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the distant past. Streets in the first district are often lined up with huge trees.

A very typical street in Saigon, where the ground level is converted into a business front and families live on the other floors.

Snapshot of a cyclo and a taxi at the back entrance of New World Hotel, a massive and recently built structure. There are now several thousands taxis, all metered and spanky new, charging an average of $2 a ride.

As a city in a tropical zone, Saigon markets have a large variety of fruits, most abundant during the rainy season from June to October. Among the more exotic fruits are mangosteen, rambutan, jack-fruit, sapodilla, longan, etc ... which grow only in South-East Asia.

Front view of Ben-Thanh market, a conglomerate of small shops that occupy a whole city block. Big American firms' marketing do not spare anybody and Saigon is no exception. Motorola sells pagers and cellular phones and Compaq is hawking their line of PCs. PC world magazine produces a vietnamese edition here so everybody is pretty well aware of the web explosion world wide. But it will be a long while before the web can establish itself in Vietnam (see report of a trip to VN to install computer network).

Like other round-points in Saigon, this one requires extreme care from the driver to maneuver their vehicle in a maze of cars, motorcycles and bicycles converging from several directions.

Here is another thing that one sees less and less in Vietnam, woman in the "ao dai". These days, the only ones that are still wearing the traditional dress are high-school students and office workers in state-owned companies such as banks, post offices, airlines.

View of Vinh Nghiem pagoda, one of several modern pagodas in Saigon, typified by the large dimensions and the multi-level structure.

View of Central Mosque.

I always wonder why the museum is put in a zoo but there is definitely nothing about them worth writing home about.

If you plan to buy miniature statue of Buddha as a souvernir, be prepared to get flagged by airport customs scanner, who will verify to see if it is smuggled antique.

I looked up Lonely Planet Guide and went to 73 Mai Thi Luu on a "honda ôm". There is a temple there but not this one. Wrong address!

With the exception of Chua Tay Phuong in the North, no other temple in Vietnam has as many beautiful statues as this one.

This place has seen some tumulteous years, it was even bombed once in the 60's. Not far from here is the old US Embassy, made famous world wide during the 1975 evacuation.

View from the balcony of the palace, looking down Thong Nhat boulevard. One can see the 2 towers of the Duc Ba Cathedral sticking out in the upper right hand corner.

Credits: Huy Thien & Trung Viet
Photos: Copyright (c) 1993-1995 Viet Bach - (c) 1993 John Boland

[ VietScape ]