No, it was not as bad as this quote from “Apocalypse Now” suggests. Actually it was pretty cool there and I liked it a lot. Mostly we have to say thank you to our great hosts Tram and Chris, who hosted us for the week that we spent in this great city. Without them it maybe wouldn’t have been sooo cool. Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, as the communists call it, is a chaotic cluster with a lot of energy and things going on. Basically, this city can satisfy all your demands, but still in a vietnamese style.
We got into the city with our motorbikes, the last stage on our bikes and probably the most challenging one, too. We avoided the main roads and chose a small route that brought us, after two ferry river crossings, directly into its heart. It was not so bad as expected, but still pretty tough. A good thing was, that we already knew where we had to go (thanks to my fantastic handdrawn map – a real masterpiece in the history of maps) and surprisingly we had no real problems to find our way to Tram’s home.
Our main task during this week was to sell our motorbikes for a reasonable price, which was not so easy and at the end we sold them, but for a price we were not really satisfied with (but it was still acceptable).
At all we spent a week in Saigon and the time really ran fast. We visited the War Remnants Museum, where it’s pretty easy to get an idea of the cruelty of war, enjoyed the Saigon nightlife with our excellent nightlife guide Tram, bought me a new cap (finally I found one that I like at least a little bit) on the market, did some casual sightseeing, tried to cross streets with an unbelievable traffic volume during the rush hour, ate good vietnamese, pakistan, mexican and indian food, gazed in amazement at the sorted chaos of the thousands of black wires, that supply Saigon with electricity or just chilled in parks or on Tram’s balcony.
However, Saigon is a good reflection of the vietnamese culture with all the good and the annoying things. I won’t tell you so much more about the city, because I think I will write much more about Saigon in a couple of months. I decided to move here for a half year or a year from mid-March on to teach some English and save some money for my onward travels…
Saigon, see you soon!

Dieser Eintrag wurde am Freitag, 11. Dezember 2009 um 09:02 erstellt und ist abgelegt unter General, Vietnam. Mit dem RSS 2.0 Feed kannst du den Antworten zu diesem Artikel folgen. Du kannst eine Antwort hinterlassen, oder einen Trackback von deiner eigenen Seite senden.