sizzling saigon

we love saigon! in fact we enjoy it here so much that we have been dragging our feet to go on to our next destination and may just skip it and stay here. this is a city like cairo; it's alive and buzzing with a frenetic pulsing energy. everywhere you look things are happening. people selling shoes, people shining shoes, ladies frying fish, families watching TV in their wide open front entries, people buying cameras, seniors exercising, business men doing bidness... but most of all, people zooming around town on motorbikes, just itching to buzz you and just about but not quite run you over.
following the leader, and focusing on the followers.



this lovely lady, who communicates through hand written cardboard signs, makes our breakfast. i enjoy witnessing (and supporting) this type of self powered entrepreneurship. oh, speaking of entrepreneurs, we (obviously) got a new camera! a canon SD700, one model up from our previous canon. no box, no cords, no tax... all camera!

this is our friend alan from bangkok. we went for vietnamese food last night at a true blue local restaurant... so local that they didnt speak a word of english. at the end of our sumptuous dinner (even the eel (middle plate) was excellent!) we were rubbing our bloated bellies and wondering what happened to make them think veggie spring roll=pork meatball (right), when a waiter came running down the street with a plate of 24!!! needless to say, we had to take almost 20 spring rolls to go.

we haved saved all our souvenir shopping (excluding tailored clothes) for saigon. above is one of two paintings we bought, pictured with the artist.
kylie knew she wanted mugs like joanna and kevin's, but she didnt realize how much selection there was!

here is the beautiful and efficient looking post office, where we hope to have all our purchases shipped home. much more reassuring than the post office in cairo! we will pack our souvenirs carefully in our tailored clothes and our new north face jackets. yes, kylie and i both succumbed to the monetary pressure and bought 2 goretex jackets for a grand total of $70.

we have been able to fulfill our fruit juice desires in saigon quite nicely. it is hot here (33-35 and sticky humid). our favourite is a mango slurpee from a street vendor that puts 7-11 to shame! frozen mangoes + ice +blender = aaaaah! i know that we shouldnt trust the ice here, but we just cant help it. there are street vendors everywhere that make a kickass iced coffee as well. we'll keep our fingers crossed.

we took a cyclo ride from the jade dragon pagoda to the war remnants museum a few days ago.
the pagoda was one of the most intricately decorated that we have seen. it also featured 20 lb koi and a pool swarming with turtles painted with ?prayers in chinese script.

at night the kids come out to play.

the war remnants museum in saigon was extremely powerful. we have been aquiring a more refined knowledge of the motivations and geography of the US/vietnam war over our travels, visiting monuments, grave sites, bombed out areas and museums. i have also started reading mcnamara's book "in retrospect", detailing his time as secretary of defense during the war.

a quick overview: 1945 - communist leader ho chi minh starts revolution to attain freedom from the french. the french fight back, with military and $$ aid from the US. both countries have substantial interests in vietnam's mineral wealth, eg. tungsten and tin (sound familiar?)

the west is booted out of north vietnam (capital = hanoi), but manages to hold on to and support a friendly regime in the south (capital = saigon). the US continues to fuel the south in order to destabilize the north.

1965 - communism is thought to be a direct threat to american soil. the US stages an attack on ITS OWN battleship USS Maddox in the gulf of tonkin and congress is provoked into declaring all out war, which it assumes it will win quickly due to vastly superior firepower. american academics, clergymen and citizens protest to no avail.

1969 - the US now has more than half a million soldiers on the ground in vietnam. also contributing soldiers are australia, new zealand, thailand, korea and the phillipines. with increased loss of american lives, majority sentiment is turning against the war.

1970-1975 - US begins to withdraw troops in response to public outcry, but continues to bomb the heck out of the country. the US dropped 10 times as many bombs on vietnam as they did during all of WWII.

1975 - US withdraws entirely and saigon is captured by the vietcong. somewhere between one and two million vietnamese have been killed, along with 50,000 american soldiers.

it is easy to demonize one side or the other in such a conflict, but what struck me at the museum was not only the barbarity perpetrated on the vietnamese, but the barbarity perpetrated on the minds of america's own young men.

a lot of the photos and articles in the war museum were taken from western publications such as life magazine and cbs news.

this is a good time to mention our visit to the famous "hanoi hilton", a military prison originally built by the french to hold vietnamese dissidents, but then used by the north to hold american POWs. john mccain was held here (pictured above). the museum contains a lot of obvious propaganda, but regardless it is pretty clear that the vietnamese treated the americans a lot better than the french treated the vietnamese.

to end on a happier note, vietnam today seems totally over the war. they have moved on and now welcome americans with the same cheerful capitalist spirit they show to other travellers with $$. kids wear shirts with US flags and when people assume we are americans they treat us quite nicely. i already mentioned the moving experience we had with the vietnamese war vets at the pagoda in hue. i suppose this speaks to the warm nature of the vietnamese.

well, its time to go find a duffel bag to ship our souvenirs home in. from here we plan to head to the mekong delta.