Saigon City and the Mekong Delta

We started our visit to Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by most, at a brisk pace. It is much hotter than we have experienced so far, apart from Laos. What is most striking about Saigon is that even with such a lot of modern high rise development it has managed it's new buildings to fit in with its huge wealth of French colonial architecture. It is bigger than Hanoi (or Hanoi-sy) as our last guide Thanh taught us. It looks a lot more prosperous. This is not the start of a song but there are reportedly 4 million motorbikes in Saigon. They are everywhere and crossing the road is definitely a skill you have to learn pretty quickly if you are ever to get anywhere. Everyone seems to wear a face mask to protect themselves from the pollution they are exposed to riding on their motorbikes. As well as it's cultural heritage - Notre Dame cathedral, the post office, opera house, the Rex Hotel where the last evacuation helicopter left from the rooftop, the Continental Hotel established in 1860 and where Graham Greene wrote the Quiet American - shopping  is the new obsession. There are the new shopping malls with the big designer names and then there are still the traditional types of shops, a lot of them tailors, which attract visitors from nearby countries like Malaysia and Singapore which have much higher prices for silk and jewellry. There is a very big Chinese community and they have massive markets, both retail and wholesale.

We visited the War Remnants Museum which charts the destruction which was inflicted on the country and it's people by the American War. As well as the canage of the time with the use of Agent Orange (the toxic defoliant) and napalm, the point was starkly made about the lasting effects of Agent Orange through genetic changes which still result in severe birth abnormalities. There is also a reconstruction of  a South Vietnamese prison which they inherited from the French. The variety of torture techniques numbered 20 and they were all savage. It is amazing that the people seem to have "moved on" as we are fond of saying, quite so readily.

The Unification Palace is an example of modern yet elegant Vietnamese architecture. Originally it was built by the French as the Governors House. It was damaged and completely rebuilt by the Vietnamese. As you'd expect the rooms are large and they made good use of windows to achieve a constant throughput of air so it is cool without aircon. The carpets are a work of art - beautiful colours and even the huge ones are all one piece.

On our second day we had a trip out to the Mekong delta region. The fields we passed on the way are lush and produce many kinds of crops - the inevitable rice, sweet potatoes, corn, beans, tomatoes, salad veg, squashes, the list goes on. There are lots of new grand houses that farmers have built which suggests they are doing very well. The delta itself has fishing, fruit farms and is a holding place for commodities which are then loaded into cargo boats and transported up the Mekong. We visited a floating market and this one is a wholesale market. Each boat has tonnes of one product and businesses turn up and negotiate a price for part or all of the vegetable or fruit they are selling. The family lives on the boat but is part of an extended family that has a farm which produces the crops for sale. We visited a fruit farm and while enjoying some tropical fruits (with a side order of chilli salt to season the fruit -yin and yang) we were treated to some singing and music from traditional string instruments.