ho chi minh city (saigon)

I'm reading a travel memoir from the 1950's right now (A Dragon Apparent, by Norman Lewis) and this is what he says shortly after arriving in Saigon: "It was clear from the first moment . . . that the lives of the people of the Far East are lived in public. . . . The street is the extension of the house and there is no sharp dividing line between the two." Many things have changed in the past fifty years, but this is one thing that still seems to be true, at least in some parts of Saigon. In the neighborhood where we stayed (in the upper level of someone's home/guesthouse), the streets formed a maze of narrow alleys. During the day, the homes were wide open to the streets and you could easily look in and see the living areas, sometimes not much bigger than a closet, with tiled floors and a small red-lit alar and a stairway or even ladder leading to the upper levels. The houses were so close together that one night a neighbor was watching TV and we kept trying to turn the volume down on our TV, because it didn't seem possible that the sound was coming from another house. We saw a lot of interesting buildings in Saigon, many of them beautiful old colonial-era buildings. The building pictured below (built in the 60's) is the Reunification Palace, the former home of the South Vietnamese president and where the North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates on the day Saigon "fell" or "was liberated," depending on perspective. We took a tour of the palace and saw the bunker and offices from which the president directed the war. In Saigon, more than in other cities in Vietnam, we noticed a strong official message regarding the war and specifically America's role in it. No one ever said anything to us personally. . . this was only the case during official scripted tours. What saddened me most about this is that many South Vietnamese suffered due to the war as well, but their message cannot be heard. Former S. Vietnamese soldiers, to this day, cannot have official residency in Saigon and therefore cannot own property or have professional jobs. We were told that many of the cyclo and motorbike drivers are former teachers, doctors, etc.

We took a day trip from Saigon and one of the stops was the head Cao Dai cathedral. Cao Daism is a religion unique to Vietnam. I believe that it is a kind of mix of Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, and maybe Islam. We were at the cathedral in time for one of the daily masses. Altough we couldn't understand anything, the building was a sight to behold. :)

Another stop was at Cu Chi Tunnels, an amazing network of tunnels built by the North Vietnamese soldiers and the community in this area and used during the war. The tunnels have supposedly been doubled in size for tourists to try them out. I can't imagine them being any smaller. This is me trying not to let claustrophobia take over. Can you see the fear in my eyes? :)