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 Photo
essay:
Vietnam Bicycle Tour: Imperial Roots (Central)
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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Arrive and settle into the
hotel.
HCMC is the starting point for this tour, but little time is
allocated for sightseeing in this fascinating and historic city. If
you haven’t spent time here before it is worthwhile to arrive a few days early or
stay a few days afterwards
to explore it on your own.
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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is
generally a low rise city with
most buildings under four stories, but it is getting increasingly high rise.
Because street frontage is at a premium, most buildings are pretty narrow.
In the downtown area, there are still a few one-story buildings, with distinctly
different architecture -- generally more human scale and decorative. They
are probably some of the oldest buildings in the area. |
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The town wakes up early and the streets
and sidewalks become full of
activity quickly. Around parks, badminton, tai chi and stretching are
popular morning activities. Along the sidewalks there are numerous venders.
Popular in the morning is "Pho" (noodle soup) which students and workers
grab a bowl of on their way to school and jobs.. |
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A major attraction is
the War Remembrance Museum. It attracts large numbers Vietnamese and
foreigners alike. Besides exhibits of military hardware, it has exhibits
on journalists who covered the war, information on the aftermath of the war and
a peace exhibit. |
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Three of the
landmark buildings in HCMC are Reunification Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral
and the Central Post Office. The Reunification Palace was the Presidential
Palace prior to reunification. It is the site of a famous photo of a
Vietcong tank coming through the gates at the time of the liberation of Saigon.
The cathedral and post office date from the French colonial period. The
late 19th century cathedral has austere gothic, neo-Romanesque
architecture. If you are in the neighborhood, the Italianate post office
has a very elegant interior.. |
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Strolling through the
city always seems to be full of good visuals: In all directions the
traffic seem to flow like a water ; sometimes an impenetrable raging
torrents, and then there are times and places where it is a gentle stream that
you can wade across -- with caution. One of the public service billboards
in town cautions against drinking and driving -- the same counsel would be
prudent for drinking and walking as well. |
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All though the city is
becoming increasingly motorized (and oppressive with noise and air pollution --
on top of the existing tropical heat) there are still elements of grace,
simplicity and practicality interjected by bicycles and bicyclists -- but we are
biased. There seems to be an infinite variety of items that can be carried
and vended from a bicycle. |
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Internet cafes always seem to have a crowd.
Computer games and instant messaging seem to be the favorite activities.
Maybe this is because accessing any website outside of Vietnam can be
tediously slow -- at peak times it took 10-20 minutes for a page to come up. |
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The fanciest buildings (right) are banks, hotels and
government buildings. Though it generally isn't treated as an
recreation asset, the city is on Song Sai Gon (the Saigon River). It is
used for transportation and the banks are packed with water
related activity. |
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On an afternoon walk we past both a
wedding and the opening of a store. Around the city there are businesses
with majestic facades that specialize in producing weddings. |
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 It is traditional,
when opening a business to hire a lion dancing troupe to scare away
the bad spirits and bring good luck to the shop. |
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This is amusing because it is an
amusement part with a variety of Buddhist themes. |
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While the city is huge, once you
escape it and its satellite communities, which have now largely merged with one
another, it is not long before you get a feel for what most of Vietnam is about.
In a word, agriculture and more specifically rice. |
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It is traditional,
when opening a business to hire a lion dancing troupe to scare away
the bad spirits and bring good luck to the shop.
