When a country has two main cities, one never knows which one to visit first.  Vietnam, due to historical reasons (prior to unification in 1976 there were two countries with two capitals), has the long-named Ho Chi Minh City in the south, and the current capital Hanoi in the north. We decided to start with the former.

Last night at dinner, a friend clarified the difference.  She said Ho Chi Minh City (also abbreviated as HCMC) is the Shanghai to Hanoi’s comparison to Beijing.  The former being a commercial centre, where capitalism is rampant, while the latter being the government seat, political, bureacratic.  A brilliant way to differentiate between the two.

Of course many people know HCMC as Saigon … a name given by the French, that evokes a romantic image of this city.  And even though the official name of the city is HCMC (named after the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party), everyone other than the government still calls it Saigon.

Disembarking the plane in Saigon, you immediately notice the new and very modern airport. It’s not what you expect of Vietnam.  Everyone assumes they will land in squalor, but the truth is that Saigon is a very dynamic, rapidly developing and a very modern city. This is immediately noticeable with the airport building.

Walking the streets of central Saigon, the energy is captivating. The city is modern yet with a certain grandeur. There are many wonderfully preserved French colonial buildings on large treed avenues.  The sidewalks are wide and the city clean. You get a sense of authenticity experiencing this vibrant city, plus it feels very safe.  Best of all, the people smile, are laid-back and leave you alone.

The lasting memory of Saigon will be the motorbikes, which are everywhere. Driving from the airport to the hotel, you witness first hand the craziness of traffic in Saigon. Cars, busses and millions of mopeds vying for the limited space on the road. The mopeds are like bugs, attacking from all sides.  

Sitting in the van, it felt like you’re in a video game … avoiding objects hurling at you trying to stay alive. Wait till you sit in a cyclo, expposed to the madness on the roads!  The mopeds come from all directions, even if you’re on a one-way street. You will also notice how the moped has become a fashion accessory. The helmets that are mandatory come in different colours and designs, some with personalized accessories pasted on them, and then there are the very colourful masks that all the drivers wear.

When you see the number of mopeds and the fumes that come out of them, you will understand why the masks.  This is a clear sign of development in Saigon.  The bicycles have been replaced with mopeds, and it’s just a matter of time that the mopeds will be replaced by cars.  Will the infrastructure accommodate all the future cars is another question.

Another image that has been embedded in my brain has to do with the telephone cabling.  The city is clearly modernizing very fast, yet the telephone cables are still laid over-ground and in such thick bundles, that if one of the cables get scut, I’m not sure how you would find the right one to fix.  Often you would walk in front of a beautiful building, but the whole front would be masked by this confusion of cables.  I guess no one had thought of this issue at the urban planning department! 

To end … a few left-over impressions that I have:  an astounding fact about the country is that there are 84 million people living in Vietnam, 10 million of which are in Saigon, yet 65% of the population is below the age of 30 … lots of creativity in the Vietnamese people, Vietnamese art definitely being in the forefront of the new up-and-coming art renaissance that is sweeping across Asia … and surprisingly, all prices in touristy areas of Saigon are in US$!!!!  How are we supposed to get those amazing deals?

To read more on Saigon (what to see, where to sleep and eat), visit my blog entry at ‘on the Go With Bo’ …