Monday, September 19, 2011
...This is just one of them.
People tell you to be ready for the motor scooters, and they're right. Everyone seems to have one, and they carry everything on them: their families, and all sorts of goods for sale. They'll take you for a ride around town if you accept the offer, and it does look like fun.
What no one told me is how much Ho Chi Minh City wants to become a modern metropolis. The Bitexco Financial Tower, for example, rises 68 stories above downtown, and comes with a helipad and observation deck jutting out from the 50th floor. Until 2005, it was the tallest building in Viet Nam; this year, the Keangnam Hanoi Tower beat it by two stories. It may not be long before one of the local 24-hour construction projects tops that.
Today was a day for further explorations of the Saigon you expect to find: markets, museums, and landmarks. President Nguyen Van Thieu's Presidential Palace, now the Reunification Palace, has the same 1960s-era architecture you see in old photographs of the New York World's Fair, or Montreal's Expo 1968. But it has bunkers beneath, with war maps on the walls and folding metal doors at strategic intervals.
The photographs on museum walls are authentic; the construction of a new economic capital is earnest. The stories of Ho Chi Minh City may or may not be true, but they are told honestly, and with hope.
and I see a familiar backpack and blue jeans in the picture ;-) enjoying your posts.
ReplyDelete