Dateline: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. We did the HCMC tour today, with three other couples. It was a long day as the drive from where we were moored to city center took 2 hours in each direction. However, we had good weather as the predicted showers and thunderstorms did not materialize. It was sunny, almost hot, and humid, of course.
Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon if you prefer the old usage, is big and growing rapidly. The traffic rivals Cairo for insanity. I wisecracked that our van driver would have to replace the horn every couple of years as he would have worn it out. Very little attention is paid to lines on the pavement, where they even exist. Cutting in front of other vehicles is routine, as is passing on the right, and many busy intersections have no traffic lights. Drivers cope with this chaos and we saw no accidents today or a couple of days ago in Da Nang.
We saw the former presidential palace (when South Vietnam was a country) which is now called the Reunification Monument or some such. Since it is maintained to look as it did when it was a presidential palace that is what I prefer to call it. It is a beautiful piece of tropical architecture, with large, vertically louvered windows that pivot to let in maximum fresh air. It is set in a park with lots of green trees. This combination of greenery to cool the air and natural ventilation made the building quite comfortable without air conditioning on a warmish, humid day. It is quite the best example of tropical architecture I’ve seen.
I know I’ve commented on this before, but we were struck anew by the rampant capitalism and entrepreneurship everywhere on display in this supposedly socialist country. To be sure, you do see an occasional socialist realism propaganda billboard but they are rare. The jarring reminder is that the main roads are lined with blood-red banners each featuring a yellow star or hammer-and-sickle. The best I can figure out, in the minds of most Vietnamese, these symbols merely stand for a reunified Vietnam ruled by Vietnamese. Of course they mean something quite different to most westerners. I believe capitalism is an even greater part of the culture here than in China.
Social distance is different in Vietnam than in the west. Vietnamese, I believe, are much more likely to touch you than are Europeans or North Americans. I suspect it “communicated” unintended things to GIs during the Vietnam War.
Our guide had a university degree in tourism and is studying for a second degree in law. So I asked her about how the country was doing with developing a civil code which would enable the enforcement of contracts. I believe she had no idea what I was talking about. Criminal code she understood perfectly, civil code drew a blank. Communist countries tend not to have much in the way of civil codes and, in this respect, I believe Vietnam may still be Communist.
Vietnam has developed a specialized tourist police force whose uniforms are labeled “tourist security” in English. This reminds me of Egypt which has done the same thing. I suspect they are more needed in Egypt which has more tourists from more countries and more potential terrorists. They tend to be stationed in places where tourists are prevalent.
