Saigon, Vietnam

On Sunday, our second sea day out of Hong Kong, the sunshine finally arrived and we had our warmest, most beautiful day since leaving Seattle in September. The ocean was like glass most of the day. I watched the World Series which started at 8am, while Cheryl went to the Spa for a haircut & style. We spent the balance of the day playing cards, relaxing, & participating in Wii games. 

Early Monday morning, our ship docked in Phu My (pronounced Foo Me) which is the gateway to Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. We were here two years ago, but I had a respiratory infection & running a high fever. Consequently, the ship’s doctor put me in quarantine and I missed our scheduled tour. I insisted that Cheryl go because I didn’t think we’d ever be back. Reluctantly, she went. If you run a fever on the ship, you’re automatically isolated until you’re back to normal for 24 hours. As I recall, I spent 4 straight days in our cabin – not a pleasant experience, but between Cheryl & Holland America, I was well cared for.   

From the port to HCMC, it was about a 90-minute bus ride. We arrived around 9:00. The French called their colonial capital the Pearl of the Orient and the victorious Communists renamed it Ho Chi Minh City – but this former Cambodian port town is still called Saigon by almost everyone who lives there. Most of the signs throughout the city are labeled as ‘Saigon’, to include many of the newer structures. The drive took us through verdant countryside with rice paddies in every direction. HCMC is a bustling metropolis of 9 million+. The most popular mode of transportation is by scooter. In fact and as you’ll see in several photos, the scooters outnumber cars significantly – we were told 70% scooter vs 30% all other. Traffic was mind-boggling - we were amazed we didn’t see any accidents. The city itself is very rich in cultural attractions & appreciates its past as much as it does to its future. Awesome balconied buildings lining wide boulevards are an elegant vestige of Saigon’s French colonial influence. In my opinion, the city’s character remains essentially French, yet resolutely Asian. If I had to summarize in a few words, I would describe Saigon as intense & frenetic…sidewalks are crammed with noodle stands and vendors, markets are overcrowded, and the roads are gridlocked. There’s a subway system currently under construction and while it’s obvious the city is making great strides, the bulk of society still live in poverty with unemployment at 15%. Photos of the market areas capture prevailing unsanitary conditions but again, give credit where credit is due…at least they’re trying, and many passengers who’ve been there in recent years can see visible progress. You can contrast Vietnam’s progress with that of our own back home and I think many would conclude they’re moving faster than we are. My opinion, America used to be a country that built for the future. Look at us now with deteriorating bridges, roadways filled with potholes, overcrowded government housing, and only talk (for years now) about bullet train development. Sometimes the government built directly. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector. Either way, there was broad support for spending to make all of us & our environments better & more prosperous. Nowadays, we simply won’t invest – even when the need is obvious and the timing couldn’t be better. Where are we with oil explorations?? Yet we spend billions in multiple countries to save the world. And you can’t convince me that the problem is ‘political dysfunction’ or some other weasel phrase that diffuses the blame. Our inability to invest doesn’t reflect something wrong with Washington – I think it’s the destructive ideology that has taken over the Republican Party. In a direct sense, much of the fall in public investment reflects the fiscal troubles of state and local governments, which account for the great bulk of public investment. These governments generally must, by law, balance their budgets, but they saw revenues plunge and some expenses rise in a depressed economy – so they delayed or canceled a lot of construction to save cash. My opinion, this didn’t have to happen. The feds could easily have provided aid to the states to help them spend – in fact, the stimulus bill included such aid…which was one reason public investment briefly increased. But once the GOP took control of the House, any chance of more money for infrastructure vanished. And it’s all about ideology – an overwhelming hostility to government spending of any kind. This hostility began as an attack on social programs, especially those that aid the poor, but over time it has broadened into opposition to any kind of spending, no matter how necessary and no matter what the state of the economy. You can get a sense of this ideology at work in some of the documents produced by House Republicans. Back in 2011 as I recall, there was a manifesto titled “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy” which called for sharp spending cuts even in the face of high unemployment, and dismissed as ridiculous the notion that decreasing government outlays for infrastructure lessens government investment. I thought that was just simple arithmetic, but what do I know? Or…take a recent Wall Street Journal editorial asserting that any money the government spends diverts resources away from the private sector, which would always make better use of those resources. Never mind that the economic models underlying such assertions have failed dramatically in practice. Never mind the obvious point that the private sector doesn’t and won’t supply most kinds of infrastructure, from local roads to sewer systems – such distinctions have been lost amid the chants of private sector good, government bad.

And the result, as I said, is that America has turned its back on its own history. We need public investment much the same as what Saigon is doing…and what China’s been doing for years…at a time of very low interest rates, we could easily afford it. But build we won’t. I’ve also said many times, I wouldn’t trade America, but we sure need to wake up pretty darn quick. Sorry for the rambling here.        

We drove through the heart of Saigon, past central square & the French-built Hotel de Ville (the former Town Hall) now housing the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City. Our first stop was at a beautiful park & zoo where we encountered hundreds of smiling, happy kids. From there, to the City Museum – a great example of French heritage that has survived the surge of development currently enveloping old Saigon. Since 1975, it has housed artifacts unique to Vietnam’s culture & history, including a wide selection of rarely seen black & white images of the communist struggle for power in Vietnam. No air conditioning and the humidity was so hot & heavy by then we were both soaked. Temps on the bus were a relief, but with very little distance between stops we continued dripping. We always carry two large thermoses of ice water, so we were better off than most other passengers.

We then visited the former Presidential Palace…now Reunification Hall, made famous when a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the front gates back in 1975, signaling the end of the Vietnam War. It has changed little since that time. Inside the Presidential Palace, we went through the reception and dining rooms as well as the basement – still full of ancient American-made telecommunications equipment & strategic military maps lining the walls. No AC there either.

Feeding time…off to the Windsor Plaza Hotel for lunch. To our surprise, there were a dozen or so other hungry tour busses from our ship at the hotel also. The Windsor Plaza is a 5-star facility and had a huge ballroom setup to easily accommodate all of us. They had several large buffet stations setup throughout, so lines were short and the food was excellent – a combination of Vietnamese & American. Desserts were awesome. Chocolate in any country is universally great! We both had ‘sampler’ plates…YES!

While the hotel dining ballroom handled the multiple busloads easily, their front entrance was a different story. We were all waiting for our respective (numbered) busses simultaneously…so nearly 500 folks confined in a small area, waiting for the busses to weave their way in and out of traffic (scooters) to get to the hotel. Could it get any worse? Of course! Murphy’s Law! It then started raining. Cheryl and I didn’t mind – it was a cooling downpour for us, but tempers started flaring elsewhere. A female beggar tried boarding one of the busses and fists started flying – at least a dozen police and security officers from the hotel joined the disturbance and quickly got things under control.

Once boarded, we made a brief stop at the local post office (amazing structure) and Notre Dame Cathedral – a neo-Classical structure dating back to the 19th century. 

As I write, we’re roughly 250 miles from Singapore, & scheduled to arrive at 10am tomorrow morning for a two-day stay. Given clear skies, the sail-in should be spectacular but much the same as Hong Kong, we’ve yet to hit it with ideal weather conditions. We’ll see. This will be our third visit to what I believe is the cleanest city in the world. We’ve done all the municipal tours in the past, to include a night safari, so we plan to spend most of our time at MGM/Universal being kids once again and time permitting, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel just adjacent to downtown.

Tonight is ‘formal’ and while we said at the onset our participation would be limited to every-other ‘formal’ function, our small group of friends has been encouraging us to attend so as much as we both dislike it, we’ll be dressing up again. I’ll try to include a few group photos if I’m able. We ARE looking forward to Halloween – Cheryl’s dressing as a witch and I’ll be in my Angry Bird costume…pictures for sure, but I’m not sure when the party is.

Rummy Game Update: Bob (6) Cheryl (3) – I’ve been very lucky the past 3 games J and I know it won’t last!