saigon

or ho chi minh city, as its commonly known. flew in from bangkok this afternoon; flight delayed an hour by monsoonal rains in bangkok. it's weird to think that i am now in the country immortalized, mythologized, discussed, etc., in myriad movies, books, songs, etc...i stepped off the plane onto the tarmac and could hear "for what it's worth" playing in my head...

saigon, or at least the part i've seen of it coming from the airport ten kilometers to my hotel downtown, has more motorcycles and scooters than cars. i mean, bangkok's got a good mix of the two, and all the autos are kind of what makes the traffic so atrocious in bangkok, but it's like a ten-to-one ratio here: ten two-wheeled vehicle for every one of the four-wheeled variety, most of them carrying three to four family members apiece, none of them pausing for red lights. it's amazing that they don't collide.

we drove from the airport through sprawling saigon, modern-looking capitalist businesses lining both sides of the street in this socialist nation. there were KFCs, starbucks, chains i recognized from thailand and japan, and a few huge shopping malls. they may not have all of our freedoms here in vietnam, but they appear to have the freedom to spend freely.

the roads, on the other hand, left something to be desired. they weren't as bad as mongolia or cambodia, but the potholes and general bumpiness of the major thoroughfares indicate a serious need for re-paving. it looks like they are in the process of starting that, though: like so many other major asian cities, saigon appears to be in the throes of a growth/reconstruction spurt, now that the asian economic crisis is ten years in the past. times were tough in this part of the world for years after that crisis struck in the mid-nineties (i know i saw lots of aborted boomtowns gathering dust in malaysia in particular), but it looks like they are headed towards modernity and even, smooth pavement here...