Good Morning Vietnam! Revisiting Ho Chi Minh City After 30 Years
My recent trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was uneventful, but unique in a number of ways. Firstly, I showed up at the airport check-in counter for my flight two hours early. I was the only one standing there. Everyone else had already checked in. A first for me. Second, as soon as they closed the plane door a small baby decided it was too sick to fly and started screaming. It took the crew an hour to get the baby and mother off the plane so we could depart.
Arriving at Ton Son Nhut Airport
Third, the taxi driver at Ton Son Nhut Airport decided he would take us on a leisurely grand tour of the city. We didn’t drive as far as Hanoi, but after 45 minutes of this nonsense, I demanded the driver stop the taxi and let my friend and I out. “There is your hotel!” was his reply. It was, He had already accurately gauged the final end of patience of foreign tourists to the run-the-meter-up fraud.
Our hotel was right in the middle of what turned out to be the HCMC’s answer to Walking Street in Pattaya, but louder and more brash. It was very noisy both inside the hotel, and outside, with blaring club music and chatter. Seems there was a raucous 24/7 party going on in both locations.
How Ho Chi Minh City Has Changed
The biggest surprise was how the city has grown from my first trip back in 1991. There was no structure higher than about five storeys back then. Now there were many dozens of tall skyscrapers sprouting up everywhere.
Back then it was VND Dong 11,000 to 1 USD. Now, the exchange rate was VND Dong 26,500 so everything was ridiculously cheap compared to Thailand.
I have had the hard sell thrown at me in many places, but nothing like the grab-your-elbow and hearing a loud pretty-please-buy-something-
On my first trip, the city was overwhelmed with bicycles with a few smatterings of motorcycles (called motos) and a rare automobile or two. On this trip I never saw a single bicycle. It was very heavy on the motos with some vehicle traffic, taxis. My friend was looking forward to riding in an old three-wheeled bicycle pedicab, called a cyclo. All museum pieces now.
I was impressed with the hospitality and friendliness of the Vietnamese people. On my first trip there I was constantly asked if I served there during the Vietnam War (called the American War by the Vietnamese). I replied that I was stationed in Thailand. Now no one even asked me a single question since the war was ancient history. But I have never received one shred of animosity on any of my trips as an American. Hard feelings or animosity to past historical injustices is seemingly not a Vietnamese trait.
I am looking forward to my next trip to Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City.
