On Saturday, November 8, we took a direct flight from Siem Reap to Ho Chi Min City, which the locals still call Saigon. The city was a major city in the Vietnam War (called the American War there), and now contains more than 10% of the country's population...approximately 10 million people. It also contains 5 million scooters and motorbikes...one for every 2 people! We quickly learned that stop signs, stop lights, lane markers, and all other traffic control devices were constructed to provide wages to the construction crews...not to give direction to traffic. Nobody pays attention to them. Not cars, not busses, not taxis, and especially not the scooters and motorbikes. Watching traffic in Saigon is like watching blood cells flow in a vein...everything rushes in a direction, and somehow gets to its destination. And rush hour is all day! Oy!
We stayed in a very American hotel - the Park Hyatt. Right across from a KFC (don't worry...we didn't go there), and a block away from a Starbucks (we did go there).
We had no touring scheduled for this afternoon...so we walked around the hotel area...which included the Saigon opera house.
One thing we noted was the heat and humidity...which was also present at our other stops. For some reason, I thought Saigon would be cooler, but no such luck! At latitude 10.8, the city basically sits on the equator!
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