Ho Chi Minh City is a large area made up of 12 rural and 5 urban districts. District 1, the downtown area, is officially known as Saigon, and that is what most people living in south Vietnam call the city.

Betsy and Albert spent a weekend in August in Saigon. Because Vietnam had been closed to foreigners for so long, only opening its borders at the beginning of the decade, Saigon has few of the tourist facilities that other cities we've visited in South East Asia have. However, we enjoyed walking around the city and seeing the sights.

Saigon has retained a lot of its French colonial character. Many buildings from that time period remain, and stand out with their dark yellow coloring and very French architecture. The building in the photo at left used to be the Hotel de Ville and is now the People's Committee Building.

The colonial buildings that dot the city are enhanced by wide, tree-lined boulevards, grassy plazas at major intersections, and a nice park along the Saigon River. Although the aura of poverty is pervasive, we both got the feeling that with some investment Saigon would be a fabulously beautiful city.

Although Saigon does have wide streets, they aren't used to capacity. Few Vietnamese can afford cars, so the most typical forms of transportation we saw were motor bikes and bicycles. One form of transportation that was new to us was the cyclo - a sort of three wheeled bicycle with a passenger seat in front. In the above right picture, Betsy's co-worker Kelly Smeltzer is riding in a cyclo.

Everywhere we went in Saigon, someone was selling something, from food to clothes to knick knacks to household items. We visited Ben Thanh Market, where all those things plus others we couldn't identify were sold under one roof. For Westerners, everything in Vietnam is incredibly inexpensive. We had a difficult time not buying everything we saw, whether we could think of a use for it or not!

In addition to regular stores and markets, there were many people selling things on the street. The woman at left, wearing the traditional Vietnamese conical straw hat, is selling food. The two buckets on either side are attached to the long handle above, which she balances on a shoulder to carry the whole contraption. The whole thing looks quite heavy - it's amazing to see so many women walking around with them!

We did do some actual sight-seeing. We visited Notre Dame Cathedral, a Buddhist temple, the Revolutionary Museum (housed in the French governor's residence), and the War Remnants Museum (formerly the Museum of American War Crimes). The War Remnants Museum, while depicting truly horrible events, was not as moving as the JEATH War Museum in Kanchaniburi, Thailand, probably because it smacked of propaganda.

We also took a day to go see the Caodai temple in Tay Ninh and the Viet Cong tunnels in Cu Chi.

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