To Cambodia, but first.....

The Saigon segment of our trip is already drawing to a close--within a half-hour, we'll be checking out of this, our base since we arrived--and you guys are still back in the noddle shop where we had breakfast our first day. It can only be a good thing, though, that we're accumulating experiences faster than we can write about them, and that we're out there--even in the Rain--rather than in here. Yes, that's Rain with a capital "R". It hasn't rained often, but when it does, it rains hard! Not that that stops life or traffic in Saigon. Scooter and motorcycle drivers simply don ponchos (this is not something needs to pull over to do), and keep going. Got two other people on that scooter? Simple--one rides in front of the driver, one in back, and the poncho (mostly) covers all three. But I digress. Back to the Fall of Saigon...

Our first full sightseeing day took us from our pho breakfast to the Reunification Palace (after a representative monsoon-season deluge). Although designed as the home of former president Ngo Dinh Diem, the US-backed leader of Vietnam, he didn't live long enough to see the completion of the current 1960s-modern building--the much-loathed design of which I love for its perfect representation of the architecture and style of the times. It was actually the Thieu-Ky administration that occupied the "palace" until, April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese tanks crashed its gates, the symbol--like the last helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy--that embodies the Fall of Saigon. In the basement is a labyrinthine command center, with maps, dusty 60s-era communications equipment.

One of my guidebooks describes the interior "as looking like everybody just up and left one day--they did--and a tour is almost eerie really." It does. It is.

So I guess our visit to the Peace Noodle Shop (where the Tet offensive was planned upstairs as noodles were ladled down stairs), my visit to the amazing Jade Emperor Pagoda, our visit to the Giac Lam Pagoda, our cyclo tour around Cholon (Saigon's Chinatown), our amazing lunch at what may be the busiest and most chaotic restaurant in Saigon, my motorcycle taxi ride to the Vietnam History Museum, where, indeed, I was tactless enough to photograph an embalmed corpse--and saw a delightful, colorful, water-puppet show!--will have to wait for now. Nevermind the circus that was Hien's birthday party, where Dan and I did our best with razor sharp implements--artists' tools, really--to replicate the delicate carrot-lotuses and cucumber palm leaves in the manner demonstrated by Hien's sister, Thuy, as garnish for the dishes being expertly prepared by a cadre of Duongs on the floor around us. Always fun 'til somebody loses a finger...

(By the way, you can begin to appreciate what the humidity is doing for my vanity--check out that hair!)