Brilliant Tiny Water (puppets)

Before we arived in Ho Chi Minh City, I was already preparing to write a blog which went something along the lines of the middle bit of Vietnam being great, but just a shame that you generally had to enter or leave through one of the big cities in the north or south. The Lonely Planet had not painted Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as most of the locals still call it so which I'll call it for the rest of this blog - easier to type!) in a very good light, and considering the same book has a fairly high opinion of Hanoi it didn't leave us optimistic that we would enjoy the big city in the south. It just goes to show that you need to visit places and form your own opinion rather than just reading someone elses as, for us, Saigon is far and away the better of the two.

Saigon feels like a capital city should feel with its wide streets and old architecture mixing with modern business and commercial areas. Although not every capital in the world has old abandoned American air force fighter jets, helicoptors and tanks just sitting around in numerous courtyards - I guess they just didn't know what to do with them after reunification! We didn't have much time to see the city, but managed a quick tour to see the main sights such as the reunification palace (the old palace building for the south vietnam government that has been left exactly as the northern troops found it when they rolled the tanks thorugh the gates in 1975 to officially end the Vietnam war), the history museum and a number of the old colonial buildings. We also found time to finally see a water puppet show (after being unable to book seats for one in Hanoi) which is something every visitor to Vietnam should see.

Overall, Saigon left us a little surprised. It, along with Hue and Hoi An had certainly gone a long way to improve on our initial introduction to Vietnam, but I guess it was always going to be a tall order to follow our fantastic experience of Lao, and so it was always going to struggle in comparision. Vietnam is an interesting country that is certainly worth the visit, I just wonder if it is possible to do so whilst never setting foot in its capital!

Steve