as told to (your name here)

Saigon actual

It's a good thing that I pre-arranged a bunch of entries about my trip. Although each of my hotels has wi-fi, internet access has already proven itself to be intermittent. If you haven't already noticed, I've denoted those entries with "(scheduled)" and will try to fill in around them where possible.

Arriving in Saigon was a trip. The doors from customs & immigration open up to the street where, waiting behind barricades, are several hundred people shouting at several hundred other people. I tried not to make too much notice of the fact that at 5'9" I tower over most. And even at 11pm, the heat. It was a definite fear that coming to Vietnam in May would be a mistake, and those fears are nearly realised. The weather app on the computer in my hotelroom says it's 32C or 90F and "feels like 105F". Although, it said there were afternoon thunderstorms, but with hardly a cloud in the sky it felt a lot hotter than the supposed 95F high temp. I very nearly over did it, my first day of walking around. There are lots of other tourists here, so even though I stand WAY out in crowd, I'm not a total curiosity to the locals. Freak, yes, but they've seen plenty of that here. Sights, sounds, smells... all in overwhelming excess here. Information overload. May wander over to the park this evening to watch the singing & dancing extravaganza they've put together in honor of Uncle Ho's 120th birthday (officially tomorrow). Caught a glimpse of it on the way in last night, seeing young girls in traditional outfits and young men in army uniforms singing and prancing. I love a good prancing soldier.

posted by tinyhands @ 5:11 AM