There are several hints around town that tip you off to the fact that Vietnam was once a French colony, and the most obvious is the Hotel d' Ville, pictured here. It's right in downtown Saigon at the end of, guess what, a typically wide French boulevard. In front of the Hotel d' Ville is a statue of Uncle Ho, of course. It is a favorite place for tourists to have their pictures taken.

One thing that I learned on the trip was the reason why Ho Chi Minh is referred to as "Uncle Ho" and not "Father Ho." It is because he never married and had no children.

My first impression of Saigon was that it is much more modern and upscale than I had expected. I distinctly feel that only a very small part of the population shares any of the wealth associated with that upscale veneer, meaning that it's inhabited by a lot of dirt poor people, but it feels quite upscale all the same. I had just flown in from Phnom Penh, and it was definitely several rungs up the civilization ladder from the city I had just flown out of. Saigon is located on the banks of the Saigon River, and down by the waterfront, down where several streets angle into each other to form this little triangular park, they have this statue of....sorry, don't know who he is. Doesn't look like our favorite uncle, though. As you can see in the background, Saigon has a skyline. I don't think those building have been there more than a couple years, though.

Everyone may expect that there be a lot of sidewalk cafes in Saigon, Vietnam having been colonized by the French and all. Actually, it goes way beyond that with all manner of business being conducted on the sidewalks. This is a morning scene with locals having their breakfast on the sidewalk as ladies in their conical hats walk through selling newspapers.

I'm not sure how long ago this would have been a picture of bicycle traffic. How long will it be before Saigon is a gridlock of irate, honking drivers in personal passenger cars? Again, anybody's guess. This was taken on a bridge over the Saigon River.

You probably already knew that Vietnam uses the Roman alphabet - almost. Vietnamese being a tonal language, they've had to add all kinds of diacritical marks to the five vowels. I guess it works, but I listened to people speaking Vietnamese and then asked myself "Could you begin to transcribe that in alphabet?" It would be a tall task, for sure. Still, they do it.

Although you can see the high-rises in the background here, the side streets of course have lots of nice examples of colonial architecture and are very pleasant. People who have been to Hanoi say that the whole city is like this, making it more pleasant than Saigon in general. Maybe I'll get there some day. I hope so.