A walking tour

I slept long, it was great!  My hotel room isn't big bit adequate and I have CNN, which isn't really a bonus, but hey, better than ESPN.

I'd picked up loads of tour brochures yesterday to try and decide which ones were best fro Cu Chi and the Delta.  I eventually decided to go with Buffalo Tours, the company with a desk in the lobby.

It was 11 before I set out and after booking an upgrade ticket for the AO  Show at the Opera House tomorrow I was accosted by the cyclo driver who helped me across the road yesterday.  My heart softeed and I let him take me on a tour.  It was supposed to be 30 minutes but as he took me to the Jade Emperor Pagoda (for happiness and good luck) it waqs an hour, 40,000 VND, about 12 pounds.

Then I continued my walk up to the Eiffel designed La Poste and the Cathedral.  I had lunch in a bistro where the owner (?) had been born in Shanghai, raised in San Fran, married in Gretna (after 3 weeks living in Hamilton), been in Saigon for 23 years and had a son who was a chef in Delhi.  The assistant was Canadian, fdrom Saskatchewan.  This is a very cosmopolitan society.

Then off to the Presidential, liberation, Reunification Palace, a building redolent with history.  Rebuilt in the early 60's it saw some of the major moments of the Vietnam War and the VC tanks crashed through the gates on 30 April 75.  It is weird having lived my teens and early 20's in the shadow of the Vietnam War to be here, seeing in person so many places I'd read about or seen on tv.  The cyclo ride took me past the former US Embassy site, now the Consulate.  the buidling that the last evacuation helicopters took off from has gone but the memorial to the VC killed in the action remains outside.

I walked back through the park and the Ben Thanh Central Market and was in dire need of a swim.  It was cooler than yesterday but still hot ad much sunnier than KL.

Another restaurant in the same street tonight, Number 19. A really cheap set meal, with Saigon beer! Early start tomorrow.