Same same, but very different

Today wasn’t as hot as yesterday afternoon so I’ve done a lot of walking. I started out going through the park (which wasn’t there when I lived here – it was waste ground surrounded by a green fence and some of the street children slept there). Two young girls came to talk to me. One was 12 and the other 10 and they wanted to practice their English. The 12 year old had very good English, the 10 year old was less confident. I talked to them for ages and heard all about their schools, where in the city they live, favourite books, films.

I walked to the main city centre area via a silk shop to check out prices. I went past the People's Committee Building (main blip) and after lunch I walked up to the post office and cathedral. The post office looks the same but inside there’s now a large souvenir shop as well as the post office counters. Ho Chi Minh still looks out over everyone. The cathedral is next to the post office. When I lived here I drove past the cathedral many times and went to the post office regularly but I never went in to the cathedral. So I decided to fix that. It’s a more impressive building from the outside!


I walked around some more looking at what’s changed and trying to take some street photography shots. After a stop for Vietnamese iced tea at a street stall, I went to see the city from above – a bar on the 52nd floor of the Bitexco tower. The bar was expensive – I nursed a beer for a long time and watched the sun set and it get dark. The view was extraordinary. You really get a sense of just how huge the city is and the numbers of tall buildings there are now. I liked picking out some of the landmark old buildings like Ben Thanh market and the People’s Committee which just looked tiny from up there. The extra is the lights of the city from the bar.