Hochiminh city:  Like many cities in Vietnam, Saigon did not escape the wrath of war. Since the beginning, Saigon has had quite a traumatic history. There are many citations to the birth of Saigon and the origin of its name. In the 15th century, this area were swamps, marshes and thick forests. By the early 17th century, a small township was formed. According to one theory, Saigon or Sai Con has its root in a Khmer word Prei Kor (Kapok Tree Forest).

The name Saigon was used officially in 1698, when Lord Nguyen Phuc Chu sent Mr. Nguyen Huu Canh to this region to create various districts and to form a government for this southern outpost. Because of its strategic location for trade and commerce as well as military importance, Saigon continued to grow and became a bonafide city. By 1772, Mr. Nguyen Cuu Dam began to fill many of the canals to form streets.

In the mid 19th century, the French with the aid of the Spanish invaded this port city and destroyed the fort. This event was the precursor to the long struggle between the people of Vietnam and France leading to the historical defeat of the French in 1954. In the years after the defeat of the French, Vietnam was divided into two separate countries and Saigon became the hub of resettlement for many as people from north and central Vietnam immigrated south.

In the 60's and 70's, Saigon was bustling with commerce and business. It was the cultural center and the capital city of South Vietnam. Already heavily influenced by the French in terms of culture and style, the city had an air of a French provincial town with a Vietnamese twist. Saigon was dubbed the "Pearl of the Orient" by the foreign press. The city was alive with activities and cultural diversity that rivaled any Asian city at the time.

After the fall of South Vietnam to communism in 1975, the city and many of its inhabitants were in a state of chaos and turmoil. In 1976, the new government renamed the city Ho Chi Minh City and shut its door to the rest of the world. Although recognized world wide as Ho Chi Minh City, to the people of Vietnam, the city is still lovingly referred to as Saigon.
 
Street Scenes: With a population of over 5 millions people, Saigon is one of the densest urban area in the world. On many streets, it is common to see houses with the ground floor converted into a business front while several families share living areas on the upper levels.

Common mode of transportation just a few years ago, the ubiquitous "cyclos" are becoming rare since they have been banned from many streets. Replacing them are fleets of taxis and "Honda ôm" - Japanese motocycles that you just wave down and jump on the back to be transported anywhere in the town.

Unlike other cities in Vietnam, Saigon is very active at night. Music halls often play to sold-out local crowds and restaurants stay open late into the night. During the summer months, sidewalks are dotted with colorful fruit stalls.
 
Orientation: The downtown area of Ho Chi Minh City is now officially called District 1, though you will still hear some people call it Saigon. Stick to either District 1 or Ho Chi Minh City - that way, nobody will be confused or offended.

Orientation is quite simple in this city - a relief if you've been travelling to other Asian destinations. Since the Vietnamese language uses Latin-based lettering, signs are easy to read. However, the street numbering can sometimes be confusing, as they can comprise a generous quantity of letters as well as numbers.

Budget travellers tend to congregate around Ð Pham Ngu Lao at the western end of District 1. Cholon (Chinatown) has plenty of cheap rooms, but Western backpackers are still rare here. Travellers with a little more cash prefer the more upmarket hotels concentrated around Dong Khoi St at the eastern side of District 1. Pham Ngu Lao and De Tham Streets form the axis of Saigon's haven of budget eateries.

The famously muddled Tan Son Nhat International Airport is only 7km (4.3mi) from the city centre. Trains, including the infamous Reunification Express from Hanoi, arrive from the north into District 3, just north of the city centre. Dirt-cheap buses - in equal measure unreliable and unsafe - run from a variety of locations around the city, including Cholon (for Mekong Delta connections) and the Binh Tranh District (for all northern destinations).
 
Ben Thanh Market: Built on a landfill of what was once a swamp named Bo Ret (Marais Boresse), the new Ben Thanh Market is located in the center of the city. Under the French government, the area around Ben Thanh Market was called Cu Nhac circle (Rond point Cuniac), named after Mr. Cuniac, the person who proposed filling the swamp to create this area. The area was later renamed Cong truong Dien Hong.
 
Nha Tho Duc Ba - Cathedral of our Lady:  Proposed to be one of France's most ambitious project in Indochina at the time, Rev. Colombert laid the cornerstone for the cathedral on October 7, 1877

Three years later, in 1880, the cathedral was opened to the public. These two dates are inscribed on a marble placard in the cathedral.The bricks used to build the structure were shipped from Marseilles. Artisans from Lorin Company (Chartres, France) were commissioned to create the stained glass windows. The cost of construction was a whopping 2.5 million francs. In 1962, the Vatican gave the cathedral the title Basilique.
 
Vinh Nghiem Temple: Located on Cong Ly boulevard (or Nam Ky Khoi Nghia), Vinh nghiem is south Vietnam's most majestic temple. Construction of the temple was completed in 1971 after the design was drawn by Mr. Nguyen Ba Lang and associates. The ground floor consists of the library, the auditorium, and offices. The temple is located in a large parcel of land. On the left of the upper court yard stands a tower or the seven-level Avalokitesvara Stupa. Next to the tower hangs a large bell given to the temple by the Japanese Buddhists Sangha.
 
Hoi Giao - Islam: A small number of Muslims exist in Vietnam, and are mainly found in South central Vietnam, the Mekong Delta, and by the Cambodian border. Islam was introduced to Vietnam in the 7th century via Arab traders and later blended with local customs and religion. Islam is now mostly practiced by the Cham population of Vietnam, although there is a strong Hindu influence in their practice. Today, there are several mosques in metropolitan Saigon.
 
Bao Tang Lich Su - Historical Museum:  Located in Saigon's Botanical garden and Zoo, the museum opened its doors to the public in January 1, 1929. Originally, the museum was named Blanchard de la Brosse. In 1956, the museum was renamed Bao Tang Quoc Gia - National Museum. And finally, in 1979, the government renamed it Bao Tang Lich Su - Historical Museum.
The museum houses many historical artifacts including three wooden stakes from the battle between Ngo Quyen and the Han invaders, granite tablets with intricate carvings, and uniforms of mandarins and kings of yesteryears. A statue of the Buddha with 1,000 eyes and 1,000 arms is also part of the museum's collections. According to the curator, many of the artifacts dated back to the 6th and 7th century.
 
Den Ngoc Hoang - Emperor of Jade Temple:  Located in Dakao, first district, the temple was built by Cantonese Buddhists who settled in Saigon in the 19th century. The architectural style is heavily influenced by the Chinese of southern China.
The Taoist deity (Emperor of Jade) is enshrined here along with his 4 guardians (Tu Dai Kim Cuong). The major attractions to the shrine are the elaborate carvings of the various deities as well as its unique architectural style of the interior. This temple is also home to the Hall of Ten Hells where there are carvings of various scenes of the various levels of hell.

Dinh Doc Lap - Independence Palace: Dinh Doc Lap or Independence Palace was completed in 1966 after three years of construction. The plans were drawn by Mr. Ngo Viet Thu, winner of the architectural excellence prize in Rome. The palace was built on the original site of the French governor's headquarters in the 19th century. President Diem commissioned Mr. Thu to design the new palace and supervised its construction. Unfortunately, the president was assassinated shortly after construction started. The Palace became the home of then President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu until the fall of Saigon in 1975. It is now called the Reunification Hall with all the original furnishings still kept intact.

Cu Chi Tunnel: It was one of the weirdest tourism experiences we've ever had.  As though Fellini and Disney had teamed up to do 'Nam....
At the beginning of the tunnel complex, there's a wall draped with clothing ... vests, cone shaped peasant hats, capes in camouflage colors. Oh yes, and rifles.  Real rifles, but thankfully without the ammo.

You can rent these things.  And wear them while crawling through the tunnels.  So much the better to feel like a guerilla.
The Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam are one of those horrible remnants of a horrible war that most folks would probably rather forget.  So, of course, they've become a tourist attraction.

The Cu Chi Tunnels lie 75 km northwest of Saigon ... which nobody these days but the government and maps call Ho Chi Minh City.  At the height of the Vietnam war, the tunnel system stretched from the outskirts of Saigon all the way to the Cambodian border ... something like 250 kilometers of tunnels.

The tunnel system, built over 25 years starting in the 1940s, let the Viet Minh and, later, the Viet Cong, control a huge rural area.  It was an underground city with living areas, kitchens, storage, weapons factories, field hospitals, command centers.  In places, it was several stories deep and housed up to 10,000 people who virtually lived underground for years.... getting married, giving birth, going to school. They only came out at night to furtively tend their crops.

The ground here is hard clay, which made this whole thing possible.  But even so, the planning and construction was incredible. People dug all this with hand tools, filling reed baskets and dumping the dirt into bomb craters.  They installed large vents so they could hear approaching helicopters, smaller vents for air and baffled vents to dissipate cooking smoke.  There were also hidden trap doors and gruesomely effective bamboo-stake booby traps.

Of course, the U.S. military knew about the tunnels.  The tunnels not only allowed guerilla communication, they allowed surprise attacks, even within the perimeters of U.S. military bases.  The U.S. retaliated with bombs, eventually turning the region into what writers Tom Mangold and John Penycate called "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warfare."That was then.

Today, the trees and bushes have grown back.  And since 1988, two sections of tunnels have been open for tourism.  There are what some guidebooks call the "real" tunnels at Ben Binh.  They remain unlit and mostly unreconstructed, which means chunky Westerners shouldn't even try.

Re-creation of underground conference room from which Tet offensive was planned
The "fake" tunnels at Ben Duoc aren't fake at all. They're merely renovated, widened for tourists and come complete with lights and displays underground.

After declining the guerilla costumes and gear we went for a hike through the woods while our guide pointed out bomb craters (labeled by shell type) and smoke vents, thoughtfully steered us around booby traps and let us play a brief game of "try to find the trap door" ... which, of course, we couldn't.

Finally, we came to the tunnels.  We dropped through a trap door to the first level, 10 feet below the surface, and squeezed through narrow passageways to see bunkers, a hospital, a kitchen and the actual command room from which the 1968 Tet offensive was planned.

There are tables and chairs, bunk beds, crude cooking stoves, dummies outfitted in guerilla garb and, for effect, the occasional live person to give an authentic touch.

Even with the tunnels widened it was a squeeze, especially one serpentine stretch at the second level where we had to drop to our knees and crawl while the ceiling scraped our spines. There was a third level, which is hardly 18 inches high and definitely would have required wriggling on our stomachs. We gratefully declined.

The day we did all this, the temperature was 98 degrees with correspondingly high humidity, and the sweat gushed so heavily we could hardly hold onto our cameras.  It gave us an incredible admiration for the people who lived and struggled here.

After one last wriggle, we came up at a snack stand where we got to taste the taro root and green tea that tunnel residents ate.

Then off to the souvenir stand, zoo and shooting range (where, if you knock down the target with your AK47 or M16, you can win a gen-u-ine guerilla scarf).....

War is hell, and, sometimes, the aftermath is just plain weird.
Tayninh: Tay Ninh is situated 95 km north-west of Ho Chi Minh city and is the original home of the Cao Dai religious sect. It is from here that Cao Daism has spread its influence onto surrounding provokes. In time past, this sect ran its own army, as they had been ruthlessly oppressed by Diem and his regime. The Cao Dais denied support to the Viet Cong, and after reunification, they were punished for this intransigence by the confiscation of their lands and temples which were not returned to them until 1985.

The central Cao Dai Temple is 4 km from Tay Ninh in the village of Long Hoa. Surrounded by a series of schools and administrative buildings, the temple contains an awesome array of colors and symbolism unlike anything else you will see in Vietnam. Built entirely with donations from its parishioners, the temple is built on nine levels and the inside is lined with a series of pillars with ornate colored dragons curling up them. The ceiling of the temple is painted sky blue and adorned with white fluffy clouds, said to represent the heavens. In fact, almost everything within the temple holds some symbolic value. At the far end of the great hallway is a large brightly colored globe upon which is a large eye. This is the divine "all seeing eye:, believed to represent the creator of the universe and similar eyes can be seen lining both sides of the building within its lattice windows. The temple always looks like it has just had a new coat of paint and is extremely photogenic.

Masses are held at 6 am, midday, 6 PM and midnight. It is worth timing your visit to the temple for one of these ceremonies as they are quite spectacular to witness. Men enter from and pray on the right side of the temple whereas women enter from and pray left. During festivals, all the worshippers are dressed from head to toe in white to add a bit more formality to the scene. The three colors you will see are those of red, yellow and blue which represent Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism respectively. If a funeral is in progress, an icon is placed on the central altar for each of the deceased. Although you are not allowed in the actual area of worship during prayer, you are allowed in the foyer, from where you can take some great photos of the mass. The Cao Dai do not mind having their photo taken, though it is always polite to ask first