Saigon, officially named Ho Chi Minh City is a thriving metropolis with an unavoidable western influence offering quite a different experience to Hanoi. Whilst Hanoi seems a city to be savoured with more traditions and obvious traces of the red-tape, Saigon catches up better and faster with the best and worst sides of "doi moi" movements (renovation of the country) following the market economy rules. This is commercial hub of Vietnam, the industrial muscle of the nation. This is the rendezvous of business people and hustlers, whilst not many of them carry visa-versus from Saigon to other big cities in Vietnam.
Towering developments start to break the skyline as multinationals fight for a seat on a plane into the country. Doi Moi and the lifting of the crippling embargo have opened the floodgates to an unstoppable torrent of foreign capital. Now everyone wants to be friends, after all, there is a lot of money to be made. After twenty years of forced sedation, Vietnam is now stirring but Saigon is wide awake.
For many of the inhabitants of Ho chi Minh City, nothing has changed. The streets still swarm with life. People buy and sell things, bargain, cook, wash, sleep, eat, drink, and live on the streets of Saigon. Despite the large amount of money being thrown around, the filter effect is yet to manifest itself and thousands of people have to survive on virtually nothing. Cyclo drivers, often unable to do other work due to government policy, earn next to nothing and are still being punished for being on the losing side. As they bed down for the night n their cyclo, across the road at the La Lai Hotel, the wealthy Vietnamese are arriving in their Mercedes Benz for a night of indulgence.

In one word, Saigon is facing all good and bad things caused by the new movements of Vietnam. It obviously promises lots of interesting things to discover, whilst remains an exciting centre for shopping and hanging around and somehow remind you of its one-time name "the Pearl of the Far Orient.

Tay Ninh

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.

Cu Chi tunnels

These tunnels are a symbol of Vietnam’s continual fight against foreign oppression and imperialism. The tunnel system covers close to 200 km including under what was once a US air base. The tunnels once spanned an area stretching from close to the Cambodian border to the city limits of Ho Chi Minh City. They can be seen to represent the Vietnamese attributes of ingenuity, loyalty, hard work and determination. They were originally constructed to fight against the French in the 1940s, to give a peasant army a means of communication between villages whilst remaining undetected. In 1960 the Viet Cong repaired and added to the tunnels to fight against the South Vietnamese and American forces. The Commander of the American forces in the region held the opinion that the Viet Cong who were responsible for digging them were like human moles. Although the tunnels were mainly designed with a fighting role in mind they also contained a wide array of chambers including field hospitals, meeting rooms and even private offices and sleeping quarters for senior officers. To repel attacks and infiltration, the tunnels contained many elaborate booby traps including concealed pits with bamboo spikes at the base, and mines and crossbows which would be triggered by trip wires. When you visit the tunnels, your guide should point out some of these traps, then look back over your path and try to decide how many of those you would have triggered. Some of the tunnels went under water, with a primitive S-Bend effect where the tunnel would open under the surface of a river, this allowing the Viet Cong to leave the tunnels virtually undetected.

Before entering the actual Cu Chi tunnels, you may see a screening of a propaganda film about them that has some amazing footage. You will then be guided around the tunnels by an English speaking guide. You will only visit some of the tunnels which have been preserved in a state not dissimilar to how they were during the war including those areas used as a field hospital, meeting room and other official quarters. It is also possible to fire an AK - 47 on site for USD 1 a bullet. The firing range closes at 4.30 PM, whilst the tunnels close at 5 PM.