Good Morning Viet Nam

we arrived at the port for Ho Chi Minh City yesterday around 2 PM. As we were sailing up the Saigon River, our sister ship, the Viking Sky was leaving port. We all went on deck and waved to her as we passed. I’m having problems uploading photos, so this may not get posted til later. It’s 9:00 AM Saturday here. It was quite a sight to see a ship just like ours passing by.
‘We had a tour at 2:45 called the Scenic Tour of Ho Chi Minh City. It was scheduled for 5 hours. It takes an hour to get into the city and back. What an experience that trip was!! I have never seen so many scooters on the road. It was bumper to bumper traffic all the way into the city and in the city too. Our 5 hour tour took almost 7 hours and we only got off the bus twice, once at a Chinese temple and then at a lacquer factory to shop. We got to see a lot of the city but when we went by places to photograph, we were either on the wrong side of the bus or we passed by too quickly. So it was a pretty disappointing day. We will have another opportunity to see the places on our tour tomorrow.

Our reflections on the city: it is cleaner than the other cities we’ve been to recently. It has been modernized with modern skyscrapers. There is still some French influence in the older sections. It has become a huge business and trade hub in Southeast Asia. We were driving around on a Friday night and the shops and restaurants, and streets were filled with people.
‘We were very happy to get back to the ship and to stretch our legs. We hurried to the Cafe before it closed and then made it to the evening show just a few minutes late. It was a Vietnamese group playing local music. They were very good. It was mostly instrumental with one man singing occasionally. Then back to the room to crash til this morning.
‘I am hoping to get pix uploaded today and then I will post this. ……..It helps if I leave the room and go to a public area and that people are now out on tours. Top 3 photos are of traffic. I saw one scooter with the mom and baby on the back and the 10 year old driving. Scary! Second row is the temple. The last two are street shots. One is a market stall in Chinatown and the other is the old French building’s. We have a HCM city tour by night . At least we get a show and dinner first.