Modern Vietnam is a nice place to visit.. and you wouldn’t mind staying there for a while.
Being an American and growing up during the Vietnam War era, I always wanted to see what the post war Vietnam was like now a days. During the Vietnam war I was to young to be drafted but I clearly remember all the hype in the USA over Vietnam and war. I can even remember my older brother actually joined in the anti-war protests and burned his draft card.
As luck would have it, one of the companies that I often free lance worked for secured a submarine cable laying project in Vietnam and asked me if I was interested to go there. Most definitely I wanted to go there.
As our plane touched down in the now Ho Chi Minh City, I tried somehow relate back to how the soldiers would have felt when they had landed there in Saigon back during the war. I can tell you this, the feelings they would have had wouldn’t have been good at all knowing there’s a chance that they could be killed there.
While driving from the airport to our hotel I even saw several of those old concrete machinegun bunkers. Even though the war had ended over 20 years ago, it was still clear that Vietnam still had many reminisces of it’s war era days.
Traffic was chaotic at best. Many intersections didn’t have traffic lights and it also seemed that some people drove on whatever side of the street they pleased. Definitely, anyone from any western country wouldn’t want to even attempt to drive a vehicle on the streets of Vietnam.
The architecture in Ho Chi Min City is a major reflection of French design with a mixture of Asian influence. The government buildings and churches were all beautifully designed and up kept quite well throughout the city center.
Vung Tau
The following morning we headed down south to the port town of Vung Tau. Vung Tau is at the entrance to the Saigon river. It is about a 6 hour drive from Ho Chi Min City to Vung Tau. During the Vietnam war the American soldiers used Vung Tau as an R&R area (Rest & Recreation).
Since the war ended the Russians have turned Vung Tau into an Offshore Oilfield supply base. They even have a large compound there where all the Russian’s oilfield workers and their families reside.
There’s also a few bars along the street directly opposite this huge Russian compound. The Russian’s visit these bars for drinking, socializing and shooting pool, etc. I would shoot pool there also and I happened to meet a few nice Russians there. They were oilfield workers on their time off.
Back to the bars.. there were several bars on the main strip there [which runs along the beach]. Most of the bars also served good western food and had pool tables in them also. Of course there were some beautiful and sexy Vietnam ladies there also.
I can’t exactly put my finger on it but there’s something about Vietnam girls that makes them extra sexy. Almost all of them have the typical long black hair (very long, in fact) and that alone makes any woman sexy in my opinion.
But, the Vietnamese ladies have their own special dress, the Vietnamese Long Dress, known locally as the Ao Dai. It is a one piece dress and the color is usually white. What’s really sexy about this dress is the extremely high slit up both sides of it. Wow.. it seems like the slit is going all the way up to and even pass their asses and it makes the ladies look so very sexy when you see them walking or riding their bicycles down the street. 다낭 붐붐