The French called Saigon “The Pearl of the Orient.” They had built it, to the degree they could, in their own image. It was a beautiful city with wide, tree-lined boulevards and an international flair. When the Vietnamese handed the French their hats in 1954, they changed the name of the fashionable rue Catanat in Saigon to Tu Do (Freedom) Street and never missed a beat. Freed from their French overlords, if not from their cultural influences, the people of Saigon had the world by the tail and made the most of their new-found liberties.
During the American presence, Saigon, with its smattering of French architecture and cuisine, was noisy with the hustle and bustle of business, in one form or another, as the population sped from place to place on Honda motorbikes, competing for the millions of dollars the Americans were pouring into the local economy. Then, one day in late April, 1975, two years after the negotiated cease fire, the American radio station started playing “White Christmas,” signaling that it was time for the Americans to gather up whatever Vietnamese friends, employees, and co-conspirators they could and di di mau (leave).
As the last American helicopter departed for the South China Sea on April 30, the North Vietnamese Army, meeting with very little resistance and thus inflicting only very few casualties, rolled into Saigon and through the gates of the Presidential Palace. The Republic of (South) Vietnam ceased to exist as a country. The new regime renamed Saigon ‘Ho Chi Minh City’ in honor of their revolutionary hero, whose tenacity had defeated the French and agonized the Americans. The victors seem to have forgotten Ho’s promise to bring brotherhood between the North and the South and a rebuilding of the country “ten times more beautiful.” For you ‘Saigon warriors,’ they also renamed Tu Do Street Dong Khoi (Uprising) Street.
The few remaining Viet Cong in the area had served the NVA as guides, getting them into the city and to their objectives. Having fought and sacrificed for many years to re-unify their country, they were certainly dismayed at being left out of the spoils as cadre from the North moved in and installed a Soviet-style economy. Over the next few years as many as 400,000 southerners who had worked either for or alongside of the Americans were rounded up and sent to re-education camps. These were some of the most productive individuals, and they were reduced to menial, back-breaking labor and writing their confessions, which were repeatedly found to be inadequate, requiring re-writing. Some of the more prominent or powerful southerners simply disappeared.
The new government seized the means of production and made private business illegal. They collectivized rice-farming in the outlying regions, a miserable failure that led to severe hunger. A U.S. led trade embargo made it all but impossible for Vietnam to obtain food and fuel from other countries.
China invaded Vietnam in 1979, leading to a short-term border war from which the Chinese backed off. Persecution of Chinese shop keepers in Cholon increased following the invasion. In 1978, Vietnam had invaded Cambodia to put an end to the Khmer Rouge’s cross-border raids. This led to a ten-year war which nearly bankrupted Vietnam.
International communications, telephone and mail, were all but nonexistent. Ho Chi Minh City’s vendors had nothing to sell, and its customers had no money with which to buy anything. The city was poverty stricken and starving. The lights had truly gone out. A million people, at great peril from pirates and rough seas in unseaworthy boats, with little or no food or water, left Vietnam for anywhere they could get to. The Vietnamese culture has always tied the people to the places of their ancestors as a part of their religion. To abandon their homeland and the ghosts of their revered forbears was serious indeed.
In 1986, Vietnam’s leaders in Hanoi finally took steps to stop the country’s self-implosion. They established a new policy, Doi Moi, moving Vietnam into a market economy. The people of Ho Chi Minh City, which everyone now pronounces ‘Saigon,’ quickly and quite ably returned to capitalism, entering into joint ventures with foreign investment, opening new businesses, and restoring the city’s economy. By 1997, the revenues in Saigon made up a third of that of the whole of Vietnam, and the per capita income was three times that of the rest of the country. The political/travel/motor sports writer P.J. O’Rourke announced (tongue in cheek as always) in an article written for the Rolling Stone that, twenty years after the war ended, the Americans had finally won.
To say that Saigon bounced back does not begin to describe what has happened there. The current Ho Chi Minh City has fourteen districts, only two of which comprise the Saigon of old. These two districts, not coincidentally, have the highest concentration of hotels, restaurants and bars. The Saint George Hotel in Cholon, where most 509th Radio Research Group personnel spent their first and final days in Vietnam, is still there, but it has been converted to apartments. The Hotel Continental and the Rex Hotel (home to the wartime news briefs referred to as the “5 o’clock follies”) are still there, updated and operational. The rooftop of the Continental, where war correspondents and diplomats met for lunch to discuss recent events, has been enclosed and renamed La Dolce Vita Café. The Caravelle Hotel, which was home to so many foreign war correspondents, and from the roof of which they watched and reported the 1968 Tet offensive in Saigon, is thriving. In 1998, a new 24-story building was added to the original 10-story building.
The average daily temperatures in Saigon range from a low of 75 degrees to a high of 90, with humidity that averages 78%. The dry season, November through April, is slightly cooler than the rainy season. Most of the rain in Saigon comes in the form of afternoon showers which can be waited out in a cafe easily enough.
Saigon is serviced by the Tan Son Nhat International Airport. It used to be Tan Son Nhut, and it is not clear whether this is a name change or an alternate spelling, which is common in Vietnam. The rest of the Tan Son Nhut Airbase appears to be unrecognizable. As an aside, during the 2-year period between the cease fire and the fall of Saigon, the North Vietnamese delegation to the International Commission for Control and Supervision (ICCS) was housed at Davis Station on the airbase. The ICCS was also called, “I Can’t Control S**t.” For those who may not know, Davis Station was home to the 509th Radio Research Group and was named for James T. ‘Tom’ Davis, an ASA Radio Direction Finder who was proclaimed by President Lyndon Johnson to be the first American combat death in Vietnam.
In addition to bars, nightclubs and good restaurants, Saigon has a plethora of smaller coffee shops where people sit outside, chat and drink cold brewed coffee while they watch the city shuffle by. The first time I tried Vietnamese cold brew was one evening when I stumbled into a small restaurant in Nha Trang. It was quite enjoyable, and I drink it now when I find it. It is very refreshing, but being made with condensed milk, it is also extremely rich.
Communist governments have a reputation for being intolerant of religion, primarily because that would place someone or something above the government. Despite this, some of the main tourist attractions in Saigon include the Notre Dame Cathedral at the end of Dong Khoi Street, the Jade Emperor Pagoda, various brightly colored pagodas in Cholon, and the Cholon Mosque. Downtown Saigon decorates the streets for Christmas with lavish lighting displays and ‘nativity scene caves.’
On the grounds of the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Park is the Vietnam National Museum of History, which presents the Vietnamese perspective of the country’s occupation by the Khmer, Chinese, French and Americans, all of which have left their marks on Vietnamese culture. What? Am I the only GI who ever spent the day at the Saigon Zoo? I remember a big funny-looking bird, some monkeys and a bear that looked like he was suffering from heat stroke.
The nightlife in Saigon now is bigger than veterans will remember. The bars are more upscale, some are more garish, many are louder. There are still countless young women one would not take home to meet the folks, but missing are the GIs and curfews. Nowadays, it seems, they party all night. The government is still communist, but it has adopted a live and let live policy where many things are concerned. After all, of what importance are a few principles where tourist revenue is at stake?
