Vietnam: The Dragon Smiles - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 271

and Honda. But at the same time, ships will berth in the city, and the traveler can walk or
ride directly to the landmarks of former Saigon.
Traffic is clotted and intense. There are no stoplights or police to punctuate the swarms
of motorbikes and cyclos, a bicycle or motorbike welded to a rickshaw. The cautious trav-
eler will do well to cross the street while in the company of locals. The less cautious may
follow local advice: walk into traffic slowly, alertly. Those on wheels are accustomed to
pedestrians. They will steer around you!
Figure 18.2. Mekong River
All of Vietnam seems to be on wheels, wearing shorts, jeans, ragged clothes, baseball
hats, and varnished straw, conical farm hats. A few riders zoom along in elegant display:
women riding motorbikes, wearing long cloth gloves, conical straw hat, dressed in an ao
dai —tight trousers beneath a silk sheath.
SAIGON AND VIETNAM: WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Saigon is the former name of Ho Chi Minh City, a name bestowed on the “Father of Viet-
namese Independence,” the man who led the war, first against the French and then against
the United States. Seen on a map, Vietnam resembles an elongated “S” joined and bisected
by two great river systems: The Red River and the Mekong. The country extends north to
south about 1,000 miles; it is narrow-waisted, and at Da Nang, where the waist pinches, it