My friend and colleague Rosemary from Auckland dropped in and stayed over the weekend. Rosemary is holidaying in Vietnam and started her tour in Ho Chi Minh. So before she actually joined the tour we had time together exploring the city centre, and what a better way to do it and enjoy the ambience of the people and the traffic than on a cyclo. There aren't too many central city sights to be had, the Notre Dame Cathedral , the Post Office with early century architecture, the Reunification Palace where the end of war treaty was signed, the War Museum and the River.
Rosemary's driver chatted to her in quite good English. He was 62 and had spent time fighting with the Americans during the Vietnam war. My chap was more entrepreneurial, asking me many times what hotel I was staying in, despite my telling him I lived in HCMC. Then as expected, close to the end he starts discussing the price we had agreed on at the start, either wanting more money or a longer time. Sorry my friend I live here!
The cyclos travel along the streets with all the traffic as you can see from the photos, and in parts of the city there were a significant number of other vehicles, and rather close too! Despite the closeness and number I only felt a little frightened once, coming up to a set of street lights, because cars and motorbikes have a tendency to run the lights. The good tour book says that once cyclos were very popular and had a high presence around the city, however the government is trying to close the operators down. Now cyclo are only found around the tourist / back packer area.
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