IT is rush hour and there are chickens on bicycles and pigs on motorbikes jostling for position with tourists in flowery shirts propped on three wheeled cycles that look like flying armchairs. Ducks tied in, pairs and wrapped around a Honda 50 are manoeuvred past a family of five perched like a display on an army sidecar as a battered old Russian bus lumbers through, casting a theatrical blue haze over the scene.
In the midst of the rush, a disagreement over a cyclo fare is played out. A triangle of drivers furiously discuss tactics while two backpackers decide that 3500 Dong (about 40p) is enough to pay per cyclo. It's as if a new set of rules has yet to be agreed and compromise is the order of the day.
In Saigon nobody is waiting to be told what to do. It has become the industrial and commercial centre of one of the fastest growing economies in South East Asia. It is here that the economic changes sweeping Vietnam and their social implications are most evident. Competition for the growing tourist market has seen a rise in the quality and choice of accommodation.
The main concentration of tourist hotels is in the central part of Saigon known as District One, which is filled with street cafes, tour shops and budget guest houses. At the Tran Thi Canh, for $4 a night, you can have a room on the roof and a brilliant view of the faded white facades and roof gardens that straddle the smoky chaos below. Alternatively, five minutes' walk away is the newly refurbished Rex Hotel where there is a porter in an oversized Beefeater's uniform who will be glad to help you off your cyclo and show you to a room for $100 a night.
Stepping down to Pham Ngu Lao street, sit for a breakfast of delicious hot white bread and eggs (60p) and watch the scene unfold in front of you. Vendors pushing food wagons ring their distinctive cow bells in competition for business. Shoe shine boys vie with postcard sellers to corner the new arrivals who look bewildered by the chaotic bustle and richness so new to the first time visitor.
Among the circus a young girl. no more than eight, balances a tray of Juicy Fruit chewing gum on a tiny hand while pulling at trouser legs with the other. A legacy of previous visitors. Nobody is buying.
By to p.m. most selling has stopped and the children disperse to their various wholesalers who are handed the day's taking in return for a day's wages and stock for the 6 a.m. start the next day. Corner traders selling beer and cigarettes from dining room cabinets open for the night shift, as people spill onto the streets from dimly lit noodle restaurants.
Hiring a bicycle for 50 cents a day is probably the best way to travel around Saigon. But what you must quickly realise is that unless you adopt the pon jerky, smooth cycling technique that seems to propel the, whole city, you will hit something or someone else. As fathers would watch six year olds career down the foot path on their first bicycle, so too you can see the worry on Vietnamese faces as they watch foreigners wobbling towards them on bicycles or motorbikes. The pace is fast but, steady no quick turns or you've had it. Abandoning the bike you might opt for a cyclo.
The cyclo drivers, many of whom are ex soldiers, will have a few interesting stories to tell if, given half the chance. For about you can have a half hour unofficial tour of Saigon's neo classical and international style buildings which give certain neighbourhoods a French atmosphere and other sections of the city a more American influence.
The American war museum smells of fried rice and fresh paint. Inside, vivid images of the Mai Lai massacre at which 504 Vietnamese women and children were, brutally cut down by marauding gangs of marines are clumsily thumbtacked to yellow painted, peeling notice boards pictures of people being thrown, from helicopters into fields of screaming napalm victims.
Outside, an incongruous mix of twisted war machinery scattered haphazardly around a courtyard catalogues a traumatic history and more helicopters are swinging in the warm breeze outside the souvenir shop. Models of the same American helicopters are made from strips of empty Coke can's the new American symbol which it seems is as big a threat to the traditional structure of Vietnamese society as the low flying helicopters were 25 years ago. Nearby a young boy sells original US army Zippos".
A $5 dollar tour, bookable from any of the tourist cafes dotted around District One, will take you to see another aspect of the war fought against the US which has become part of the tourist industry. The Chu Chi tunnel system is a 200 km network of tunnels started by the Vict Cong during the Indo French war of the 1950s and extended and improved in the fight against the Americans. The system enabled the Viet Cong to control a large rural area only 20 to 30 km from Saigon. At its height. the system was 200 km long. stretching to the Cambodian border.
Parts of the system were several stories deep and included trap doors, specially constructed living areas, storage facilities, weapon facilities, field hospitals, command centres and kitchens You are invited to squeeze into the tunnel system through an incredibly small hole while other unsuspecting tourists wander, round triggering imitation land mines. The firecracker that replaces the explosives is enough to make you think. And you. cab complete your war experience by firing off an AK 47 at $1 a bullet.
Up until very recently any travel within Vietnam had to be organised through government agencies and licensed tour operators such as the Sinh Cafe group. Now with "Doi Moi", as the liberalisation policy is known, cars and motorbikes can be privately hired for travel to most parts of the country, roads permitting of course.
WITH Sinh Cafe, a pre booked three day trip to the Mykong Delta will cost about $25, which includes B&B and two boat trips. It is possible to survive comfortably in Saigon for $10 to $12 a day but with no frills a couple of beers could soon double that figure. There is no shortage of bars and clubs to slip into, Apocalypse Now being one of the more interesting.
Although changing rapidly, Vietnam continues to be a police state. Anyone who doubts that fact can quickly settle the argument by publicly criticising the government. A vast entrenched network of minor functionaries has become a law unto itself, defying the government's central efforts to build a market economy. Many reformers now look back fondly on the days when everyone followed the central government's instructions without question.
There are many contrasts and contradictions in Saigon and travelling away from the city reveals many more. But I felt that there was optimism, industry and humour which seem to be driving the Vietnamese to a brighter future but they really do need to fill in the holes in the roads.