International travel by economy class airline is an extremely painful experience. Having small children along magnifies the pain significantly, since you have to attend to their needs, leaving far less time for you to rest.
It takes nearly 24 hours to travel from Wichita Kansas USA, to Saigon Vietnam. While we did fly United Airlines all the way, we had to make connecting flights in Chicago, and Hong Kong. The trip went off with no major problems, but we were nearly dead by the time we arrived. Thankfully, my wife's family was waiting for us, and we were whisked off to our hotel rooms without delay.
The Dad, was given place of honor in the cab/mini Van that took us to our hotel room. Thus he had a front row seat as he was introduced to that nightmare that is Saigon traffic. My father is a WW2 veteran and made a living driving race cars for a number of years afterward. He’s a man whose nerve has been tested again and again and has never been found wanting. The traffic of Saigon though, that tested him more severely then ever before.
I have spoken elsewhere on traffic in Saigon, so I’ll not say much here, save that the lack of instinct for self preservation of the average Saigon driver as remained unchanged. Which is to say Zero....
Nonetheless, we were transported to our hotel rooms safely, where we remained comatose, till we recovered the next day.
Since, by Saigon time, we had gotten to be fairly early, (around 7 PM or so) we were up the next day fairly early. We had breakfast at this quiet little restaurant located on top of a major department store. The restaurant had a garden where I had a chance to take some pictures of the family. After that, we embarked on the Quest. The Dad had always had a desire to try out a Cuban cigar. Those, after we had breakfast, we began our search for the forbidden tobacco. Which we found with the aide of our friendly and streetwise cab driver.
Mention of this fine fellow is necessary. I’m sorry now that I have neither his name or picture. We used him as often as possible, as he was an excellent driver, knew the streets of Saigon very well, and took very good care of us. Indeed, he was even willing to look after little Wart, when everyone else wanted to disappear in different directions while shopping. It was this Cab Driver that found the one street vender who had, stashed away, a box of fine Cuban cigars.
With The Dad in possession of his Holy Grail, we went back to our rooms to prepare for the evenings adventure!
Date(s): 11/22/09. Album by Steven W Dugger. 1 - 8 of 8 Total. 260 Visits.
1 Arriving in Saigon. We are met by friends and family!
2 This is the hotel where we stayed in Saigon. Nice place, with occasionally hot showers, flush toilets and, most importantly of all, air-conditioning!
3 Godot and Wort, chilling in the garden. The first morning we where in Vietnam, we had a breakfast in a lovely little restaurant on top of a department store. There was a small garden next to the restaurant where I took some pictures
4 The Dad with EBNC Bride and the kids.
5 Against the Saigon skyline
6 Ahh, the ubiquitous motor scooter, if you are going to be traveling around Saigon, you HAVE to ride one of these.
7 Yep, that's my 83 year old Dad on the back of the scooter to the right. He later said that, riding around on the scooter was one of the most frightening things he had ever done in his life. Later, he would come to embrace the zen of it all and riding the scooter wasn't so bad.
8 Score!!
One of the major goals for the Dad was obtaining a box of Cuban cigars. He loves cigars and had only had one chance before in his life to smoke a Cuban. Well, it took us an afternoon, but we finally found someone who had them.
