Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Saigon)

So I'm just going to do one post for Saigon. We ended up leaving a day early, which means we were only there for 4 nights. We arrived on Saturday around 7pm, and our luggage was lost. We felt pretty gross from traveling all day and were pretty upset our luggage didn't make it. I went down for dinner with my mom and Harvey but ended up going up to the room before we ate.  (it had been a LONG day- as you know if you read the story) On Sunday we went to Harvey's house for a luncheon... he has a cook and it was delicious. Harvey is my mom's boss.

Here's his driveway...

His house is beautiful. He lives in a compound that is SO pretty. 

While at lunch we met a lady named Sally Cox, who I love. She's English and used to be a ballet dancer. She's hilarious and showed us around Saigon after lunch, which ended up being the only sightseeing we really did.

There were two things that really shocked me about Vietnam:

1) How hot it is. I am not really great with geography and wasn't aware that Vietnam is 2 hours from the equator....it is SO hot. The lady who does my nails had warned me but I didn't believe her. The humidity is unlike anything I have ever felt. It's almost not enjoyable to walk around.

2) The traffic. There are TONS of mopeds. According to Harvey "there are 400,000 cars in Saigon, 4 million mopeds and 12 million people." Also according to him... "there are 38 traffic deaths a day, this is not including people who die at a hospital from an accident, just on the scene."  They drive like crazy people... everyone goes at the same time in all directions. There are mopeds zipping in and out of traffic, it's crazy.  They will fit up to 6 people on the mopeds as well. Here are some pictures where I tried to capture how many there were:

In Vietnam we spent a lot of time at Theodore Alexander and got to see the factories. It was extremely interesting. I have a few pictures but I'm not allowed to put them on the internet. Here's the welcome sign though...

The rest of the pictures are from around Saigon. I don't know what most of them are but will say if I do.

My mom and Sally...

My mom and Sally again...

My mom and me...Please notice our lovely outfits we bought Sunday morning. It was almost impossible to find clothes because everyone is SOOOOO small.

Sally took us to L'Usine which was great. It reminded me of Anthropologie with a cafe.

Probably the best red velvet cake/cupcake I have ever had...

Inside L'Usine...

A man selling goldfish on his bike.

Our hotel the Park Hyatt. It was very nice, except there were a lot of "brown-outs" which just means the power kept going off.

Dong Khoi was the shopping street...

The Ben Thanh market (pronounced Ben Tin, I think)...it was SO crowded and hot.

Inside the market

Went back to L'Usine on the last day...

We also ate at one of the prettiest restaurants ever called the Dock, but I wasn't feeling well and didn't take any pictures. Vietnam had some really pretty areas and then it had a lot of areas that looked pretty poor and run-down. Apparently this is still from the war. We had a great trip and I would love to go back, just not in the summer.