June 12: Saigon

I'm back in Saigon for the first time since 1995. The bus from Phnom Penh dropped me off a block from the guest house we stayed in 11 years ago.

Had it not been for my map, I would not have recognized the neighborhood.

Oh, the venerable Kim's Cafe backpacker hangout is still there, but where I remember quiet, dusty streets are now towering hotels and streets jam-packed with shops and tourists and motorbike drivers.

I wandered down to Bui Vien Street, where in 1995 we stayed in a guest house that had just a number for a name. The problem is, I don't remember if it was number 62 or 64 or something else, and none of the humble guest houses from a decade ago exist any longer. They've all been replaced with hotels -- granted, hotels that only charge ten bucks a night, but hotels all the same. I think I'm staying within a building or two of where I stayed last time, in a swish new room with a refrigerator and satellite TV, amenities I know we didn't have last time.

Found the Philippines Airlines ticket office to change my flight to one a couple days earlier, then went to the Notre Dame Cathedral and Post Office -- which, remarkably, look much like they did 11 years ago. I was actually in search of a cyclo driver I knew from 1995. Armed with very little information about him -- he used to hang out in front of the post office, and he a big Batman decal on his cyclo -- I didn't actually expect to find him, but I was hoping to find a group of cyclo drivers who might know him. Occasionally, you'll get lucky and find a cyclo driver who served alongside U.S. servicemen during the war and has a good grasp of English.

A few abortive attempts at conversation with moto drivers went nowhere. I told a postcard-selling kid that I was looking for a friend who used to drive a cyclo. "Oh, he died," the kid said. "Want to buy some postcards?"

Umm....right.

I wandered into some pricey boutiques and a very upscale shopping mall -- with delightfully cold air conditioning -- and did some window shopping, then drank some Orangina and walked back to the hotel in the rain.