I hadn’t booked anything before I arrived, so I had to scramble for a half-day city tour. With the help of a travel agency I found one at a Sinh Café location. It really is a combination café and tour service. It is Vietnamese owned and shows evidence of the need to further develop the tourist infrastructure. The tour was about 3 hours long. We went to the War Museum, which every American should see once

That said, the tour guide spoke reasonable English and was friendly and willing to answer questions. I met an American woman traveling with a Vietnamese-born friend who has lived in the US for several years. Our reactions to the war museum were interesting. I introduced myself because I needed an American to talk to. We were both disturbed by what we saw, even though we had seen and heard virtually all of it during the war itself. Seeing it again in the context of the Iraq caused feelings of anger and frustration. The woman born in Vietnam told us we should “just move on,” which seems to be a common feeling, at least in the southern part of Vietnam. I wish I could, but if we had learned the lessons of that war, we wouldn’t be in Iraq now.
I was immediately captivated by Saigon itself. The French Colonial architecture and

Before I went to work, I had a day on my own. It was fun, but the many short

With those experiences in mind, and a desire to see more of Saigon and the surrounding area, I allowed more time and prepared for some tourism this year. I booked two activities through Viator, a large multinational travel company. That was a breeze. I also booked a three-day cruise on the Mekong River through a local company with headquarters in Hanoi and an office in Saigon. I already knew that I wasn’t going to be able to use a credit card to pay for it. They recommended Western Union, which seemed reasonable to me. I went to the Western Union web site, gave my information, the necessary information about Tuan Lihn Travel, credit card number, and selected Vietnam from the pull-down menu. Having done everything right, I watched the site implode in my face. It not only refused my transfer, the refusal blocked my credit card. Ugh!
In the end, I had to take cash and visit a local Western Union office in order to make the transfer. Maybe the travel company should have told me that; certainly Western Union should not have included Vietnam on the menu of countries where you can use your credit card to transfer money. It appears that they do not make any kind of transfer into Vietnam that can link to a credit card or bank account number. Stating that on the website would have saved me annoyance. It’s a sign of the lack of trust in the Vietnamese financial system that I’ll describe further in the marketing section of my travelogue.
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