Directly across a narrow street from my hotel, the Sophia Hotel, is the French Embassy, pictured here. Just to the right, out of the picture, is the entrance to a small, open-air French restaurant on the embassy grounds. It features excellent French cuisine at reasonable prices. Last night I had an onion soup to die for!
Note the gaggle of strung wires running across the picture, the likes of which you see all over Saigon. When they figure out how to go underground with communication lines it will improve the presentation of some of their very fine buldings.
There are some very impressive high rise apartments that have been built in the last ten years. Rates for these start at 1500 USD per month. Surrounding these modern edifices you will find urban blight of seamy open air commercial enterprises on which every bit of space is covered by a sign of some sort.
So, Saigon is a study of contrasts in which foreign investors have developed huge hotels, car dealerships, high-tech industries and other high profile international business names while the Vietnamese are slowly but surely beginning to share the wealth by working at the hotels, driving taxis, and other concomitant employment, such as security guards for all of this development.
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