My flight was delayed by two hours, which meant that I was grumpy and irrigated before getting on the plane. Thankfully, all that disappeared almost immediately when I saw Ho Chi Minh City from the sky. As we were preparing to descend, I thought I was arriving into a small French town, and not the middle of South East Asia! The rows of houses and the structures we could see from the sky definitely solidified the fact of Southern Vietnam’s colonized past.
As expected, the hour long shuttle ride that took us from the airport to our hotel was not the most pleasant experience. It was about 35 degrees outside and we were riding in a non-air conditioned bus. At least it wasn’t as crowded as I was expecting. Ho Chi Minh City has got to be one of the most polluted places I’ve ever visited. I was coming from China and I still felt like I couldn’t breathe properly from the pollution.
I came to realize later on in the week that although Vietnam isn’t a relatively large country, the difference between the north and the south are massive. By the end of the week, as I had gradually made my way from the south towards Hanoi in the north, I would have believed it if someone had told me that I had visited two different countries.
The strange thing is, I found Northern Vietnam to be more organized and less polluted compared to the South. As everyone knows, the South was supported by the Americans during the Vietnam War and I guess when the war was lost, Ho Chi Minh City must have just been left to be, as it seems less developed than the North. Although, I was only in both cities for a couple of days, so it definitely wasn’t enough time to make an accurate observation as I only got to see a very small part of each of the cities. It was just surprising to me, because the Americans had also supported South Korea in the Korean War and the stark contrast of development between the two Koreas is incomparable.
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