We've Arrived at Saigon Port, But Haven't Gone Beyond the Dock Yet

Arrival was at 3 pm, and our first excursions are tomorrow. We did visit some vendors on the pier and bought stuff...

Yes, the port is called Saigon, although the city is Ho Chi Minh City. It seems to be a busy port. We saw a couple container ships pass by, but we must have missed many others, since we are not often looking outside our stateroom.

We passed what looked like a brand-new container port on our way to our berth. And there are two new bridges being built — one upstream and one downstream from our dock. Interestingly, they’re both the same design and both in the same state of completion:

Yes, the air is not really clear here! We did go ashore to see what was being sold in these vendor tents:

Notice the many automobiles beyond the tents. Vietnam is a car-exporting country. Here are the top 9 manufacturers, two of which are homegrown:

• HONDA VIETNAM COMPANY LTD. ...

• TRUONG HAI GROUP CORPORATION. ...

• TOYOTA MOTOR VIETNAM CO.,LTD. ...

• FORD VIET NAM LIMITED. ...

• HYUNDAI THANHCONG VIET NAM JOINT STOCK COMPANY. ...

• MITSUBISHI MOTORS VIETNAM CO., LTD. ...

• VINFAST BUSINESS AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY LIMITED.

Vinfast makes electric cars and scooters and has opened a factory in North Carolina.

We went ashore briefly — it’s very hot and humid! — and bought one necessity and two impulse items.

Not so necessary were three XXXL polo shirts for me for $20, and 10 Lay’s potato chips packages for $5. (I haven’t gained THAT much weight, but for a Vietnamese market I’m XXXL. I’m only XL in America — still too large. More about that later.) They don’t serve potato chips anywhere on the ship. I could probably sell each package for a couple dollars! There were no “original” flavor potato chips, or perhaps they sold out. The flavor I bought was cheese-and-shrimp, which is not our favorite, so I went back and bought another 10-pack of “nori-seaweed” flavor chips. We like those more.

The necessary purchase was toothpaste…

The 9 a.m. lecture was David Burgess on “America’s Involvement in Vietnam.” The big lesson, as we all know by now, is that we underestimated the commitment of the Vietnamese to be free of outside forces, having defeated the Chinese, Japanese and French before we appeared on the scene. And, of course, it was a guerrilla-style war, which we didn’t know how to fight. We all know the persistence of Ukraine against Russia. That’s what it was like in Vietnam. (My analogy, not Mr. Burgess’s)

The 11 a.m. lecture was interesting. Sharon Giraud’s title was “Dangerous Dining.” It was about poisoning, usually political. (No mention of Navalny, by the way.) We learned about food tasters through the years, too. A memorable story she told was about Cleopatra, who showed Mark Antony how easy it would be by coating some jewels in poison, unbeknownst to him, and dipping the jewels in a glass of wine before Mark Antony was to drink it. She then took the glass from his hand and gave it to a servant who then died quickly.

On that note, I’ll go with Rita to dinner (with wine) on Deck 7…