Once you get out of the tourists-and-w*res district, Saigon is actually quite nice. It looks like a fabulous city to be rich in. It has french cafes with realistic-looking baguettes, impeccable fashion stores, art galleries selling beautiful fakes. Name it, if your neighbor Vietnam-dong-billionaire likes it, Saigon's got it.

However, it does not have any coffee. Not any coffee to care for anyway. I suppose it never gets cold enough for a street-side Caf fe nom sua here, but don't these people ever need to wake up?

I spent the day riding around the Mekong Delta. The book makes a lot of the cultural impact that the American presence had on the South, but this is silly, I feel like I am touring the poorer parts of Louisiana.

So this is it, I going back to the North.