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When I had the opportunity to use frequent flyer miles for an overseas trip, I decided to use them to go over a different sea than usual for a trip to Asia in November 2002. Here is a report on that trip to Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
TRIP TO ASIA, NOVEMBER 2002
Amc2004-09-13 14:42:34
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card, since the logo was on the door, and Tony said I was the first person in five years to want to use one. He took it, and came back saying it would take a complicated set-up on the computer, could I pay with Visa. I obliged, and this is part of the problem I’ve had with Diners; it’s nice for getting frequent flyer miles, but it has too little acceptance. I will not renew it next time. I got a taxi back to the hotel; not expecting that I would be going far enough to need a cab, I hadn’t taken the hotel’s card. I wrote down “Hotel Oscar Nguyen Hue” for the driver; he took me down the street from my hotel. I indicated it was o.k., but he insisted on finding the right place; I had the guidebook with a short list of Vietnamese phrases, so I looked up the street number and made my one effort on the trip to say anything in Vietnamese as I directed him to number 68.
So there my impression of Saigon was formed. One could take in that there were many people about, there were broad boulevards marked with French colonial architecture, and that was basically it. I normally like to explore cities by walking around, but it was too unpleasant to do it here, with the ordeal of crossing streets, hassled by children begging or selling trinkets and postcards, and by people offering rides on these modes of transport I dislike or to procure other services for a man alone. Crossing busy streets without stoplights is something I dislike about Italian cities as well, and eventually I had a method to it; here, where most traffic was two-wheeled, just cross at a steady pace and traffic will weave around you. Also, although I generally have a good sense of direction, here I often found that I had started out in the wrong direction and crossed streets unnecessarily. So I walked a little, and took a taxi for less than a dollar if the distance at all justified it. Since it got unpleasant to be out, I spent a lot of time in my hotel room, also not great because of the lack
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See photographs from:
Vietnam Gallery
,
Macau Gallery
,
Hong Kong Gallery
,
Cambodia Gallery
