On the Other Side

The cab stooped in the middle of the road. I looked at the paper I had with the name of my guesthouse and couldn’t see any signs with anything that looked like that trough the windows. It was almost ten at night. On one side of the road there was a very bad lighten park and across the street just some commercial buildings that were all closed. I showed the address again to the cab driver, he couldn’t speak any english, he just pointed to the other side of the street said something in his language while nodding his head and waiving for me to get out the cab. So there I was, in the middle of the road, with no idea where to go, on the other side of the world. For the first time I was in Asia, standing at night on an empty street in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s most important city, or as I would get to love her, Saigon. No matter how much books and websites I had read to prepare for this trip, the truth is you never know exactly what to expect you when you are traveling, and that's the beauty of it.
Ho Chi Minh is Vietnam's most important city, until 1975 it was know as Saigon, and as Saigon it was dominated by the French, became the capital of all Indo-China, and the base for the US Army at the Vietnam War. It's a vibrant and historical city, that has suffer a lot, but never surrendered.
I saw some backpackers coming out of the cracks between two of the commercial buildings across the street and discovered that my guesthouse was in that ally. My first impressions off the city were not good, the ally was a bit scary, people where cooking in the middle of the street, there were electric wires hanging all over the place, my guesthouse room had no windows, the bathroom was not very clean, and it was hot as hell. So I left my things and decided to grab something to eat before going to bed.
I got out on the other side of the alley and it was like magic, like that moment in Wizard of Oz when everything comes to color. A whole world just unraveled in front of me, the colorful neon signs, a sea of people coming and going and a majestic and chaotic ballet of motorcycles. As I seat on a small stool on the sidewalk among tourists and locals, had a beer for 25 American cents, chat with some locals who were there to get to know different cultures, watch interesting characters selling things and doing tricks with snakes and fire, ate some of the best spring rolls of my life (10 for 50 cents), I started a love affair with Southeast Asia that has bring me nothing but joy.