Silk and smog in Ho Chi Minh City

We are docked in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) within walking distance of downtown after sailing up 37 miles of the Saigon River, an advantage of a somewhat smaller cruise ship. The river is industrial but the bad news is a city shrouded in smog. Legions of motorbikes do their bit as well. As my cabin mate Marilyn and I set out to walk downtown we discovered, as she put it, "Nobody walks in Ho Chi Minh City." Everybody rides motorbikes, which make crossing a street an adventure.

We made it to the  Rex Hotel,  whose bar was the gathering place for reporters during the Vietnam War, for lunch, walking through a street market on the way. We then had a silk road adventure along a street called Duong Khoi starting with the Rex gift shop where a nice young Kashmiri salesman improved our chic quotient by teaching us how to wear our silk scarves with flair. Properly skilled, we meandered on through high and low quality offerings and returned to the ship by taxi. This is not a city for strolls but definitely a good place for silk.