In the small park across the street from the Rex Hotel he could see a half dozen cyclo drivers camped side by side on the seats of their cabs, chatting as they watched the hotel’s entrance for possible customers. From a hundred yards away, Condley searched their clothing and baseball caps. He knew that business had not been good for the cyclo drivers lately. Even as they watched and waited, a steady stream of motorbikes, limousines, and taxis informed them of the inevitability of the future. They were stuck on their cyclos, offering up a quaintness that linked them to yesterday as tomorrow unraveled before their waiting eyes.

The park behind where the cyclo drivers lazed was dominated by a crude statue of Ho Chi Minh ministering to a small child. Its grounds were packed with perhaps the greatest mix of people one could find anywhere in Viet Nam. Vietnamese of all ages milled about as if at carnival. Some of them were young parents who had motorbiked from the outskirts of the city, mother and father and tiny children all packed onto one Honda, to buy their kids a balloon or a toy and let them play on the sidewalks and in the grass. Some of them were old, dressed in traditional ao dai clothes. Some were in groups, come to take pictures of themselves at the very center of everything that had always been Sai Gon. Foreigners of all color and stripe walked through the park, largely ignoring both the Vietnamese and those from countries other than their own. Japanese, Korean, French, British, overseas Chinese, and every now and then an American milled about, and even an occasional Russian in from a ship in Sai Gon Harbor or one of the oilers off Vung Tau.

Among the tourists the usual gang of local vendors, hustlers, and beggars plied their trade. A worn old man in a fading blue beret walked through the crowd, selling helium-filled balloons. A scarred, one-armed veteran with black powder burns on his face from some long-ago explosion stood at a curb, hawking an armload of toy helicopters he had made from Coca-Cola cans. A beaming, slick-haired young hustler wearing a gold necklace offered books of worthless Vietnamese stamps, his dancing, mischievous eyes promising a host of more delightful alternatives if the right deal could be made and the proper money changed hands. Young children danced in and out, insistently selling chewing gum, postcards, newspapers, and souvenir booklets. In front of Uncle Ho’s statue a large wedding party had formed a wide reception line, and as the bride and groom laid a wreath at Uncle Ho’s feet the ceremony was being filmed with a home video camera.