Asia Travel Information Blog

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Raquel Welch

Vietnam

Say what you will, but in my Company area, Raquel Welch was the pin up girl on my wall [black and white], I got a poster from her, signed, but I think it was printed on by machine. No one else in the company had what I called a poster. Calendars yes, but not an original poster, and of Raquel, surely not one from her, so that made me a kind of hot shot [but there is more to this].

Most of my friends in Vietnam believed she [Raquel Welch, whose poster I had put it up on a back-board of the bunk at the head of my bed] was my girlfriend, until I told them, three-weeks after I had gotten it and set it in my room, that I had gotten the poster by request via mailing for it. When I told the guys this, I also told them I was just kidding, that she was not my girlfriend after all –woops, that didn’t go over so well, but to make up for it I told them that when I left Vietnam, someone would get it in the company area.

Ho Chi Minh City

Washed ashore above the Mekong Delta, some 40km north of the South China Sea, HO CHI MINH CITY is a city on the march, a boomtown where the rule of the dollar is absolute. Fuelled by the sweeping economic changes wrought by doi moi, this effervescent city, perched on the west bank of the Saigon River, now boasts fine restaurants, immaculate hotels, and glitzy bars among its colonial villas, venerable pagodas and austere, Soviet-style housing-blocks.