Saigon’s New Spirit : The Vietnamese metropolis embraces things Western, including tourists.

Even before the Bush Administration lifted a ban on U.S.-organized tourism to Vietnam last month, travel agents had detected a small groundswell of interest. The world was that Saigon in particular was becoming an exiting city to visit-pro-Western, avidly capitalistic and with a thumbs-up attitude toward Americans. Indeed, these photographs taken last September show a city that could be Bangkok or some other freewheeling Asian capital. Seventeen years after the city fell to the Communist North Vietnamese, billboards on the airport road announced the presence of Sony, Nissan and Ogilvy & Mather. In the former South Vietnamese capital-still officially Ho Chi Minh City, almost no one calls it that-restaurants have opened selling everything from Philadelphia steak sandwiches to L.A. burgers. Though poverty is pervasive and children beg everywhere, in the Continental Hotel the $80 rooms have been remodeled; the five-star Saigon Floating Hotel offers two restaurants, a tennis court, gym, lounge and discos for $120-$150 a night. A Melrose Avenue-type restaurant called the City Bar and Grill opened last year on Dong Khoi Street and the Apocalypse Now bar on Le Loi has become a tourist hangout. With the high-season Tet Festival about to begin Feb. 3, there are many who hope Saigon is on the verge of becoming chic.