Callie and I touched down in Ho Chi Minh City on the night of December 18th after a comfortable, five-hour flight from Seoul. Stepping off the plane into the 30-degree humidity was like walking into a sauna, reminding me of the time I landed in Tokyo in the middle of the summer. It was 11 o’clock at night but it felt like noon... and this was their winter. I couldn’t begin to imagine what summer was like.

My mom and grandma were at the entrance to the airport waiting for us as we landed. I hadn't seen my mom in five months but she was easy to pick out from the crowd of hundreds. We hugged for a brief reunion before I was introduced to my small and feisty grandma, whom I was meeting for the first time. She looked happy to see me but couldn't speak any English so my mom had to act as translator. A few weeks earlier my brother, sister, brother-in-law and niece moved to Vietnam from Canada but weren't there at the airport to meet us. I learned they had left the city before I arrived to spend time on the beach and I was to meet up with them a few weeks later. They wanted some peace and quiet after the shock of moving to a busy city in a new country and surrounded by extended family, so they escaped to Nha Trang.

I was unprepared for the sights and sounds of Saigon (as the locals still call it). Riding to my grandma's on the way from the airport, even at close to midnight, the city was still alive with people. It truly is the moto capital of the world. You looked everywhere and saw an endless sea of motos (not quite motorbikes) on the streets and parked on sidewalks. Motos are small, cheaper than cars and over four million people own one, just under half the city's population. They’re used for everything from getting groceries to moving furniture, even panes of glass! They’re used like minivans with babies in the arms of a parent and the other children tucked between them, all piled on a single moto. The traffic was like watching a school of fish. The larger vehicles moved like slow whales with the small motos simply flowing around them. Drivers and motorists alike honked constantly to let others know they're there, filling the city with noise. Only in the downtown area were there traffic lights at intersections. Everywhere else had four-way stops... without the stopping. Crossing the road was like playing Frogger - you had to stop for them, not the other way around. It was sheer chaos, but somehow it all worked.

Watching the city pass me by, it was easy to see a country rebuilding itself after years of war. A country still healing its wounds. Vietnam seemed to be a large, organized mess, doing its best to catch up with the modern world. Less than 30 years ago the landscape was riddled with land mines and Agent Orange was wreaking havoc on nature. The people in the South were learning how to live under a Communist regime, millions of people fled the country on boats (including my parents) and the ones who stayed behind had to learn how to live in a war-ravaged country. Only 20 years ago did the government adopt a free-market economy and since then, tourism has exploded. With this new flush of income, the country has developed itself into a world-class tourist destination and quality of life has improved, but the majority of Vietnamese still live on dollars a day.

During the war, hundreds of thousands of people left their villages to escape the bombings in the countryside. Many of them moved to urban areas or refugee camps located at the edges of cities, leading to Saigon becoming one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Nowadays, shops, marketplaces and restaurants line the streets selling everything from bike parts, electronics, and art to t-shirts, shoes and knock-off Louie Vutton. Construction is everywhere. Empty lots become apartment buildings, dirt roads become paved and all the available land (even around cemeteries and graveyards) is being used for housing. Street merchants selling goods with nothing to do or nowhere to go squat down on the dusty road, waiting for the occasional customer. Mototaxi's ask every tourist where they're going and if they need a ride. Children and old ladies wearing rice hats walk the sidewalks hawking fruits, used books and sunglasses. Workers have iced coffee in the shade of an outdoor cafe and talk about trivial things like the weather. That's what Vietnam is today. But in spite of it all, being a third-world country with a troubled past, people are happy. Life simply goes on.