The largest city in Vietnam is also its commercial capital and is fast becoming the nation’s window to the world. Buzzing with frenetic activity, cosmopolitan Ho Chi Minh City(or formal name Saigon) looks outward, listens to jazz, and drinks French wine. Existing alongside the highrise hotels, shopping malls, and cbic restaurants, are ancient pagodas and colonial buildings, recalling a checkered but vibrant past.