Last week i discovered a goldmine of great old stuff. There's a hidden side street in downtown Saigon that is all antique stores.
Most of the stores carry items that were looted from the French when they left- beautiful phonograph players, antique rosewood bookcases, candelabras, silver, wooden screens, and all kinds of artwork. I bought several sweet french antique oil lamps. The glass isn't uniform in its thickness, so you know it's old.
Other stores are more like "junk" stores, except that's where all the really cool stuff is. Old metal signs, vietnamese records, instruments, photographs, tons of printed material. I bought a bunch of old vietnamese sheet music.
It was disturbing to see how many cameras are in the stores. They are cool and all, but I can't help but think that most of them were stolen from American soldiers and correspondents. There are also many engraved zippo lighters and wristwatches, definitely stolen from American soldiers- possibly taken from dead American soldiers. I even saw highschool class rings from highschools in Iowa. Creepy.
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