Last month a Vietnamese fisherman hacked a large piece out of a cable to sell as scrap metal. It was one of the two internet connections into the country. As yet, it has not been replaced and explains the very slow internet speed and the frequent hang-ups we have encountered here.

Saigon, I have mixed feelings. Getting to a destination is nerve-racking. Today, we were in a taxi that collided with a cement truck. Imagine being in a swarm of bees but each is a motor scooter, car, truck, pedicab, bicycle, truck, bus, pedestrian. Crossing a road is a skillful exercise. I'm not sure of the death rate but I read tonight that in a 2-day period over Christmas in Thailand, 118 road deaths were recorded.

Could we teach in Saigon? Possibly, as there is work available. Hourly rate is OK and rents are reasonable, although the houses are small and squeezed together. To get to work, you learn to ride in the traffic swarm, where it is rumoured that road rules existed once long ago. Nobody drives without having their hand on the horn button. At least, in Hanoi, there was a special horn for people in close proximity: a kind of burble or 5-note soft cadence. Not so evident in Saigon.

We wandered through some lovely old streets about one kilometre from this tourist area. The old homes look like very stately senior citizens who have not moved from their sickbed for some years. Grand, decayed, with memories of colour and mystery, architecture that, to us, is so totally foreign in design and construction.

We dodged dozens of local dinner-time gatherings on the footpaths as we walked slowly back, slow because the footpaths are treacherous. Sometimes beautifully tiled, mostly torn up, their former glory merely a memory of when the French had so much influence. Some grand avenues still remain but destruction is everywhere you look.

Destroyed people also. At the Military Museum this morning, an armless but well-dressed beggar, speaking good English, bade me to sit with him. He had postcards for sale but so does everyone, postcards or sunglasses or photocopied books. This beggar was nearly blind, his right eye missing as was his right leg. His story was that an American landmine exploded when he was a child. He asked whether he could give me a hug and then opened up his two soft pincer-like remnants of arms to hold me. I wondered how he would manage going to the toilet - the same thought I had when approached outside Notre Dame cathedral in Saigon, also this morning. This beggar had tiny, baby-like arms sticking out the front of his shoulders, looking practically useless but that's all he had.

The Military Museum was a paean to the resilience of the Vietnamese against the imperialism of the United States. Dozens of large photographs of tortured men, women and children. Atrocities, cruel devices, body parts, phosphorus burns victims, "tiger cages", a French guillotine that saw lots of service here in Saigon, the museum walls were full of heart-wrenching sadness. Once you have had your fill and can take no more, you leave, only to face more beggars outside with their gross deformities, twisted thin limbs, pathetic faces.

Suddenly, I find I could take no more. The crazy traffic, the continual beggars, the poverty always evident. But how much do the locals actually see as being a problem? In the tiny lane next to this hotel, so thin that nothing more than two motorscooters side by side would fit in it, is the entrance to the interior of the block. Out in the street, there are nice hotels and travel agencies - down this non-descript colourless lane is the path that leads to many dozens of families with their living rooms open to passers-by. As we use this path as a shortcut to a major street parallel to our hotel street, we brush by the locals eating, playing, gambling, sleeping, lazing in this alleyway. Their homes open as we walk past and, in the centre, a local policeman sits on a plastic chair, watching everything.

Local police are fed information about strangers in the area. This keeps the crime rate low in the poorer areas. Apparently, it is forbidden for Vietnamese to spend the night in other bedrooms. People report this to their local policeman and a reminder is given that citizens must spend their night in their own houses. This makes it very difficult for Westerners who are used to the freedom to move as we wish. But, on the other hand, safety of a kind comes with this restriction.

There are hundreds of oddities here in Saigon, from the crowded park before dawn with everyone exercising, to the vast number of cripples, pregnant mothers lying in the street with their children, to the sadness that many will never have a hope in hell of escaping life-long poverty. At the moment, I see Saigon as having an overwhelming sadness that has now permeated my bones and I am anxious to leave. When I get it into perspective, I may be back.