Overall the cost of living in Ho Chi Minh City is cheap and if you can stay away from Western restaurants and use just local products in your everyday life it's really cheap.

Ho Chi Minh City is crowded, noisy, untidy and chaotic. I miss the orderly life of suburban America and the comfort of my apartment and my truck when I'm here, but when I get back in the USA I miss the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City or Bangkok.

Also Ho Chi Minh City is broken up into districts so it's much like little cities within the city, in your home district folks take the time to smile and wave as you pass by or even try to have a little chat.

I'm divorced and have a son and a grandson and it is a problem being away most of the time. Living as I do, if I had a wife and children I think it would be really hard to do.

Why Ho Chi Minh City? It is crowded, noisy, scruffy, crazy, but always interesting and things are happening all at a break neck speed.

Born in the Flint, Michigan, big boat sailing on the Great Lakes and skiing in the winter was how most of my youth was spent.

Some 30 years later I found myself back here again [in Vietnam] on what was to be a short visit that lasted months, and since then I've been living my life with one foot in Ho Chi Minh City and the other in Fair Oaks, California.