The name 'Saigon' has for decades etched itself into the Western consciousness. For the French, it was the capital of colonial Indochina, the tropical Paris of the Orient. In 1950, Norman Lewis described Saigon thus: 'its inspiration has been purely commercial and it is therefore without folly, fervour or much ostentation...a pleasant, colourless and characterless French provincial city.rnrnTheā¦