Saigon

Our flight from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) landed around 7PM after it’s departure was delayed for about 1 hour. We had already booked a hotel through booking.com, and decided to take a taxi straight to it from the airport. It was in “District 1”, an extremely vibrant area. I was shocked when the driver let us out. 8PM on a Sunday night and it was a full on PARTY!

I looked on my phone to see where the hotel was, but when I lifted my head, all I could see was an alley! The kind of alley, as a westerner, I would normally think…”Umm, I’m not going down there”! But I wasn’t in the west, this was Saigon, so down we went. At the end of the alley was our hotel, run by a very nice couple. The fact that it was at the end of this alley, was actually to our benefit. It shielded us from the noise of the ongoing party. Having said that, we quickly dropped off our backpacks, and went to join in. We found a park where a concert was going on, and a street food market that we were compelled to investigate. It had all kinds of great “street food”! Rice pancake taco’s, sushi, even crocodile. Lisa picked a curry chicken wrap that was amazing! At about 10PM we decided to go back to the hotel and call it a night.

We visited the war museum which was really special. Vietnam has been attacked full on by the Chinese, Japanese, French, and Americans… and they are still standing! The museum had tanks, fighter jets, and all sorts of weaponry on display from the US war in the 60’s and 70’s…it was fascinating to get a look back from their viewpoint.

We hung out at a local park, and met a really nice local family. The son and daughter spoke perfect english, and the mom…not a word, although she was nice enough to buy us all ice cream. This was great because it was sweltering hot! I spoke to the (probably 9yr old) son for about 15 mins, he was a cool kid… Hi Oliver! (his chosen english name).

That night we wanted to catch the sunset from a rooftop restaurant, so we googled the tallest building that was available, and started walking. Unfortunately, there was a $40 cover charge, so we decided against it. Instead we ran about 5 mins to a tall hotel with a rooftop restaurant. We had a drink there… the sunset view however, was less than spectacular… oh well.

HCMC was a grid of major streets, but we found that these alleyways were where the real culture was. We made a point of travelling around from alley to alley finding the best food, shops, and other interesting things and people. I even stopped for a haircut. Also, there was no shortage of young attractive women offering cheap massages… in the next life maybe, lol