Don't Miss Saigon

Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 but both names are still used throughout the city.

The bus dropped us quite a way out of town so we jumped in a taxi to our hostel, The Dorm Saigon, which was one of the best hostels we’ve stayed in and was very central.

Still feeling the effects of our respective illnesses, we decided to leave the sightseeing until the next day and instead went straight to Pasteur Street Brewing Company, which we’d seen advertised at Taps, way back when we were in KL. Here I actually found beers (plural!) that I liked!!

The bar was really nice and chilled and we would have stayed longer but they weren’t serving food because of Tet. Having read that you can get some really good, cheap Japanese food in Saigon, we headed towards a Japanese restaurant near our hostel, passing the Ho Chi Minh statue outside the City Hall on the way. We were a bit confused as it wasn’t the statue of “Uncle Ho” we were expecting, but it turns out they changed it a few years ago!

The restaurant we actually wanted to go to was shut because of Tet (there’s a running theme here!) so we went to the one across the road. This actually proved to be a great decision and we spent a lovely meal speaking to the Japanese restaurant owner. We were transported back to our trip to Japan a couple of years ago and reminded how different Japanese culture is to Vietnamese! It felt like a calm oasis in a sea of craziness!

With only one full day in HCMC, we wanted to make the most of it. Our hostel was just around the corner from Lam Son Square and the Opera House so we headed there first, although it was shut so we couldn’t go in. We did get speaking to a German man outside though who had apparently been working in Saigon during the war in 1973. He was also a massive fan of Ronnie O’Sullivan and snooker, and had little concept of personal space!

After reading about the Continental and the Caravelle hotels and the role they had for international journalists during the war, we walked up to the Notre Dame cathedral and the Post Office. The cathedral is currently closed for refurbishment, but the Post Office is a very grand building and worth a look in.

We had planned to go to the Independence Palace next but it shuts for lunch so our next stop was the War Remnants Museum. We spent about three hours here and it was definitely worth the visit. Previously called the Museum of American War Crimes, it depicts the horrendous atrocities of the American War as it is known in Vietnam. There’s no filter and some of the exhibits are pretty disturbing, particularly those relating to Agent Orange and the impact that is still having on Vietnamese people today. One quote really seemed to sum up the War quite accurately when it said the US essentially used Vietnam as an experiment to develop worse and worse weapons. It was pretty harrowing.

With the Independence Palace back open, we walked back there to look around. The current building was rebuilt in the mid 1960s after a South Vietnamese pilot took off apparently to attack the Viet Công but instead turned around and bombed the Palace in an attempt to assassinate the President! In 1975 a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the palace gates, effectively bringing the war to an end and in 1976 it became the Independence Palace. The Palace was pretty fancy and included a dining room for 100 people, a cinema, a games room and an underground bunker.

The park behind the Palace was hosting a festival for Tet so enticed by the sound of banging drums, we went to check it out. We saw an acrobatic show where men dress up as Chinese dragons and put on a dance on various platforms of different heights. Think of a pantomime horse, sometimes only standing on its hind legs, jumping between 5m high platforms. It was fascinating to watch.

The rest of the park looked a bit like the Chelsea Flower Show, with various sections dedicated to different plants, such as orchids and bonsai trees. Unfortunately being the last day of Tet, many of the flowers were a bit past their best but they were still pretty to look at if you didn’t get too close!

That evening, we checked out a couple more brew pubs, but unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, the beer wasn’t as nice as the night before. We then went back to the hostel so I could watch England beat France in the Six Nations rugby. It was midnight by the time it finished so hopefully I wasn’t cheering too loudly!

The next day we’d booked onto an afternoon tour of the Cu Chi tunnels to the North West of Saigon. With a few hours to kill before our tour, we headed to the Chinese quarter and Binh Tay market. This market was much more organised than others we’ve seen, with each section dedicated to a different product. Despite the guidebook saying it was the most hustling part of HCMC, we found it quite quiet, again maybe because of Tet.

We walked back via the Backpacker District, which was full of bars and restaurants and looked quite lively. We arrived back at the hostel at 1pm, just as the bus was pulling up to take us on our tour. Our tour guide was an entertaining character, who gave us a lot of interesting information about Vietnam and its culture. For example, there are four creatures that are sacred in Vietnam, the unicorn (symbolising peace and love), the dragon (strength), the phoenix (resilience) and the turtle (longevity). Apparently his name in Vietnamese means unicorn so that’s what we were to call him.

On the way, we stopped at a centre where victims of the Vietnam war were making incredible pictures out of eggshell, seashell and paint. They were beautiful and I ended up buying one.

The Cu Chi tunnels were interesting, but being our first properly organised tour, it felt a bit rushed. We watched a propaganda video from the North Vietnamese and then wandered around the tunnel complex while Unicorn explained more about the Viet Công and how they defeated the Americans. What was interesting was seeing examples of the types of booby traps the Viet Công used, as this wasn’t covered in the War Remnants museum. Many were pretty primative but nevertheless they were rather brutal and would strike fear into the hearts of the GIs.

The other odd thing was the rifle range at the complex. This added to the atmosphere as you would hear occasional gun fire as you wandered round, but they put it right next to the cafe, which did not make for a relaxing coffee stop! Finally we got to the highlight, actually going into the tunnels. While not as small as I thought they would be, I still would not have been able to move through them at any speed and actually only made it 40m as my knees were really sore by then. James made it the whole 120m though, which given his size is pretty impressive!

Once back in Saigon, Unicorn took us for a noodle soup meal, which we hadn’t realised was included in the trip. We sat with a Canadian couple who only spoke a little English so with our broken French we had a rather stilted conversation!

Back at the hostel, we packed up everything ready to get our overnight bus to Da Lat. With a couple more hours to kill, we went to another pub round the corner and played a game of Round the World on their dart board. We weren’t particularly good but at least we completed it!

Finally we made it back to the Japanese restaurant that had been closed on our first night. We had the whole floor to ourselves and were entertained by some bizarre Japanese gameshow on the television, of which we didn’t understand a word! Finally at 10pm, we eventually flagged down a taxi to take us to the bus station for our overnight transfer.

Despite still feeling quite rough when we were in HCMC, our overall impression was very positive. Having expected a horribly polluted, incredibly busy city, we were pleasantly surprised to find this not to be the case. Whether it was because of Tet, or whether we’ve just got used to SE Asia, we had an enjoyable couple of days here.