Having spent the last few weeks in the safety and comfort of Vietnamese beach resorts, we were a little nervous about venturing to Ho Chi Minh City. We pictured it as a huge, vast metropolis with billions of people milling about on their motorcycles in conical hats. We thought it would be dirty, and we thought the overpopulation of Vietnam would be felt here the most.
Arriving on our bus from Mui Ne (100,000d/$5, 4 hours) to Pham Ngu Lao (the main backpacker district — kind of like a smaller version of Khao San Road, Bangkok), we no longer felt scared, but excited to be in Saigon. We crossed the street (like pros) and, as it started to rain, we ducked into the alley at 241 Pham Ngu Lao. We had not booked a guesthouse ahead of time, a decision we were not sure was wise as we had arrived during Vietnam’s largest holiday (next to Tet), Liberation Day. Together with Labour Day, plus the weekend, it gave the Vietnamese a four-day holiday. The first few guesthouses we inquired at were full but Ly Loan Guesthouse had a nice AC room with a TV, fridge, and a private bathroom for 324,000d/$16.
Ly Loan. Head down the alley at 241 Pham Ngu Lao. It’s in a smaller alley by the Indian restaurant.
It turns out that the best thing to do during Liberation Day is to get away from the seaside resorts. Many hotels will increase their prices to extortionate amounts. For example, Kim Ngan Hotel in Nha Trang went from $15 to $60/night!
Ly Loan Guesthouse was wonderful. It is family owned and run and the owner helped us during our stay with excellent restaurant recommendations, making sure we didn’t pay too much for anything, and telling us how to take local buses to the Mekong Delta. She also took care of Ryan when he slipped in the bath like an old lady and hurt his wrist. She massaged the stinky but magical Tiger Balm onto it and made him feel all better. She also bought us bananas for breakfast. It was like having a Vietnamese mother for five days.
Ho Chi Minh City is walkable. It is very flat; and if it weren’t for the heat, you could walk around all day discovering alleyways, back streets, markets, cafes, and the like. The highlight of the day was Reunification Palace (30,000d/$1.50) which on first glance appears to be nothing more than a sixties looking government building, but going in for a closer look reveals that it was clearly used as an evil Bond-style villain’s hideout. It has been left exactly as it was found in 1975 when a communist tank crashed through the gates upon Saigon’s surrender.
The evil lair.
Swanky bar for hosting evil parties.
Bomb shelter with multiple phone lines.
Rooftop helipad for daring evil escape.
Ben Thanh, the central market, has an abundance of crap to buy and serves up delicious food. At night, many of the stalls move out to the streets that surround the market. Now would be a good time to try out your bargaining skills and buy a Vietnamese flag t-shirt. We got one for 50,000d/$2.50! You can judge how well you did by how huffy they are when they take your money.
Food stalls in Ben Thanh market offer cheap and tasty dishes.
So our Ho Chi Minh City days were spent perusing the markets, buying souvenirs, seeing the sights, and drinking bia hoi (fresh beer). Bia Hoi places are not as numerous in the south as they are in the north, but they are a great place to drink cheap beer (6000d/$0.30 per glass) and chat to travellers, and locals who come to practise their English. We met a somewhat heartbroken Vietnamese guy who was recently dumped when he proposed a very “untraditional” act to his girlfriend, a Korean man who moved to Saigon for a much younger girl, a set of potentially evil twins who went on and on about smuggling babies out of Vietnam and making top dollar to do it (they were joking..?). It’s amazing how quickly beers go down when you combine them with cheap prices and entertaining conversation.
Traffic blur motorcycle mania.
We left Saigon, reluctant to leave behind our new mother and drinking buddies, and headed into the Mekong Delta. First stop, Ben Tre.
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