Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) is our first stop in Vietnam. We arrived early morning after a 12 hour flight from London. We came straight to our hotel, Eden Star, in District 1. Luckily they were very accommodating and found us a few spare massage beds to sleep on for a few hours whilst they made up our room early. They couldn’t of been nicer to us!

The jetlag was pretty horrid that first day. Due to flight times/time difference, we missed the night so left in the morning and arrived in the morning. We had a couple of naps but tried to power through the day to help switch our body clocks.

Once unpacked and a quick nap we went for a short stroll round the surrounding streets then came back to the hotel as it had a lovely rooftop pool. Once Faye’s in a pool she’s happy!

Dusk hits reasonably early here, around 6pm, so we headed out whilst it was still light to start some sightseeing. We hit the Ben Thành market and the Bitexco Tower.

The market is great for a wander round albeit very hot and sweaty! Here you can buy anything from food to shoes. As this is a tourist hot spot the market stalls all start high with their pricing. Everything can be bartered for! In subsequent days after meeting people we found out that the market isn’t really that good value for money you are best to shop elsewhere that’s not crawling with tourists.

The Bitexco Tower is Saigon’s version of the The Empire State Building in NYC. It’s mainly offices and bars but has a Skydeck on the 49th floor for panoramic views of the HCMC.

In the following few days (we stayed in HCMC for 4 days) we did a couple of tours booked through our hotel. The first, a city tour, a minibus with a/c and our tour guide Hai took us to see the main sights; Independence Palace, War Remnants Museum, Notre Dam Cathedral, The General Post Office, a picture making factory and a local pagoda (temple). These places are all within walking distance of the hotel and I had planned to navigate it all myself, however, for a number of reasons when I saw the tour on offer at the hotel I’m glad I booked us onto it. A) It’s hot and sticky, jumping into the minibus after each destination made a nice break from the heat, especially for Faye. B) I found HCMC to be quite tricky to navigate despite having a map and studying it. C) Motorbikes. Last summer in Bali I remember seeing hundreds of bikes but this is something else. There are thousands of them! This makes crossing the roads really tricky and Faye found it quite scary. There are pedestrian crossings but they don’t stop at them, the cars do sometimes. I googled any advice for the roads and what to do/not to do when crossing. You basically just have to step out at the crossing and the bikes will go round you. Apparently. Or try and get behind a local crossing the road! We did it a few times but on some of the bigger roads it was really daunting and having Faye on my own for crossing was hard as the bikes came from all directions so I couldn’t shield her from the bikes.

Hai was a great tour guide and although he was still working on his English he really engaged Faye throughout the day. He was very good at talking me through the War Remnants Museum and what is and isn’t suitable for Faye as the top floor has a lot of very graphic imagery. The war is still very fresh for the Vietnamese and Hai spoke multiple times of his hatred of Nixon. He had lost his Father and Uncle during the war and his family are still getting over what happened. In spite of the ‘American War’ as the Viets call it they are so welcoming and wanting to build their country. They love the tourist trade and want people to love their time in Vietnam which is really lovely.

Ho Chi Minh City is still very often referred to as Saigon but all the locals. They are very keen to keep the Saigon name alive.

We also visited the Mekong Delta on another tour through our hotel. A 1.5 hour drive South of HCMC. This was a fantastic trip that kept Faye engaged the whole way through. We stopped off at loads of places; Bamboo factory, a few temples (one of which had the biggest Buddha I’ve ever seen!), fruit farm, honey farm, coconut candy making, horse and cart ride, fed alligators and went on multiple motor boat and Sampa boat rides as well as a 5-course lunch by the river where we tried Elephant ear fish. I’m so glad we did this it was such a contrast to the City and a great experience.

When in HCMC you’ve got to have a massage! There’s spas everywhere. Every other building offers massages. Faye and I treated ourselves to one after checking out of the hotel. £12 for us both to have a 1 hour massage – what a bargain!!

Faye’s fallen in love with Non La’s- the conical hats everyone wears here!