Vietnam: HCMC

---

Saigon, Vietnam

It all started a year ago in 2010, planned to visit Vietnam but it just remained as a plan until now, thanks to Vietnam Embassy in London denying me a visa. I was a bit skeptical initially while I was thinking of Vietnam, how it would be as a holiday destination whilst it still being a socialist country. May be Jeremy Clarkson’s road trip looked tremedously entertaining, or the lush natural beauty of Halong Bay was just too attractive, Surprisingly I didn’t realize that my determination to go to Vietnam would be almost unbeatable that even after a year from my visa rejection I tried again and eventually get an e-visa, embassy-0 e-visa-1. May be they were thinking why would a national from a third world muslim country staying in London, want to go to Vietnam for holidays. Well I don’t blame them, not unexpected that they would stereotype, after all they are still under socialist regime.

One of my friend joined with me from Bangladesh and we travelled via Bangkok, thanks to Air Asia who stopped their flight operations in Bangladesh very recently. Early arrival by Bangkok Airways was nice, as the traffic was just warming up for the day. Although we did quite a bit of a research as to how we could minimize cost by avoiding taxi to the city, they charge a hefty 450-500 baht from the airport, unfortunately the bus routes and number we got from our reasearch has now changed. So we had to explore and we took the free airport shuttle bus to the local transport centre which was quite near to the airport and from there we took the Aircon Microbus (No.555) which costed 40 Baht per person which took us straight to Democracy Monument in about 45 mins via the highway. From there we took a local bus which dropped us near Khaosan Road, which was our destination for that day until we fly off to Saigon next morning.

Before the touch down in HCMC I was thinking all sorts, given the kind of experience I had so far with Vietnam Visa, luckily VOA the process was quite straight forward. Had to give the immigration my passport along with a arrival form which I printed off before hand from internet, and then waited for abt 15 mins. They called my name once the visa was processed and I paid the fee USD25 (have the correct change, they don’t return) and its all done. Quite content with my experience so far we headed out for taxi. The airport is not far from the city, so taxi fare was reasonable which infact eliminated the need for us to look for local bus. We should have booked our taxi while we were still within the terminal building as the outside taxi would ask for unrealistically high fares. The usual cost for taxi is about 7-8 USD to District 1, which worked well for two of us. The taxi driver was very nice and dropped us off right at our hotel door step even though our hotel was just a small backpackers lodge owned privately by a vietnamese family in the heart of District 1, adjacent to Pham Ngua Lao. The ride was only about 20-25 mins, but the sun already blazing and it was enough to wear us down quick.
At the first impression, our hotel seemed nice and clean, no frills just the basic however it had free wifi and an internet terminal, in the so called lobby which was actually the family’s lounge to sit around and eat.
After crashing into our room, freshen up and etc., we decided to go out to explore. However I was quite surpised to realize that Facebook doesn’t work in my laptop, well may be that was a jolt from the socialist regime. Fortunately somehow, reasons beyond my undertsanding, the computer terminal in the hotel lobby does give access to facebook, if there is a will there is a way !

We decided to take a cyclo ride around the city, the drivers were pretty enthused about all the places they would take us to. After a little bit of bargaining we agreed on 8 dollars each for few hours on each cylco. As we were riding along the cars and mainly motorcycles, it was a amazing sight how they manage this without hitting each other.

Our first stop was War Remnants Museum, all the things the vietnamese people preserved from the destruction America brought upon them back in those days. I must say for Americans, they need to have a pretty thick skin to go thorugh all the exhibits on display. From there we went to Reunification Palace, which supposedly a government building with a huge garden in front, nothing much to see really! Went to Notre Dame cathedral and luckily there was a wedding in progress, was nice to see. Finally our cyclo drivers dropped us off at the Ben Than Market as agreed. The market is good for local souveniers, T-shirts, sandals etc. So I bought a shirt with the most famous yellow star on it, I always wanted to have one ever since Michael Stipe (REM) sported one of these.

We were starving by that point and stared to look for a decent eating place. Unfortunately that proved to be a struggle, everywhere we went had a weird smell where they had these small chair or rather stools with small kindergarten plastic table outside on the pavement, we were just walking around for a normal looking café where we could have some rice or noodle. Eventually we had to settle in of these with the least obnoxious smell. But alas, our comfort didn’t last long as I realized someone eating a half hatched egg with a spoon where you could actually see the feathers almost growing inside the egg shell. Realized it was time to go !

We walked back to our hotel from the market and man, crossing the road was quite an experience. Coming from another south east asian country, even then it was challenging for me but entertaining to an extent, if you know what I mean!

There were plenty of bars and clubs around our hotel area, which were just warming up for the evening. We took a stroll around that area and eventually settled in a bar during the happy hour, I must say the drinks are quite cheap, just a dollar for whichever drink you want. It was nice to enjoy the drink with live music on a open roadside table. Finally decided to get back to our hotel to get some sleep before tomorrow’s adventure to Cu Chi.

---