Blogs from Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 242

What a country! What a place! I absolutely love it. The people are brilliant, the scenery is out of this world, the culture, the craziness; it's all just so... so... ASIAN! Finally a country with both a safe infrastructure and a crazy dangerous blend of the eastern world with western influences. Thankfully not too western though. Both Helen and I are very glad that Vietnam was our last country in SE Asia because it is simply manic, crazy! Everyone wants something from you - whether it is your money or a simple broken English conversation... everyone is moving, jostling, eating, drinking... you can't walk on the path because families are cooking their food on them; you can't walk on the roads because there are more bikes than mosquitos. Walking is by far the most dangerous hazard ... read more

In and around Ho Chi Minh City...... read more

Kane Waiting for a girl we are travelling with so thats why I'm posting. Got cut off once on the plane over, but just went to different crew members for drinks. We are staying in Chinatown of Saigon and went Exploring last night, after talking to alot of locals, one of them organised a cab for us to go somewhere to dance. We ended up at Gossip. This place was balistic. A Dance club for locals, sure the alcohol was Sydney club prices except for Cognac which was about 20% of the Aussie price but the venue and music was one of the best I've been to in a year or two. I lost my watch last night. I left it in a hotel and when I went back I couldn't even find the hotel. Good ... read more

We arrived right in the middle of the backpacker area of Saigon (as the locals still refer to it) in the early evening giving us enough time to check into a guesthouse and get some food before getting some much-needed sleep. The Pham Ngu Lao area (still no idea how you say it!) is definitely geared up to tourists - plenty of western food and crafts shops - but has it's fair share of locals enjoying the cheap beer so it's a pretty nice atmosphere. On our first full day here we decided to visit the War Crimes Museum which is an undeniably one-sided look at the Vietnam war (it used to be called the Musem of Chinese and American War Crimes) and doesn't give a particularly good overview of the war, but it has some ... read more

Whilst we have been travelling we had heard several stories of how dangerous and dodgy Saigon was, so it was with some trepidation that we arrived off our bus after dark. Fortunately most of these stories were largely unfounded (we only saw 1 drive-by robbery in the 2 days we were there) and we really enjoyed the city. The first morning we were feeling energetic so decided to do a walking tour of the city to take in all the major sights. The tour took us around 7 hours to complete as we were interrupted by a massive thunder and lightning storm and had to hide out in a cafe for about an hour. We managed to see the municipal theatre, Notre Dame Cathedral (Vietnam style), Post Office, Reunification Palace (couldn't get in as it was ... read more