Our journey through Vietnam is from South to North and we kicked things off in the largest city, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). It is a huge heaving Metropolis and home to 10 million people so to say it is busy is a bit of an understatement! The ‘crazy’ traffic in Bangkok seem like country lanes by comparison; motorbikes number in the thousands and when the road gets full they just mount the pavement and drive down those instead! Despite being so big, if you stay in the main district 1 backpacker area you can walk to many attraction sites in 15-20 minutes.
In terms of things to do, many of the attractions centre around the Vietnam war history. We arrived at the weekend when some of the sites are closed. We walked up to the Reunification Palace on our first day to find this so check ahead if you are sightseeing at the weekend.
On the way there we accidentally tresspassed into a park which was closed whilst it was being prepared for Tet (Vietnamese New Year) so we got a really peaceful walk through one of the busiest cities in the world and saw some brilliant topiary ready for the celebration.
Close to the palace a coconut seller told us it was closed. He also did what seems to be a trick they all know: give the tourist a go of holding the coconuts, then shove a fresh coconut into their hands before they know what’s happening and try to charge them an extortionate price for them. We negotiated the price down to a more acceptable level, enjoyed our first fresh coconut in Asia and got this picture…
With our first choice closed we decided to go to the war remnants museum. Another quirk of Saigon attractions is that they all close for lunch (12-1.30pm) so we went to kill a couple of hours in the Benh Than market and get a cheap lunch. The market is pretty huge and sells everything for both locals and tourists. We walked in through the meat section and saw pretty much any part of a pig you wanted laid out for all (brains included). Ali nearly vomited from the smell!
We bought some clothes to expand our minimal wardrobes and went to the food section for lunch. A bolshy lady sat us down at her stall and forced a menu on us. She stood behind us snorting like a pig – gross – and the menu we had appeared to be the extra pricey tourist version so we sacked her off and went to the stall next door. A much nicer lady served us delicious chicken, fish cakes and rice for less than $2 each – much more like it!
With full bellies we walked back to the museum just as it reopened, paid the 30,000vnd ($1.50) entry fee and walked in. The museum was good but quite long-winded, and naturally told the story of the war from an extremely pro-vietnamese stance. The courtyard was full of cool, old reclaimed American tanks, planes and artillery.
Inside the museum had a few different sections, there was an exhibition about worldwide protests against the American war in Vietnam (everyone supported Vietnam, naturally). A section on American atrocities and another solely on the hideous legacy left behind by the use of the herbicide Agent Orange – a truly reprehensible act from the USA which caused enormous ecological damage to the Vietnamese countryside.
The top floor was probably the best section as it held a huge amount of photography from many famous war photographers. There was some really excellent work and some quite poignant shots, for example photos which were the last ever taken by a photographer moments before they were killed. There was another photo exhibition from photographers in the Vietnamese army in the present day which also demonstrated some cool work.
Our day finished with a walk home and a beer in the park whilst the sun set. We saw locals playing keepy-uppy with a bamboo ball and others kicking around a type of shuttlecock in a tennis-type game with great skill.
