The City of Saigon, now more commonly known as Ho Chi Minh, is the South Capital of Vietnam.  It is by far the largest metropolitan area and the business capital of the country.  Multinational companies hold their Vietnam headquarters in Ho Chi Minh.  It’s supposed to be the best place to visit in Vietnam if you are an urbanite.  It can be quite chaotic here at times with hundreds of motorbikes whizzing past you at every corner, but this city is said to be friendlier to tourists than any other part of Vietnam, particularly Hanoi or Hue. 

It is fairly evident to see some French influences in the area, particularly in their buildings.  Notable sights in your list should include Notre Dame Cathedral, Saigon Town Hall or HCMC’s People’s Committee Building, War Remnants Museum, Reunification Palace (where the Presidents get billeted before), and Saigon Opera House.

There are also quite a number of temples and pagodas in the city but in different districts.  Notable to visit is the Quoc Tu Pagoda.  Another must see is the escape route during the war, so better reserve half a day for a tour at the Cu Chi Tunnels.  It’s an hour drive from District 1.

Image Source Jasonbarbacovi

Philippine Airlines touched down safely in Ho Chi Minh at 3PM.  It was a two and a half hour flight that was right on time.  Vietnam, like Thailand, is one hour behind Manila’s time.  Ho Chi Minh’s airport is new and can already compete with PAL’s international terminal.  The clean airport is a warm welcome to the country of Vietnam, without any trace to the 1950’s war that was fought for almost 2 decades. 

Happy to note also that immigration check was fast and took only 10minutes.  I can’t still get over waiting in line for 40 minutes to an hour in Thailand’s immigration check three weeks ago.  My only complaint of HCMC’s airport is the lack of Ho Chi Minh maps in English.  There is a clean row of FOREX booths before the exit door.  Three FOREX booths offered 17,620 Dong for 1 Dollar.  One booth with the longest line (4 people in line against zero in the other three) offered 17,704 for 1 Dollar.

As instructed by Garry (a Filipino hotelier who currently works in Hanoi and who I’ve been corresponding with regarding Vietnam), I changed USD 20 at the airport.  While Bubba was in the washroom, my better safe than sorry side gets the best of me so I had a 100-dollar bill changed too.  Later on, I find out that I should have really listened to Garry when we saw a FOREX stall with dollar currency rate at 17,800.  I had a total of 120 dollars changed that translated to 2.1 million dong.  Woo-whee, an overnight millionaire in Vietnam (even it is a meager 6K in pesos)! 

We went over the Mai Linh Cab line and had a cab take us to the A&EM Hotel.  Now, I have anticipated this before coming to Vietnam but overlooked it during the actual trip.  The cab driver drops us off in front of a small hotel.  The reception couldn’t find our booking under the name of Garry.  I showed them the address and the look in their eyes told me my suspicion was correct.  We were at the wrong A&EM Hotel.  There were quite a handful of A&EM Hotels in the area.  We were at the Le Thanh Ton branch when we were supposed to go to Thai Van Lung St., which is located right in front of the Benh Than Market, in the Ben Nghe Ward area.

It cost another dollar to get to the right hotel.  We checked in and settled in our small room (that cost USD28/night) that had hot shower, LCD screen, A/C and queen size bed.  Not more than 20 minutes later, we were ready to explore the city by foot.

Image Source machomikemd: virtualtourist member

The white A&EM hotel sits right across the Ben Thanh Market.  Ben Thanh Market is a square market with four different frontiers that exits into Phan Boi Chau, Quach Thi Trang Plaza, Phan Chu Trinh and Le Thanh Ton Streets.  Almost most roads connect to this oldest and busiest central market.  The side that looks into the plaza has a tower with three Citizen  clocks but before 1985, none are said to show the correct time.  There are over 3,000 stalls in the market that offer anything from snake wine, colorful shoes, bags, tea bags, coffee beans, shawls.  This is also a great place to taste the local food specialties.

District 1 has a lot of colonial influences with its broad boulevards and parks sketched with tall trees.  The Saigon Town Hall is walking distance to the Saigon Tower and Post Office, which are all along the long boulevard of Dong Khoi.  Even the Notre Dame Cathedral can be found within the area.  A side street vendor offered Lonely Planet branded Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos books.  She was selling it for USD 8 or 140,000 Dong.  I was skeptical, Bubba was adamant.  Since we had no maps whatsoever, I relented to buying.  Soon after we opened it, it was not an original but photocopied pages, some even with scribbles.

Finding our way along different streets and several ailing directions from locals, we found our first stop.  We thought it was the Notre Dame Cathedral.  Despite the fact that Vietnam is a predominantly Buddhist country, Notre Dame Cathedral, built in the late 1870s which carries the same name as the original one in Montreal, stands tall at the center of Saigon.  The Church officiates masses in Vietnamese and English.

Finding our way through the neighborhood, we reached our 2^nd stop, the Saigon Opera House.  This building was built at the turn of the 20^th century as a classical opera house to entertain French colonists.  The building was renovated but was severely damaged by bombers 4 years after the reformation.  It became a state owned Municipal theater after becoming a shelter for refugees after the Geneva Accord split Vietnam at the 17^th Parallel in 1954.  It is a three-story structure that houses almost 2,000 seats.

I knew Saigon Town Hall was near Saigon Opera House so we kept walking and walking to find another stalwart edifice amidst this bustling city.  Finally, Bubba asked a cab driver where it was.  He instructed to walk 3 blocks and turn left and follow that path until we hit Saigon Town Hall.  We did as instructed.  We still couldn’t find the City Hall.  We asked another local and he pointed at the building adjacent to where we stand.  The tall building looks like a hotel and it is not the image I had in mind.  Bubba suspected that they must have the same sounding name.  We curbed towards the front of the gray skyscraper and read, Saigon Tower.  In this part of the world, Town Hall sounds like Tower.  Go figure.

Since our legs started to complain, we resigned to see the Town Hall on another day.  There was no cab in sight so we walked a few more blocks.  We spotted a red-bricked church nameless to us and another accepted tourist spot, HCMC’s Colonial-looking post office, which gives the impression of being an old train station.  This re-energized me a bit and we went inside the post office and took some photos.  We sat on the bench and rested our semi-tired legs and current defeated state.  Bubba flips the pages of the Lonely Planet book we bought to see where the heck Saigon Town Hall is (not in the book) while I watched with plain interest how people mail their letters.  I’m fascinated that people still paste stamps on their letters.  I guess the effort of writing a letter, putting it in a choice envelope, sealing it, gluing stamp on it, and dropping it off the post office brings a lot of lure to reading that very correspondence.

That short visit to the post office revitalized my spirits.  Outside, the illumination from the building lights was a simple sight that stole the night.  Simple joy.  It was like Christmas came early.

A smile creeps on my face and I chide Bubba for more snaps by the reddish Church to his reluctant accord.  At this point, I have max-ed out his tolerance for having his photos taken.  After a few more shots, he hailed a cab to his great escape of photography boredom. 

He directed the driver to a restaurant.  The driver couldn’t understand.  We showed him the address from the guidebook.  It took him a good one-minute to figure out the reason the place was unfamiliar to him.  The restaurant we picked for dinner was in Hanoi.  We just laughed and asked him to take us to our hotel.  On the way back, we stopped a block from the hotel that had a row of restaurants.  Restaurant Bar Be Cua Café is a small beer garden type of restaurant along Nguyen Trung Truc. 

On the Table:

Grilled Beef with Five Spices Dong 65,000

Grilled Pork with Chili, Lemon Grass Dong 65,000

Strawberry Shake Dong 22,000

Mango Shake Dong 22,000

White Rice (2) Dong 15,000

The dinner took two hours because more than the food, the conversation on the table was the most appetizing.  The meaty discussion was what we really digested that evening.  After dinner, we walked back to our hotel under the Vietnam night.

As of writing, I discover that the first magnificent building we saw was actually the Saigon Town Hall we thought we missed.  HCMC’s People Committee or the Saigon Town Hall or City Hall was built in 1908 as Hotel de Ville.  The building was formerly used as the Assembly Building, restored and painted many times since.  Uncle Ho Statue seemingly guards the front of the building.  The red-bricked cathedral happens to be the Notre Dame Cathedral we initially thought was the Saigon Town Hall.  The Notre Dame Cathedral was built using bricks from Marseilles and stained glass windows from Chartres.  The city sites we wanted to see was right under our noses.

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