Night Ride in Ho Chi Minh City

Travelling from Yangon, Myanmar to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam feels like time travelling. Although Myanmar has welcomed tourists since 2011 and is changing fast, the contrast between Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon still surprised us. Although we'd only been in Myanmar 12 days we felt as if we were returning to a future period in time, seeing the bright and brash lights of Ho Chi Minh on our evening drive from the airport to the city centre. 

I'd spent a few days in Ho Chi Minh City (also called Saigon) with friends in October, while Gordon was in Nepal, so the city felt quite familiar revisiting a month later. Ho Chi Minh City is hot, humid and incredibly noisy due to the astonishing number of cars and motorbikes that completely fill the streets and pavements.  There's a constant din of horns hooting. District 1 is where most tourists stay (us too) and walking around the streets it was easy to spot them (unlike Yangon, where sometimes we appeared to be the only tourists).   We enjoyed our stay in a small hotel overlooking the large Ben Thanh Market, built by the French in 1914, and we dipped in and out of the market when we felt up to bargaining.

We're loving the food in Vietnam and seem to spend a fair bit of time planning where we're going to have lunch and dinner.  Mostly we choose places that have been well reviewed on Trip Advisor or get a mention in our guide books, but this probably means we are missing out on places that simply haven't been reviewed.  I have the feeling we are slaves to the guides books but it's a hard habit to break.

Fresh rice paper spring rolls with prawns - so tasty

Stirfried beef and bok choy

The city has many beautiful French Colonial buildings and we admired them on our way to the exceptionally grand General Post Office to post our Xmas cards. I'm not sure what possessed us to acquire (in the market), write and post Xmas cards in Vietnam, but I hope the Vietnamese postal system does not let us down!  The inside of the General Post Office has not most probably not changed much in the last 50 years and is a glorious colonial building. Only one counter sells stamps and no sign of any automation.

Inside the General Post Office

General Post Office, Ho Chi Minh City

The People's Committee Building, the house of the city government

The War Remnants Museum is a sobering, thought provoking experience, depicting the effects of the Vietnam War on the the people of Vietnam.  You can't really come to Ho Chi Minh City and not learn a little about how the war shaped the Vietnam of today.  An hour here was enough.

A top rated experience to have in Ho Chi Minh City is to take a motorbike food tour, so we plucked up courage and signed up with Saigon Extravaganza Tours. What a lot of fun this was - zooming around the city on the back of motorbike one evening, making stops to eat delicious street food.  Our guides (the drivers of the motorbikes) were university students and spoke excellent English. Weaving in and out of the sea of motorbikes was a bit shocking at first, but after a while it was pleasant to feel the breeze as we zipped along in the roaring traffic.  Some of the "restaurants" we stopped at looked a bit rough and ready, but it was a great opportunity to eat in places we'd never choose ourselves as well as gain insights into the lives of young students in Vietnam.  At one of the food stops we were introduced to a local delicacy, called in English "lucky duck egg".  This turned out to be a hard boiled duck egg, which sounds ok, except that when you crack it open there is a duck foetus inside, looking pretty much like a duckling. Obviously it's dead, but it takes some courage to eat it (if you're a Westerner). I passed on this, but Gordon munched through a bit of one.  Eating one of these can bring you good luck apparently.

We're looking a bit hot here, but the food was delicious!

Four days in Ho Chi Minh City passed quickly and although we could have crammed our activities and sightseeing into fewer days, taking our time meant no rushing around.  Next up, a flight to Da Nang to visit Hue and Hoi An in central Vietnam.