Ho Chi Minh City – part 1

Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, is the biggest city in Vietnam. Located in the south, it’s Vietnams financial headquarter.

We touched down in HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) at 12:30pm with a stop-over in Bangkok. After 11 hours of flying, we just wanted to get to our hotel and took a taxi for 900.000 vietnamese dong (that’s around 35€). We are certain we got ripped-off. There are cheaper ways to get to district 1, the city centre: the public bus nr. 152 or the Airport bus nr. 49

Our taxi driver dropped us off at our hotel, the Sunland Hotel in the first district next to a branch of the saigon river. It has a rooftop bar with a great view of the city and a nice rootop pool.

After a short afternoon nap we went out to explore the city and to eat delicious vietnamese cousine. We landed at the „Secret House“ restaurant near Ben Thanh Market. Great food, friendly staff and a really cool toilet 👍

During our walk through the city we mastered the vietnamese rules of traffic real fast: just walk and don’t show any signs of weakness 💪 you just have to keep an eye on cars and busses, the motorbikes will drive around you 🛵 or they will just honk at you to tell you to stop walking. There are traffic lights (for vehicles and people), but those are just suggestions. You can cross the road whenever and wherever you feel like it. You just have to look out for motorbikes driving on the sidewalk, that happens quite often. But no worries, they will honk at you if you’re blocking their way 🤙

Today we got up at 8 am cause we got free breakfast at our hotel and we wanted to check it out. It’s on the 14th floor and we got a window seat with a geeat view over the city. It was a mix of western and vietnamese food.

We walked around the city again and covered the main attractions like a drink at the Bitexo financial tower (we haven’t been to the famous sky deck though), we took a photo at the Ho Chi Minh City Hall, bought souvenirs at the post office and followed a random tour to the notre-dame Cathedral.

We also went to a big shopping mall next to the HCMC Hall, ate lunch and tasted some vietnamese sweets (doughnut filled with red beans, two bready things filled with cream cheese and raspberry, an egg tart and bingsu (korean ice cream of some sorts)).

and here are a few more impressions of the city: