After arriving in to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at 5.30am from a 17 hour journey on the sleeper train, it was bittersweet. I was tired after not sleeping well again (despite no cockroaches this time to share my bed!) but it was sunny and no rain after the washout in Hoi An so that made it good! I was also slightly hungover as about 10 of us crammed into one cabin, were playing music and drinking rice wine for several hours which was fun and made the journey more bearable! After a brief freshen up at the hotel, it was off to explore what the city had to offer.
The city was heavily bombed during the Vietnam war and modern day Saigon is a mix of French colonial architecture similar to Hanoi with a number of more modern buildings and skyscrapers. I did all the main tourist sites including the Notre Dame Cathedral, old GPO Post Office building, Opera House and the many old colonial hotels such as the Rex and the Grand Hyatt. I also stopped at the Independence Palace which was used as a prison during the war but has now been renamed as the Reunification Hall.
The last stop was the War Remnants Museum which is a really detailed account of the Vietnam war and very different to how the Hollywood Films have portrayed it. It’s obviously very anti-USA and has a lot of propaganda material in it but is also a stark reminder of what happened here. In parts it was a graphic walkthrough, particularly the dirty bombs ‘agent orange’ and the after effects the had including the torture that happened here.
Overall, I felt the city was a really nice mix of old and new, slightly more hectic and abrupt than Hanoi but I guess you would expect this from a city of 12 million people!
