Ho Chi Minh City, still also romantically referred to as Saigon by its inhabitants, is situated in the south-eastern region of Vietnam. It is the largest and most populous city in Vietnam with over 10 million people living in the metropolitan area.  The city is a thriving economic hub for modern Vietnam with contemporary skyscrapers mixed throughout the buildings of the ancient city; the distress of the past living alongside the hope of a new generation.

Our Trip

Having lived in large cities all of our lives you can imagine our surprise to find out that during our travels, visiting populous towns and cities has been our least favourite part. With so many people living in Saigon, tourists are seen as walking ATM machines for the locals and so there is no personal interaction (which is fine) but there is a lot of touting and hassle from the locals trying to sell you products and/or service – no time is sacred and we got consistently approached while our on walks and during every meal – our solution being to, on occasion, get very drunk and hope the booze will wipe some of the encounters from our memory! …every feel like you’re being watched?

We were truely hoping to love Saigon and we did have a really fantastic time walking around, seeing the sites and eating the food… But the touting was all a bit overwhelming and for this reason, it’s far from our most loved place in this glorious country.

Walking around Saigon

Our week in HCMC was mainly spent on foot and we walked in and around the central district 1 area to get our bearings.

Several times we walked through the very vibrant 23/9 Park where we saw locals exercising and tourists taking leisurely strolls. The park is very long and narrow and there are intervals main roads intersecting every few blocks. The park is a balance of green trees and a lake amongst large concrete squares where the locals can gather in large groups – either for formal exercise or for more informal games of hackie sack.

At the end of the park is the very busy Bến Thành market where we stepped inside and we walked past rows upon rows of stalls selling the usual tourist fodder – everything from small souvenirs and trinkets to counterfeit clothes and handbags. The building itself is quite striking and is one of the earliest surviving structures from Saigon.

We walked along Nguyen Hue Street where we saw a sky rise full of cafes, an exhibition of a timeline Ho Chi Minh’s life and locals and tourists riding electronic segways. At the top of the street lies a statue of Ho Chi Minh, and at the other end lies Saigon river esplanade.

We walked up to and inside the Bitexco Financial Tower where we could see the office buildings that stretch up to floor 68. This is the tallest building in HCMC and there is a viewing platform on the 49th floor with panoramic views over the city. The ground floor houses high street and designer shops.

We also strolled over to the War Remnants Museum and spent a few hours walking through the displays. There are displays on the ground floor and up through the building each of the four floors has a display theme. As with all war, the stories from both sides were absolutely tragic – the atrocities of this war were vast. Of course, as we read the literature we got a sense of bias and communist propaganda, but in any case the suffering of the civilians and soldiers was real.

Saigon Central Post office sits across the road from Saigon Notre Dame Cathedral and so we got to see both buildings when we decided to lighten our load and post excess luggage home – we were travelling light but found we could reduce even further as certain items we just weren’t using.

We also went on a ride day to see the Cu Chi Tunnels (See Ride Day 30: Cu Chi Tunnels) where we rode up to the tunnels, crawled through and spent time with the local guide learning about what life would have been like. On the way back we rode past the Chinese fabric market and the Catholic Church, it was a seven hour ride all up!

Bookworms Cafe in District 1 also deserves a shout out, they do a mean Sunday roast and we swapped over some books and got new ones in return, awesome!

Nguyen Hue St Skyscraper Cafes

Bitexco Viewing Platform

Street Market

Catholic Church

Cu Chi Tunnels hut

Excellent beer

Pimping our rides

We were thinking that while in town we could customise our bikes a little so we rode up to district 9 to find a garage that our mechanic recommended – it was a bit hidden and while we stopped to check the map we were approached by an older local guy called Phuc who had great English and drove with us to three different shops and spoke in Vietnamese with the locals to get us what we wanted – of course we gave him some cash for his trouble.

We decided on keeping Eddies bike black and changing mine white, and we got our blog address printed on the side of each of both – it was quite a lot of fun, our bikes look so different now!

Playing with stickers

Making stickers

Trac Ed Around Asia!

Final sticker on

Olds Stickers off

White vinyl coating on

No seat!