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HCMC (Saigon)


ibfern
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Saigon (HCMC)

12/23/14

 

Today we took a ship tour called the Best of Ho Chi Minh City, a 9.5 hour tour that included some of the highlights of this interesting city. Given the long distance between the port and the city, we spent a considerable time in the bus with our guide Hoa Nyguen. Hoa had an interesting perspective given his past as an English teacher, he spoke in slang a lot.

 

Driving past colorful roadside cities, we learned about how people pay more money for a roadside home where their family business is conducted on the ground floor and the higher floors are for living. Homes here that are away from streets are much cheaper! The roads are very crowded with motorcycles which greatly outnumber autos. Some highways have dedicated cycle sections, considering there is no parking anywhere in HCMC, owing a car is not very practical. We spotted motorcycles with four and five people on them all over the city and freeways, it is quite common for an entire family to ride on one cycle! Imagine Amsterdam with motorcycles instead of bicycles and you'll get the picture.

 

We also passed interesting landscapes, lush green belts with rice paddy fields, swamp like grasslands, small rivers, and lots of trees. We followed the Saigon river throughout our visit to the city. This river was lined with some cleaner, more modern riverside homes, as well as shack like shanties which looked dirty and dilapidated. I think the government is slowly knocking down to old homes in favor of newer, more hygienic housing. In the distance you see large apartment like buildings which are quite modern. The city is dotted with skyscrapers, some with helipads.

 

Out first stop was the National Museum of Vietnamese History. This was interesting, tracing the history of Vietnamese culture in artifacts and art, as weI'll as costumes and ceramics. The visit culminated in a traditional water puppet show. Our guide announced that there would be no shopping stops on the entire tour so I ditched out of the museum and into the museum store to purchase a few items for friends. I found very reasonable lacquerware, wooden boxes with chopsticks, paper pop up cards, fans, tee shirts, among other things at very reasonable prices here. Throughout the day street vendors offered similar items but the quality differences were great. I steered clear of street vendors expect for the lovely and inexpensive pop up paper cards, which I bought at a cost of 3 for $2!

 

We visited a square in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral build to resemble the one in Paris, then crossed the street and visited the old post office. Many of the sites were drive by visits without stops, so we really visited only a few sites. Our drive by visits included Chinatown, the Botanical gardens, the Rex hotel (which we were supposed to stop for photos at but didn't), and HCMC Park also called the kissing park. We did stop at Thien Hau Temple where we learned a little and got to walk through the pagoda.

 

Lunch was at a nice hotel and our guide told us if we finished lunch early to cross the street and shop at the Butterfly shop, although he asked us not to mention it (mums the word) so naturally we sped through lunch and hightailed it to that store where we found junk, many other ship tourists, and varying prices depending on who was asking! Stay away from this place. Instead walk a few stores over to the lovely inside Dragon mall filled with lovely silks, and high quality items at very reasonable prices. I bought two silk scarves and a silk dress for $19 total. Everybody here takes US money so don't bother with the Dong. 1,000,000 Dongs equals about $50!

 

After lunch we visited the Palace, an interesting and well-worn place where the Royal family interacted with foreign officials. The living rooms were nothing special and the meeting rooms contained some spectacular pieces of furniture and soiled carpets. This place was swarming with busloads of people and was not air conditioned, bring your fans.

 

**Lucky Plaza 69 Dong Khoi Hoac 38 Nguyen Hue

Quan.1,TP.HCM

Quay TAO7

DD:0918.426033

We stopped at a lacquer factory which smelled of heavy solvents so it was difficult to follow the introduction to how the pieces were made, my asthma was bad and I raced into the Air conditioned show room/store to find bathrooms and very high priced items. The best deal in the place was water, which we bought two bottles for $1! After the factory we stopped somewhere, not sure why, and walked around the square block back to the bus. We started to drive away, as the guide was counting us and we all had to yell at the driver to stop and let a passenger on who was delayed by street vendors from entering the bus as quickly as the rest of us. It could have been disastrous for this lady if we hadn't noticed her running because the guide did not count us up before the bus moved. Be careful.

Tour Info: Saigon (HCMC)

We took a ship tour which was nice, we visited some good sites and had a wonderful meal where they brought wonderful vegetarian food that was yummy. Aside from the bad recommendation by the guide to show us his (mums the word) recommended place to shop (avoid like the plague) and the standard long stop at the enamel factory it was pretty good. It was quite expensive, next time we will take a private tour over a ship tour because Vietnam was interesting and deserved more sightseeing and no factories visits!

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