Ho Chi Minh City - Saigon

Saigon is definitely the most modern and biggest city of Vietnam - it has a much more metropolitan feeling than Hanoi. From time to time it is nice to be in a big city. We have arrived to the city right in the middle of the afternoon rain showers that now became very frequent. They basically start always around 3pm and last for 1-2 hours. Of course we have arrived directly to the tourist ghetto since almost every South East Asian city has one. There you can feel a bit like at home (whether you like it or not).

In the city we decided to make our lives easier and rented one scooter to go around the city. It is kind of liberating experience but on the other hand also a bit stressful. The good thing is that once you get into the traffic it becomes much less intimidating than what it seems when you are a bystander - perhaps something like jumping into the river and let the current take you with it... To make it simple we choose a full automatic scooter :)

We were set to see a couple of landmarks in the city - though to be honest there are not too many. Saigon has nice parks, Notre Dam Cathedral (French legacy as in most bigger cities of the former French colonies) some nice pagodas especially in the China town and all the modern buildings etc. which you would expect in a 21st century city. We decided to take it easy and go to botanical gardens which turned out to be more of a zoo than the botanical garden. Nevertheless, the animals were kept in captivity under what we would call good conditions (if you can say anything like that about keeping anybody in captivity) and there was a nice variety of them. The thing that shocked me thought the most was a little rabbit sitting undisturbed in a relatively big aquarium. It would not have been anything special except that in the other corner of the aquarium there was a huge snake chilling and I guess waiting for a good moment to eat the poor black rabbit for dinner...


Anyway we have also found the best dinning experience in Vietnam so far. Perhaps even during our trip - at least from the culinary side. It was a very nice restaurant in an old villa, with cooks all around the compound preparing traditional Vietnamese dishes. Then we would be helped by the staff to get to know how to make wraps etc. Excellent service and great food and very reasonable prices. Absolutely a MUST for everyone visiting the city. This was the first place we got to know how to eat things that are sold on the street but you have no idea what to do with them. No wonder the restaurant is always full...(Quan An Ngon Restaurant- 138 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia street in District)

This would be our last destination in Vietnam - we would only see the Mekong Delta and head to Phnom Pehn.