Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 28 - Monday June 6th 2016 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

So we absolutely have no agenda for the day……well nothing other than two stops but before we get to that it’s fair to say that we woke up a bit later than normal at just after nine and just about made it to breakfast that closes at 10:00.

We were in no rush though which in some ways was a bit of a shame. We had two planned stops for the whole day which was not going to fil it so there was going to need to be a lot of mooching in between to fill our day here.

Our first port of call was the Ben Thanh Market, actually it’s just around the corner from the hotel we are staying at. It’s one of the earliest surviving structures in Saigon and is considered by the locals as a symbol of the city (apparently). It’s a huge inside market selling well just about everything you can think of from pots and pans to food, coffee, crafts and a lot of knock off clothing and fake leather goods. The pathways around the never ending r

ows of stalls were all really narrow and to be honest after walking up and down a few the constant heckling and attention seeking by the stall holders all got a bit much so we reached for the nearest exit. If we had been in the market for anything we might have played along but as our luggage is already up to maximum kilos we just don’t have the room so we moved on.

Outside the market was a huge roundabout with no crossings so we had to navigate crossing a really crazy busy road weaving in and out of all the buses, cars and scooters. If we had not been to Hanoi I don’t think that we could have found the courage to do it but in most things here, it was actually fine and looked a lot worse than it actually was.

Now it was time for a real contrast as we headed off to the Bitexco Financial Tower, the most modern and tallest building in Vietnam and a real sign of the cities intent. Before getting there we walked through an older part of the city that actually was very reminiscent of Hanoi and the old French quarter. This was a food market with stalls either side of the street selling unrefrigerated meats and vegetables, pots and pans, everything really. It had that feeling of Hanoi, a little bit dirty, a little bit rough. It was also a little bit lost with the glass superstructures that surround it, you got the feeling that its days were numbered and that this traditional way of shopping would soon be pushed out of the centre of the city, relocated to make way for a different form of life.

The tower stands 26 meters tall, has 68 floors and there was a viewing floor on floor 49 and that was where we were going. At the base of the tower was a shopping mall with topshop and topman, Adidas, many coffee shops, again here was east meets west right in front of us.

As we reached the viewing floor the real thing that hit you was how vast the city is. There was no visible edge to it no matter how far you looked or travelled round the three hundred and sixty-degree view. The only thing that broke up the view was the river cutting Saigon in half. Seriously this really made you change your perception of the place as from up here it seemed endless. The building itself is designed with a closed lotus flower as its inspiration but it’s the extra-large helipad protruding from it that makes it unique. The helipad looks like a big flat tongue coming out of the sleek tall glass tower. We walked round and round the perimeter of the tower taking in the vastness of the city but soon returned to ground level and a much needed coffee stop in the shiny western mall. Refreshed but with everything on our list seen and done it was a real case of what to do now?

With a lack of inspiration, we headed off on a walk across town to the Saigon Botanical Gardens and Zoo. We passed the American and English embassies (At first we thought that the American Embassy was a jail as it was so fortress like. Given its place in Vietnamese history I suppose that is not surprising at all). Eventually we made it to the zoo and gardens and paid the very small entry fee. Now I want to say here that zoos on the whole are not our thing. We tend to find seeing any animal in captivity quite upsetting and bleak so this really was us reaching out for something else to do. We were honestly more interested in the green space that the many captive animals on display.

As zoos go this was maybe not the worse, they had all the normal species on display, tigers, elephants, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, lions, crocodiles etc etc. and on the whole the enclosures seemed just about adequate, in our view they should not be in anything resembling this at all.

With the recent news story of a child falling into an ape’s enclosure at a zoo it was really interesting to see just how wide all the bars were on most of the enclosures (the lions and tigers were behind glass). It would never pass European standards for health and safety but then that’s Asia for you. We walked around for a good hour, dodging a big school trip that was here on a scavenger hunt the best we could.

It was a lot hotter and more humid today so after the best part of four hours nonstop walking we headed back into the heart of the city and some air conditioning in a mall and some lunch.

As we also seem to do we ordered the same, a really great beef salad, all fragrant and yummy, everything that Asian cooking normally is, it was just so full of flavour, so without any fat or calories…..yum yum yum!

Being just around the corner from the hotel we decided to take a break, get back and do some catching up. Jonathan sat and wrote out the blogs whilst Trevor went up to the rooftop pool for a swim (until he got rained off). The hotel not only has a pool on its roof but also a tennis court (now if only I had someone to play with!).

After a bit of relaxation and downtime we headed back out onto the streets again for an earlier dinner. Tonight in Ho Chi Minh was like no other and not just because we were out earlier. There was a storm brewing overhead and the sky was being lit up by sheet lightning and the wind was really strong. Barriers were getting blown down in the street and there was a real sense of something big coming this way. Because of that the hover board crowds on the whole had stayed away and the central pedestrianised area was still all but empty sapping the atmosphere form the place.

We ended up going to the same restaurant as last night as the food had been so cheap and so good. It was empty tonight (so far anyway) but we had no idea if this was because of the impending storm or the fact that it was no longer the weekend? We both settled on Thai Red curry with fishcakes and sticky rice, once again it was really good. We drank a few beers then headed off back to the hotel to crash once again, sort more pictures and watch another homeland on the iPad. Sometimes you feel guilty for just crashing in the hotel but when you have been travelling for a month and have been out nearly every night of that you really ned just some chill time sometimes.

So this was our last night in Ho Chi Minh but actually not our last day as we will be coming back here once we get back on board The Ovation of the Seas from Singapore. For that reason, we have left the main tourist attraction for that day, the Chi Chi war tunnels but they are nowhere near the centre so its bye bye Ho Chi Minh.

It was lights out around 23:30 and the alarm was set for another travel day and another country that we never thought we would get to visit, Cambodia here we come.