Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Ho Chi Minh

The famous Independence Palace

Our first stop in Vietnam is the very large city of Ho Chi Minh City or more commonly known as Saigon. This large bustling city of over 9 million people, catches you by surprise with its hectic traffic with almost everyone on motorbikes or peddle bikes and cars being fairly scarce. The traffic just flows to its own set of rules but it flows effortlessly through the city, but I would certainly never want to drive here. The city is designed on grid pattern with very uniform standard blocks making it very easy to navigate, this was influenced by the fact that the city was colonized by the French for many years.

This country has a long and sordid history of many occupations of foreign countries and many large wars being fought on its soil. This makes for a country still coming to terms with its new freedom and with many influences seen in all aspects of their daily life from food to architecture to customs. There is French bread available at every corner, their architecture has a very European style and there language has only been recently redone in characters similar to our alphabet. But they are a proud people proud of their past and incredibly friendly to us.

In Saigon we were lucky enough to be here at the tail end of the Chinese New Year so the city was lit up to its festival finest. The main streets were lit up with several types of lanterns and twinkling lights giving the whole area a festive feel. Here we strolled the streets discovering that capitalism is alive and well in this communist country. And we were delighted with great food experiences and local Saigon Beer. We had a great dinner cruise down the mighty Mekong River and made our way up to the viewing platform of the recently open ultra modern BiTexeco Financial Tower.

We toured a few of the historic sites such as the Notre Dame Cathedral, a smaller version of the original in Paris built by the French during their occupation totally from materials shipped in from France. The wonderful railway station and Opera House both beautiful designed after classic European architecture. And of course the famous Independence Palace that was home of the emperor at the time of the communist coup, that became the centre of the regime under Ho Chi Minh himself.

This city is alive with chaotic traffic, crowds at every corner and lights blinking every where we were totally in love with this city called Saigon.