Sightseeing in Saigon

[by Jonas] So we are in Ho Chi Minh City or formerly known as Saigon. The second largest city we visit on our journey and the biggest in Vietnam. We noticed this right at the beginning when we drove into the city: the traffic here is even crazier than in Hanoi or Bangkok. There are a lot more scooter drivers and everything is even more chaotic. Sometimes the streets here have 6 lanes in one direction, all filled with countless scooters. But one big difference to Hanoi is that the old town of Hanoi consisted of many small alleys. The old town of Saigon is completely different in this respect. There are big streets here and even junctions with traffic lights. You can also use the sidewalk for the most part, if it is not used as a turning lane or counter lane by the scooters. But all in all, walking around here was not as stressful as in Hanoi.

The bus stopped in the middle of the city in front of the office of the travel company, just a few blocks away from our hotel. We quickly walked there on foot and within a few minutes we were already at the inconspicuous entrance to the side street where our hotel was located. Checked in, went to eat something and fell straight into bed, as it was already quite late after the 5-hour drive. The time had even advanced so far that a very special day had begun: Franzi's birthday!

But we started the next day as a normal sightseeing day. First, we went to the War Remnants Museum (40,000 Dong = 1.42€ per person). In front of the building, there is a collection of American war equipment such as planes or tanks that fell into the hands of the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

But since we still had a lot planned, we quickly moved on to Notre Dame. Not to Paris, but of course to the one in HCMC (short for Ho Chi Minh City).

In front of the main entrance is primarily a large lawn with a huge fountain in the middle, all surrounded by Vietnamese flags.

Then we went home for a short break, where we got ready for the birthday evening. We had something very special in mind: we wanted to have a cocktail and watch the sunset in a sky bar on the 52nd floor of the tallest building in the city, the Bitexco Financial Tower.
The building is gigantic and after we found the right entrance, we were taken to the elevators and called by the staff. They took us to the 50th floor at breakneck speed, where other employees led us to another elevator across. This took us up the last 2 floors, where we were greeted not only by a waitress but especially by an indescribable view. The waitress then took us to our table, a small but high table right by the window facing the sunset! We ordered 2 cocktails (440,000 Dong = 15.75€) and enjoyed the view of the seemingly endless city slowly getting darker. I also made a timelapse of it!

So we quickly moved on here too and made our way to the Vietnamese History Museum (40,000 Dong = 1.43€ per person). Unfortunately, here again we could see that the Vietnamese don't really know how to do museums. It was unstructured and not sufficiently labeled in English, just like the museums in Hanoi. We found this very unfortunate because we had expected more, especially since Vietnam has such an interesting history to tell.

But there were a few individual things that were quite interesting:

And then it was time to pack again. The next day, a big journey awaited us. We have now left Vietnam and are in the next country, but where and whether everything went well, you will find out in the next blog!

So until then

Franzi and Jonas