Sightseeing in Saigon with Whisky

In Ho Chi Minh City, I obviously did not only indulge in food, as my previous blog might suggest. Between September 28 and October 4, 2026, I also revisited the city's major landmarks. Although I had been here in December 2024, my ability to sightsee back then was limited due to a serious intestinal disturbance that more or less pinned me to my hotel room.

After the food tour while riding pillion with Phương, who calls herself Jessica, I booked a guide on a scooter for the major names in the city's history. His name is Whisky (really!); I did not understand his Vietnamese name despite several inquiries.

Ho Chi Minh City is an expansive metropolis with ten million inhabitants (or 22 million if you include the metropolitan area), where everything exists: corrugated iron shacks and skyscrapers, filthy alleys and wide boulevards, street kitchens and Michelin-starred restaurants, billionaires and beggars. Above it all hangs the past, even though three-quarters of all Vietnamese have been born after 1975: the colonization and oppression by the French, the occupation by the Japanese, and the Vietnam War, which is referred to here as the “War of Liberation against America.”

Remnants of the