Today was a travel day so we had to be up very early. We left the hotel at 6:30, went directly to the airport and flew to Ho Chi Minh City, which is often still called Saigon by the Vietnamese.
Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam with about 16 million people. We had a brief city tour on the way to the hotel. We passed the US consulate, and stopped at the post office. The post office was designed by Gustave Eiffel and finished in 1891. It looks like a train station because it was originally designed to be one. Across the street is Saigon’s Notre Dame which is being renovated so we couldn’t go in. We also passed the memorial to the Buddhist monk that immolated himself in 1963 as well as the location of the last US helicopter to leave in the fall of Saigon in 1975.
We had lunch of pho at a traditional, local restaurant.
Here’s a video of us all saying pho.
We got checked into the hotel and Mai took us on a brief orientation walk around the neighborhood. Afterwards some people went to the war museum. We decided to save that for later in the week. I spent the afternoon sitting by the rooftop pool, blogging. I’m all caught up!
That evening we went out to dinner at a restaurant called Vi Sai Gon where we had a delicious dinner including a mekong delta salad.
On the way back to the hotel the driver took us to city hall, a building original built by the French, to see the lights. It was a Saturday evening and everyone was out. Mai talked about how people living in Saigon live in very small apartments and like to get out for fresh air in the evening. The stores along Nguyen Hue Walking St were very exclusive. In the middle of the walkway was a statue of Ho Chi Minh. From there we could also see the lotus fountain, the Bitexco tower with its helipad, and the opera house. The Rex Hotel was on Nguyen St. High ranking US military briefings were held there. Many of the wait staff were VC spies and the information they discussed was passed on. The bar got a nickname and was known as “The Five O’clock Follies”.
After getting back to the hotel, I went up to the roof pool and took some pictures of Saigon at night. They could have been pictures of New York City from my perspective. Quite a contrast to Hanoi.
