Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City ( Saigon )

A very pleasant surprise. Ho Chi Minh city is a lovely place to visit. It is developing rapidly many new buildings and the central area has many parks and nice old buildings.

Many shops and restaurants around you can find all the major international brands even the most expensive ones. There are also proper supermarkets where you can buy western and international food alike. We thought this would be a city to move to if We have to live in Asia for some reason. We have visited the following sites, they are all walking distance from each other so no need to take a cab.

– Notre Dame Cathedral. This is actually a middle sized church nothing special really
– Post office. Opposite to the cathedral, very nice colonial style old building looks nice from the outside as well as the inside.
– Reunification Palace. We actually didn’t go inside of this one it looked to me as an ugly communist style building that we had all over Budapest 20-30 years ago. The park that surrounds it really nice though.
– Revolutionary Museum. Again socialist style museum a bit funny but it worth visiting if you haven’t seen many of these before.
– Financial Tower. Amazing building it is still being built ( 2010.10 ) so we couldn’t get inside a must see!
– Ben Thanh Market. Very nice building loads of small shops inside.
– City Operahouse.

Price wise Ho Chi Minh City is even cheaper than Thailand or Cambodia. Read more details in the Prices 2010 Article.

Tip: In Ho Chi Minh city stay at Bich Duyen Hotel. The staff is supernice, the rooms are clean, the location is excellent, and not very expensive.

Bich Duyen Hotel
283/4 Pham Ngu Lao | 1 District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam