Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon), Vietnam
Following our few relaxed days in Can Tho, we took a bus up to Ho Chi Minh City and spent 4 nights there.
Independence Palace (aka Reunification Palace)
This is a former palace used by the president of South Vietnam until the North Vietnamese Army drove their tanks right through the front gate, ending the Vietnam war. Now it is a tourist stop for large tour groups on busses, lots of Vietnamese families, and us!
The exterior is very impressive as you see it from the front gates. No landmark in Vietnam would be complete without their army planes and tanks parked on the front lawn (you can see a tank in the far right of the picture below). We walked around the bedrooms, meeting rooms and even a game room inside, all furnished as they were when it served as a palace. The furniture is formal, regal and quite 70s! Groovy.
interior of palace 
see tank far right
The Saigon City Hall, now called the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, was built in 1902 in French Colonial style. There are alot of things re-named for Ho Chi Minh in Saigon, including the city itself. It is still sometimes referred to as Saigon, but mostly it’s HCMC.
We spent an afternoon at the Saigon Zoo & Botanical Garden, which was unintentional. Normally, I don’t enjoy zoos, because seeing the animals all locked up makes me sad. We only wanted to walk around the gardens, but when we got there, we realized they are one and the same. In any case, it was very beautiful and we had a nice little walk around, ending with me losing my footing in a maze and being caked in slimey black mud. Fun day!
Saigon is a huge city, with lots of fun street activities to witness. While sitting in a restaurant one day, this was on the sidewalk outside the restaurant opposite us.
There are these huge tall buildings towering over loud streets where you question you survival if you attempt to cross… and then you turn a corner and you find yourself transported to a more peaceful town from the past. Kids sitting on the front stoop, grandma cooking in the street and its like you are not just one parallel street from screeching tires and honking horns. Its wild.
We came across these little back streets our way out to Chinatown to find and check out the Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda, a beautifully ornamented temple from 1902.
In an effort to be brief, that’s all I will post about Saigon! 🙂
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