A Stroll about Ho Chi Minh City

We had a good night's sleep thanks to our fatigue and modern medicine. As I pointed out yesterday, the scooter rules Saigon. Apparently there are 11 million people in HCMC (this is how I will now refer to Ho Chi Minh City) and 7 million scooters.

Our room looks out at the Reunification Palace, which was the last stand for the Americans as they were being booted unceremoniously out of Vietnam in 1976. We will visit this place in a couple days so more about it then.

After breakfast, we set out on a walking tour of District one, outlined for us by our guide. It lead us first to Notre Dame Cathedral, an 1888 construction, of which all materials were imported from France. Right now it is undergoing quite a renovation with both sides totally wrapped in scaffolding.

Across the street from the cathedral is the colonial Post Office which is more like a classic rail station. There was a lot of activity here with people selling intricate diaramas and a group of dressed up ladies at a photo shoot.

From there, we wandered down a booksellers walking street.

At the end of this street was the Hard Rock Cafe, always a destination for me.

As we continued our walk we encountered a couple of excellent wine shops where we stocked up.

We then made our way down to the Saigon River, with its wartime guns still on guard. From here, you can also see the intense modern development spreading out from HCMC.

As the heat built up, we felt obligued to stop for a drink. Everyone had a beer while I had something fancy with sugarcane and lemon grass.

On the way back to the hotel we passed more interesting buildings like the Skydeck and the Plant(?) Hotel.

When we were almost at the hotel, I had my Birkenstocks rebuilt. As the guy started working on them I had no idea what this was going to cost, and it ended up totalling around $30 - probably more than I should have paid, but not bad for new shoes. Once we cooled off in our air conditioned rooms - thank the Lord for that! - we headed back up to the pool for two for one cocktails and some serious chill time in a 30 degree pool.

As we set out for dinner tonight we witnessed the setup of the night market around Ben Thanh Market. It was with military precision that the vendors wheeled their canopies and goodies to their sites.

Tonight we opted for one of the restaurants on our guide's list - the Mountain Retreat rooftop restaurant. It was supposed to be only a 10 minute walk from then hotel, but because of major construction we(I) were thrown off kilter and ended up taking the scenic circuitous route at around 30 minutes - Oops! In all fairness, this was not an easy place to find. Then to add insult to injury, we had a 7 and 1/2 flight set of stairs to get to said rooftop. Fortunately the breeze was welcome and the views were not shabby.

We had six plates that we shared and all agreed that the food was delicious and the stairs were, if not annoying, then at least worth the effort. We are confirming what we have understood about Vietnam - it's mostly about the food. Our return to the hotel was only the 10 minute trip that we initially anticipated and we got to experience the night market while continuing to dodge motor scooters. Do they keep a tally of daily motor scooter annihilations? So far we've seen no sign that anyone is dieing in this caotic traffic.

Back at the hotel we all decided to cash it in, what with all the steps we put in today. The bonus is that tomorrow we don't need to do much - maybe some pool time.

Off to Southeast Asia

We are now off on our third trip to Asia - two more than we swore we'd take after the first trip. This is not a reflection of the amazingness of these destinations. It's more about the travel time - essentially one day+ lost in travel. We started off right by taking a car service to the airport - totally stressless.

Then, thanks to our tour operator Nexus, we had one of the most enjoyable flights ever in the Premium Economy section of our China Southern Airlines aircraft - lots of leg and peripheral room , fabulous service, great seat back entertainment and substantial food and drinks - fruit juice of course .

We chased the night the entire trip - departing at 12:30 at night and travelling west will do that to you. So leg one of our journey - 15.5 hours to Guangzhou China (another of those small Chinese cities at 14.5 million people) didn't get better than this.

Since our final destination was Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, the break between flights was good therapy. We had a three hour wait and another 2.5 hr. flight, plus after meeting the Nexus Representative, we had a 40 minute drive from the airport to the Silverland Yen Hotel. From previous reconnoitering it appeared that this hotel was ideally located and it was, smack in the centre of district one, the heart of all things touristy.

At the Silverland we had a short orientation with Bao, our guide after which we quickly changed and adjourned to the rooftop pool in the rising 35 degree heat of the afternoon. With the humidity, Dawn is quickly transforming into a tight curl Annie.

It's easy to imagine us hanging out around the pool for the next couple of days as our heads adjust to the 12 hour time change. We did get some slow time in our rooms before heading out on foot to explore the immdiate vicinity of the hotel. We are only one block from the famous Ben Thahn Market. There are more vendors crammed into this small space creating shopping alleys that are nesrly untraversable.

Walking just a short distance gave us an appreciation for the need to develop effective road crossing skills so as to avoid being annihilated by one of the myriad of motor scooters that pollute the streets of old Saigon. You'll notice in the following pics that they have two ridesharing scooter services, Uber and Grab.

The buildings around the hotel tend to be tall and thin with many harkening back to colonial days. They are also predominantly hotels.

We had some great Viet cuisine at our hotel to finish the day, unable to search out anything else out there with our foggy heads and then wandered up to the roof for the evening vista. In perfect world this would have been the ideal opportunity for a dip, but we decided drowning could ensue, so we retreated to our rooms and crashed after not having seen a bed for 2 days.