Having roughly 9 million people, Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam. Many of the locals and business signs still refer to it by its older name of Saigon. It has the Vietnamese street food, lights, bars and the customary barrage of motorbikes. What is different here are the modern skyscrapers, huge luxury designer stores, fancy restaurants, pedestrianised walkways and rooftop bars.
The new young generation are occupying the old office blocks and setting up entrepreneurial businesses, cafes and bars. These are more diverse and interesting than the high streets. A visit to Ton That Dan was the perfect pit stop.
As soon as we arrived on a hot wet grey day, I immediately fell in love with Saigon. It’s big, it’s friendly, it’s full of orderly traffic, it’s a cosmopolitan city with a mix of old and new and it’s developing rapidly. Skyscrapers are emerging across the skyline. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly attractive city and it certainly doesn’t have a huge list of tourist attractions but it has bags of local life, intriguing quarters made up of webs of alleyways and bags of friendliness and no hassle.
An exercise park comes with quite a list of ‘Do Not’s’
The city has many, many billboards.
4th poster along translates to - The People’s Police Force is determined to successfully implement the goal of building and strongly protecting the socialist country of Vietnam.
11.00 am schools out, the cafes get swamped with students eating lunch.
While Hanoi is associated with the old 36 trade streets with small alleys and tree lined lanes, I was delighted to find Saigon also has its own interesting maze of alleyways just waiting to be explored.
Time for a nap.
Unfortunately our stay here is short. Since there are no tuk-tuks to bounce around in, getting lost on foot in the alleyways is the ideal way to bring us amongst the local people, street food, intriguing architecture, and best of all, local life.
The alleys are narrow enough to chat to your neighbour opposite without leaving your home.
The deeper you go into the alleys you may end up in a square where children or sellers congregate.
The art of the nap is fully mastered here.
Working our way back onto the main drag, it’s scooter mania. Looking forward to another day in another district.