Before we begin, here is the Google Photos album that I made for this trip.

Alright, I had never done a solo trip before, and Ho Chi Minh city was the first city on my list in Vietnam. I spent a short one and a half days here and will thus make a shorter post about this city. First, however, a list of tips for you:

• Ho Chi Minh city airport does not have wifi. I have relied on wifi to work on every airport up until this point, which it has done. That is why I was shocked to find out that it did not, and all of a sudden I was put in a siutation where I could not find out the necessary information I needed for the city - something that set me up for a scam.
• Beware of taxi scams at the airports. When travelling in Vietnam, always look up the taxi prices from the airport to your hostel the day before you get there, and download an offline currency app to help you quickly convert the suggested prices to your own currency
• Go to the War Museum. I list it, my friends list it, everybody lists it. It is an eye opener seeing what took place during the war.
• Go to downtown food to enjoy some delicious food.
• If you want to try out street food, you can head to Turtle Square for some quite cheap and great street food!
• Skip the Cu Chi tunnels. They were simply not worth it for the long journey it was, and they will take you to a shop for half an hour on the way there for you to buy some souvenirs.
• Best amount of time spent in this city would be one day for the war museum and downtown food. Most people I spoke to did not enjoy spending more than 2 days in this city, and in retrospect, I would have rather spent a layover of 8 hours here than the 2 nights I did; freeing up time to explore more of Vietnam than I did. It takes half an hour from the city to the airport, which makes a War Museum + downtown foods trip during the layover a perfect fit.

Now that I am done with the tips, let us start with the story.

It was a cloudy day the day I arrived. We were flying above the clouds, with the late afternoon sun hitting us gently in the eyes. I could suddenly feel the plane slow down; preparing for the inevitable landing in a few minutes. We slowly went into the clouds and my mind was trying to figure out what I would see once we got out on the other side of the clouds. I waited for a few seconds. Waited a few more seconds. Some minutes. All of a sudden I realized that we could not exit the clouds; in fact the city was itself wrapped in clouds. Giant smog clouds, that is… Nice first impression of the city!

A few minutes later I landed at the airport and quickly exchanged money and took out some more from an ATM. I thought about buying a SIM card for my trip in order to have internet access and make my life easier. However, as I had heard from Leo that he had not bought any SIM cards in Asia, nor used any mobile data, I wanted to find out if I could do the same. Therefore, I skipped buying a SIM card. Stupidly.

A few minutes later I found myself not being able to access the internet from the airport wifi whilst a ‘taxi driver’ was trying to get me on his trip. I wisely ignored him for a few minutes until I decided I really wanted to get to the hostel soon without troubles, so I bought his taxi trip for 15 USD (ca 13 EUR). I did not know anything about how long this trip would be nor how much I should expect to pay for a taxi trip here, and I was in a hurry. In fact, I practically knew nothing about this city or country, as the airport’s lack of wifi had left me completely off guard.

Therefore, I got into the taxi for said price and one minute later he wanted me to pay a toll fee for 150,000 Dong (ca 6 EUR, as I found out later) which I think was actually around 30,000 Dong (ca 1 EUR). I should have gone out of the taxi then and there, but as I really wanted to get to my hostel, I did not. Upon arrival to the hostel, I said that I probably got scammed, and they said that I indeed got scammed, and that I should also be on the outlook for pick pocketers. Some wisdom for the future: never trust taxi drivers in these countries, and try to only go with big taxi companies.

This was my introduction to Ho Chi Minh city - a taxi scam, a clear warning against pick pocketers as well as a thick, bad smelling smog filling up my lungs. I strolled around for awhile in the city with my hands paranoidically holding on to my phone and valuables. I grabbed dinner at a restaurant by Hem 28 Bui Vien street (forgot the name of the restaurant) and ended up not that impressed by the vietnamese food that I had heard such great things about.

I strolled around a bit more, grabbed some lemon tea at Phuc Long Coffee & Tea Express, ended up liking that a bit more, and finally went back to Alleyway Hostel. Over here, I wanted to plan a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels for the next day and got lucky as I met a Brittish girl who had booked a relatively cheap trip here the next day with getyourguide.com for 20 USD (ca 17 EUR). I ended up going on this same trip next day.

We started out at their office (ca 15 min walk from hostel) at 8 am and then went on a bus trip for around one hour before they stopped by a local shop filled with expensive handicrafts that they wanted us to buy. The crafts were impressive, and they showed us how they were made from scratch with mussels carved into stone tablets, etc. It was, however, not what we were here for, and as such it was a bad thing for the overall experience of the trip. We got water after this, however, so it was not too bad!

After this, we drove for another hour until we got to the Cu Chi tunnels, where we were guided for an hour through tunnels and traps. It was impressive to see the traps and tunnels, because they gave a feel for how ruthless this war could be. The traps where designed to cause as much pain and fear as possible, and to me it felt like the ones making these traps had no compassion for human lives whatsoever. On the other side of the story, the tunnels gave a feel for how horrible life quality the Vietnamese had during these wars, judging by how small and dark the tunnels were.

Looking back to this trip, it was quite interesting to see the tunnels, but the trip was not worth the time or money. It was quite a small area where the tunnels were located, which meant that the tour was too short. Furthermore, it felt like the stories we were told about this war lacked information due to the communist censoring, and this area had become too much of a tourist attraction. Lastly, the tour guide was an asshole, because he tried to turn everyone against an old man who got angry with him when he tried to hurry us all the time through the area. I therefore cannot recommend this trip to future travellers, because it has too many negative aspects to make it worth the time and money. I got dropped off at the war museum afterwards, though, so this was a nice aspect of the trip.

The war museum was definitely the highlight of this trip, and it gave a feel for how raw this war actually was. We were shown uncensored pictures of people torn in half, people deformed by the gas Agent Orange, along with stories of the torture methods the americans used in the war. This made me realise that the americans had Hitler-like (if not worse) concentration camps in Vietnam during this war, and gave me a completely new view of USA. It also made me realise how much the world has changed in the past decades, but at the same time how recent this war was. Lastly, it gave me a feeling of being left out of the truth, because the museum only gave a view of the american evils without giving any information whatsoever about the communist’s methods during the war. Nevertheless, this museum is a must see if you ever decide to go to Ho Chi Minh.

I do not know if you can read the text in the picture above, so let me write down here what it says (in quite broken English):

• HOLDING PRISONERS IN “TIGER CAGE”: “The cage” were weaved by interlacing barbed wires around and on top of it, “cage” were placed outdoor and had many sizes for keeping one person or 3-5 people. Prisoners had to lie on sandy soil, barbed wires or only could sit or stoop but stand up straight depending on the sizes of cages.
• SPECIAL CONFINEMENT: Warders created special confinement areas by wearing barbed wires many times around the iron grill. The foundation surface was coved by iron grill too. Within the area of 27 square meters, they kept 180 prisoners. Prisoners had to take turns lying, sitting and standing due to the lack of space. Poor sanitation and lack of basic health care caused many people to be infected by a variety of diseases such as scabies or even polio.
• BURNING SEX ORGANS: Warders had their prisoners take off their pants and sit on a bench with a hole. Then the warders would tie prisoners’ legs and burn their sex organs from below.
• BURNING PRISONERS’ MOUTHS: Warders burnt prisoners’ mouths so the couldn’t eat anything and die of starving.
• PIERCING PRISONERS WITH NAILS: Warders drove nails at 3-10 cm long into vital points of prisoners’ bodies such as fingers, back of hands, insteps, shoulder blades, knees, and even skull. A series of excavation revealed many Phu Quoc prisoners-of-war’ remains with 5,6 nails at 3 to 8 cm long pierced into vital points of their bodies.
• BREAKING KNEECAPS OFF: Warders thrust prisoners’ calf of legs and broke their kneecaps off. Warders pressed hot iron on the bleeding knees for their so-called blood stopping treatment.
• SOAKING PRISONERS INTO BOILING WATER PAN: Warders had prisoners sit and wrapped in a rice sack, then they tied the mouth of sack and soaked prisoners into boiling water pan. Prisoners died of scalded by boiling water.
• PRESSING PLYWOOD PLANKS ON PRISONERS’ CHESTS: Warders pressed two plywood planks on the backs and chests of prisoners then bolted them together at the rears. The pressure caused prisoners’ to stop heart’s beating and breathing.
• BURNING PRISONERS: Warders tied prisoners to 2 long sticks which were 80 cm far from ground surface and made a low fire below like broiling fish.
• BURYING PRISONERS ALIVE: Warders pushed a blindfold prisoner into a grave which had been dug and filled in the grave with dirt in the presence of other prisoners to threaten their morale.

It was also fun taking the picture below after exiting the museum. It shows the horrible traffic situation in Vietnam. Yes, it is quite common seeing people driving their scooters on the sidewalk, and people start driving about 1-2 seconds before the traffic light turns green, and stop driving 1-2 second after the traffic light has turned red.

After the museum, I fixed a SIM card at Thegioididong, because I had realised how much easier life gets when you have internet access. I had to bring a passport and pay 125,000 Dong (ca 5 EUR) for 3.5 GB mobile data lasting for a month. In retrospect, this was definitely worth it, and it made my life a whole lot easier throughout the rest of the trip. Therefore, I highly recommend doing this!

After the SIM card was fixed, I went to Turtle Square to eat some cheap street food that Eric the old zealander had recommended. I tried some Bap xao, Banh trong tranh and Banh trong nuong. Eric’s names for the dishes were not accurate with the pictures he provided for them, which resulted in me eating Bap xao twice. It was a delicious corn meal, though, so I did not really mind! The street food in general was quite good here, so this ends up as another one of my recommendations!

After the food, I went to a nearby café to have some hot peach tea. They seemed confused when I ordered it hot, and after a minute, I got a glass of ice tea served to me. Confused about this ordeal, I accepted this new fate of mine and got even more confused when they refilled my glass with tea when I had finished it. A minute later, I got served delicious hot peach tea as previously requested, and this is when I realised that they serve ice tea like it is water here in Vietnam. Interesting concept, indeed… I think this is the place of your dreams, Mattias the son of Josef and teaholic!

Next day, I walked around in the city to the Independence Palace and Downtown food. I just walked to the gates outside the Independence Palace, and this was enough to me; a beautiful building but not much to see. Downtown food was, however, definitely worth it, as the food here was really good, and the overall atmosphere was quite nice - it was a food court below ground in a mall, and they had at least 20 different restaurants here. I ended up getting some glass noodles with spring rolls, salad and meat from the Bun Moc restaurant, as well as an ice cream waffle from ChiChiKo for about 60,000 (ca 2 EUR) and 50,000 Dong (ca 2 EUR) respectively. I highly recommend paying this place a visit!

After this experience, I was done with Ho Chi Minh. I went to my hostel, grabbed my stuff and took a grab to the airport, from where I had to depart for Da Lat around 3 pm. Interestingly, the airport security is very easy-going here, as I could get my 1.5 liter water bottle through the luggage scanner without even a raised eyebrow. What is worse is that I put it separately in a box, 100 % visible for the security guards.

Anyways, next up is Da Lat!