Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

 Notes from the journal:

6/8

  • Arrived in Ho Chi Minh in the middle of the night due to flight delay, walked 20 minutes in the HUMID night along a highway to our hostel and the very kind hosts and their kids checked us in at 2 am

6/9

  • Slept in as late as we could and then went to get beef soup for breakfast nearby
  • Returned to hostel to pack up and Tyler found an available apartment for the complex we wanted to live at 
  • Learned how to walk across busy streets and how the bus system works. Took a bus to Chinatown, which was pretty nonexistent?
  • Took a bus to the Landmark 81 building and went up to the lounge on the 75th floor to order overpriced drinks and enjoy a beautiful panoramic view of the city. Sat for a couple hours and filled out our apartment application, which wasn’t super fun to do on our phones. We also felt hilariously underdressed, as we were in our grungiest backpacking clothes with our dirty packs in the very fancy building (whoops)
  • Got food nearby and wandered around a WinMart under Landmark 81 before taking a couple of buses to get back to the airport

6/24

  • Only slept about 3 hours on our flight from New Delhi and landed in the morning Vietnam time, when it started raining torrentially. They didn’t let us off the plane for awhile and the tarmac was kind of flooding but eventually we were able to get off, although it continued to floor while we tried to get around the city. 
  • Took a bus to a market, but there was only raw/bulk food so we tried to find food nearby, which proved to be difficult. Eventually got some pork belly at a restaurant and then walked to the famous Saigon Apartment Cafes. 
  • Went to Buihaus on the 7th floor and had a great hot chocolate, while reading and journaling.
  • Walked to the Saigon Central Post Office and then took a bus back to the same airport hostel and went to sleep.
  • Woke up in the middle of the night with a migraine, checked my email and saw our morning flight had been delayed by 4 hours, so re-set alarm and went back to sleep for a little bit until we headed back to the airport in the morning for our flight to Hanoi.


Read if I referred you to this post:

  • I wouldn’t really recommend Ho Chi Minh as a specific destination, but it is a neat layover city (although the visa to enter Vietnam is $25 each time) and has a different, less touristy vibe than Hanoi.
  • I would recommend Landmark 81 just for the view. To get in, you just need to buy a drink, which is expensive for Vietnamese prices but very comparable or even slightly less than drinks of the same fanciness in the states. 
  • I would also recommend the apartment cafes (if you poke around and go during the off season you can find empty ones); they are cool even though they’re touristy.























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