Inveterate Travellers: Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City

Saigon is now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, honouring the founder of modern unified Vietnam. It is divided into 19 urban districts and is a city fast becoming a huge international centre for trade and commerce. District 1, central or “Old Saigon” is a mix of old markets, traditional streets of small manufacturers, flash hotels and restaurants, alleyways and wide boulevards, tree-lined streets with cafes and shops and a busy night-club scene. Notre Dame Cathedral, the Opera House, the Reunification Palace, Bitexco Financial Tower, the Majestic Hotel and Continental Hotel and Central Post Office are all features of this area, highlighting the changes wrought by progress of this modern, exciting city. The Continental Hotel, for instance, was built in 1880 and was a favourite of the press corps during the French War and author Graham Greene regularly stayed in room 214 and the hotel featured in his book, “The Quiet American”. The Bitexco Tower, a modern financial centre of 68 floors, features a “Skydeck” on the 49^th floor which gives an amazing view over Saigon.

Some of the most significant memories we carried away were the Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, the busy Ben Thanh Market, the Bitexco Tower and Skydeck and the open-air bar and restaurant on the top floor of the Rex Hotel where we enjoyed the fireworks over Saigon on the evening of the celebration day (April 30) – Independence Day – celebrating the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1975. We ate in some amazing restaurants and cafes, including Nha Hang Ngon, Lemon Grass and Huong Lai, Vietnam’s version of “15” where staff are from disadvantaged families, orphans or street-kids who receive on-the-job training, education and a place to stay and might I say, was one of the best experiences we had.

One morning we left on an excursion to the Cu Chi tunnels, only 30kms from Saigon, where up to 16,000 people hid from the Americans in the late 60s and early 70s, mostly farming families who’d been displaced by the war. This was an area of enormous destruction, with intense fighting and bombing, but underground, a labyrinth of some 250km of tunnels were used to house families as well as the Viet Cong. Constant harassment and surprise attacks on the Americans by the Viet Cong using the tunnels and hidden trap-doors eventually led to the Americans using their enormous fire-power to leave the district one of the “most devastated areas in the history of warfare”. Two sections of the tunnels have been opened to tour groups (although somewhat enlarged from the original versions) and one wonders how people, even those as small as the Vietnamese, could live in such confined spaces for weeks and months at a time.