Saigons be Bygones

I have mixed feelings about Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). We have had our first negative experience with AirB&B on our travels, which prompted a premature exit from the city. I don’t want to let that experience cloud our overall impression of the city, as we spent an enjoyable time rambling and exploring the lane ways, streets and more touristy attractions. We also got a better insight into how people live in the city – both in the crowded spaces of prime real estate inner-city Saigon, and in the more affluent suburbs in outlying districts. I couldn’t help being reminded of the Hunger Games, with the numbering of the districts.

The accommodation we had booked, which we understood to be a full apartment (which we had discussed with the owner prior to our arrival), turned out to be a little different than anticipated.
The apartment was in a quirky bustling laneway in District 1 – a great hidden lane that didn’t appear on street maps.

On the bottom level was a little shop, selling clothes and goodness knows what! The young people who ran the shop had vacated their rooms for us when we arrived (we found out only after arrival, not before), and they slept on the floor of the shop. That proved kind of tricky, as they were on a different timetable to us, and it prevented us from us from using the kitchenette adjoining the shop, and kept us kind of detained inside, awaiting until they awoke mid morning to get out (past the large shuttered opening to the shop). We were being polite house guests by not clambering over them or disturbing them! That all wasn’t too bad, and we had no beef about that. An inconvenience but not insurmountable (trying to portray ourselves as rationally reasonable here!).
The issues we had related to security. Late on our first night a stranger came to the bedroom door and said he had stayed there the night before and had left something behind (the rooms being pretty sparse contained very little when we arrived……not even toilet paper). Again no big deal at the time to us.
The next evening when returned from a great day out, we talked with the shop people – incidentally who introduced us to their newly bought puppy (that day) which they named…..ahem…..”Dollar”. All very amicable and friendly. When we went upstairs we found out they had been through our rooms: one room to access the rooftop drying area for clothes (which didn’t bother us too much as we had left that room unlocked): another room which we had purposefully left unlocked as the key we were given didn’t work, but when we came back the door was locked (with our non-working key inside): the third locked room we suspect someone had been into, as some money was missing.
What firmed our resolve in getting the flock out of there, as the shepherd said to the sheep, was that same night someone went through Tadhg’s rooftop room while he was asleep alone to collect the clothes. No damage to him, but it left us with such a sense of unease, perhaps due to cultural differences in our norms of personal space, that we decided to vacate the accommodation fairly lively: exit stage left.

Although I am not a mega-city kind-a-gal, and might now recoil from visiting huge sprawling urban centers (at least until the kids have flown the coup), the experience doesn’t deter me from some of the charms of Saigon. We had an otherwise quite enjoyable time here.

We went to see the Reunification Palace, brushing up on some of Vietnamese recent history. It is a fascinatingly designed building of the 1960s, showcasing an enviable opulence and style for the ruling class.
We also visited the War Museum (hat tip Úna), chronicling some of the turbulent and violent recent past that the Vietnamese are recovering from. Pictures tell 1,000 words, and the photographic exhibition housed there is sobering. I recall seeing horrific scenes from childhood, but couldn’t recognize any of the iconic pictures that made it to the front pages of ‘Time’ and ‘Life’ magazines.

The scale of the Vietnam war is tremendous, and worth remembering:

As of course is the barbarism that each new conflict seems to get remembered for:

Onto socialising in Saigon: the daughter of our newfound Hué friends live in Saigon. A visit to their very comfortable house in the more affluent District 7 showed us another side to Saigon. Our kids were delighted to meet their kids again, and we got to meet their interesting father. He runs a private company/corporation in a Communist country, and his take on economic issues was very interesting.

We found tranquil places in the City, and great eateries.



Tadhg and I avoided the afternoon downpours and spent about four hours after lunch sipping drinks and playing board games in a cafe that supplied numerous board games. Daniel and Ilona were off doing father daughter things – taking undisclosed time to ramble around and do their thing.