We headed from Phomn Phen on a 6 hour bus ride, the cross over to Vietnam was seamless. It was a nice relaxing change compared to how we entered in Cambodia.
We found a hotel fairly quickly after getting dropped off by the bus then headed out to check out the city. The amount of motor bikes are insane! So many people buzzing around the city. We crossed a stop light in the main area of the city and just saw this sea of motor bikes, like a massive school of fish only on land. They seem to use their motor bikes more than in any other country we have been in so far.
The first night we walked through the main park, and there were hundreds of young Vietnamese teenagers hang out, talking and sitting in their motor bikes – their version of ‘parking’. We also bought a “hacky sack” for lack of better term. It is a plastic thing with a feather on the end of it, I think it is called ‘shuttlecock’… everyone was playing it in the park, so we decided to join in. As we were starting to play three young teenagers came up and started to play with us. Alan and I both thought great, we will never get to play, but they were as good as us (not so good), and very sweet on taking turns. After playing for a while, we headed back to our place, walking back through the park.
The next morning I woke up with a headache, so we hung in until I felt better. I was cold, so Alan wrapped me up tightly in anything he could find. He says he didn’t have any intention of making me look funny, but I don’t believe it…by the time he was done wrapping me up, he had to take some photos. I slept like this for 2 hours…not moving a bit!
By noon, I felt good enough to walking around so we went and found a place to have pho soup, and then started to do a walking tour through Saigon. First up was this cool market, but learned very quickly to not walk through the small aisle in the market since people will grab your arm and try to pull you into their shop. They were a lot of beautiful things in the market, I would have loved to buy, but with many months left to go on the traveling, it is hard to buy a lot of the things. We came across this Snake wine that Vietnamese supposedly use for healing all sorts of sicknesses. It literally has a snake and a scorpion in the wine bottle. I dared Alan to drink some, but he was not having any!!
After the market, we decided to do the walking tour described in the Lonely Planet. Alan was our navigator, we were able to check out the different art galleries, museums and parks. We decided to relax on the grass at one of the parks, but quickly realized, that you are not allowed to sit on any of the grass in city parks as a guard was yelling and whistling at us. Now we know why everyone was sitting on their motor bikes at the park the night before. Saigon was a fun town, I loved the different architecture, there were streets that felt like you were in France, San Fransisco, and of course Vietnam!
After our self guided city tour, we stopped at a roof top bar and watched the sunset. It was a nice ending to a fabulous day in Saigon!
