Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh city, formerly known as Saigon, is the capital of South Vietnam. It is also the largest city in the country with more than 9 million people living here. It is super busy, and during rush hours the 7,3 million scooters are very visible in the streets.

The strangest thing here is (as in Hanoi and other cities in Vietnam) that to cross the street, you have to just “trust the system” and walk over, even though it doesn’t seem as the scooters or cars are holding back for you – but they actually will stop (or drive around you) as you cross. It is something that seems nerve wrecking every single time, especially crossing the street with children.

Ho Chi Minh feels both like a Metropolitan city, but it also has a very “old Vietnam feel” at the same time, as it is skyskrabers next to street vendors in a mix.

As we have been here before, we didn’t “tourist” too much around, but hung out and tried to escape some of that very hot weather (40 degrees). The last time we were here, we went to the War Remnant Museum, the Museum of Modern art, The Reunification Palace and Cu Chi Tunnels (I wrote about this in earlier blog posts ;-)).

So this time we spend time at the Ben Thanh Market, had lots of street food, hung out in some of the best mails (for the air con benefits) and also went by the flower market an early morning.

We really wanted to see the floating river flower market, however, it is unfortunately only during the Lunar New Year season it can be experienced (December-January).