What a wonderful 2 weeks it's been! Vietnam has changed a lot in the 9 years since we were last there, but then again, so have we. 9 years ago, we were fresh faced 21 year olds, embarking on our first South East Asia adventure, backpacking and trying to save as much money as possible by eating street food and staying in some pretty nasty hostels above bars that played loud music until 6am. This time, we had some money in our pockets (hooray for having grown-up jobs!) and so we replaced 10 hour overnight trains, for 1 hour, extra-leg-room, get-fed-on-the-way flights.
I knew the minute we touched down in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it's known in the north, that I was going to love the city. Last time, I liked Saigon, but didn't love it. I think our 7 weeks away was drawing to a close and I was tired by that point of our trip. At the time, Matt preferred Saigon to Hanoi and I was the other way around. Now, I think Saigon is both our favourites.
The city has become a lot more high-rise in 9 years. It now boasts the highest building in Vietnam, which we went up. The city is still very low-rise compared to Shanghai, but it is very proud of its 45th floor viewing platform (to give you some perspective, the bar we like in Jinmao tower is on the 87th floor, and is dwarfed by the 2 towers next to it). Everything a tourist wants to see in Saigon is walking distance, and our hotel was in a great spot for getting everywhere. It also had a pool, so we spent our mornings wandering the streets of Saigon and the afternoons lounging by the pool before heading out for dinner. There was no pressure to sight see as much a possible, since we had seen lots of things before, but actually we did most of the big sights. We didn't go to the War Remnants Museum though, mostly because once in a lifetime is more than enough of that place, and also because when we were discussing it with our friends who were also there (we ran into them twice by accident!), we can remember very clearly most of the exhibits. They are burned into my memory and I don't think I will ever forget some of the images we saw 9 years ago. We did go to see the Cathedral, the opera house and spent every evening up in the Caravelle Hotel's rooftop bar, overlooking the opera house. This bar was used during the war for news correspondents, who would go up there to watch the fighting in the fields, before all the buildings came along. Crazy!
Lots of the buildings were familiar to me, though the city itself didn't hold many memories from our previous trip, so it was like visiting somewhere brand new, which I really enjoyed. There were lots of decorations up for Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year), including some wonderful flower displays, and of course it being the year of the pig, there were pigs everywhere!
On the rooftop bar at the Caravelle hotel...
This was the view from the tallest building in Vietnam. That building you can see in the distance is being built, but will be taller, however the viewing platform will be lower, so we were as high up as we could get in Vietnam.
There were tourists everywhere, mostly Chinese and other Asian people, who also had holidays for the Lunar New Year. They all love to do very posed photos, so we decided to do some posing of our own!!!
One place we did go into again was Reunification Palace. We had just intended to have a look at the outside very early on our last day in Saigon, but we found it was open at 8am, and there were no tourists yet, so in we went. I'm glad we did. It's a great building and is full of history. There are marks on the roof where two bombs hit the building during the war. The decor is great, and the bunker is an interesting reminder of the decisions that were made in this historic building.
This was the chair Matt sat in 9 years ago. There are barriers up now... probably because of him.
