I was planning a short trip to Ho Chin Minh. The largest city in Vietnam typically know as Saigon. It is a very nice city, and there are lots of things that you can do here. I did my hotel shopping on Agoda. I got a great deal at a decent hotel very near to the center area in HCM, Hoang Lian Hotel. It is about 10 minutes walking distance from the famous Ben Tanh Market. Along the same street, you find lots of good budget hotels with great deals. My advice, buying online and as early as possible will get you the best room at the right price. Most of these hotels provide so called breakfast. Forget the continental or american breakfast, this will be purely Vietnamese. You are lucky if you get some bread and butter. WiFi is offered free in most hotels.
Getting out of the place was easy. You can rent a bike for USD 4-5 per day. Remember you will need International License to ride it around. However even the rental guy will not ask for one. You only need to worry about this if you are caught by police. But it is always "negotiable". From here if you walk 10 minutes to Pham Ngu Lao, you will find a whole street full of backpackers hotel and tourist agents. Now, the hotels here are designed to cater backpackers. So if you don't mind the simplicity and privacy is not an issue to you you probably will like this place. But for a bout extra USD 2-5 you will be able to get a nice room on your own at other places. So do your math.The good thing about this area is that it offers you lots of options for traveling further to other parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. They have the 2 days, 3 days and up to a week tour for Mekong Delta trips, to the villages on the south and to through Mekong to Phnom Penh Cambodia. I will come to that latter. You will also find lots of restaurants here, from Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese and Western. But for me, the food prices here are much more expensive compared to what I can get in Malaysia.
You will get lots of good information on places to visit in Ho Chin Minh online, just google it. So I am not going to elaborate on that. My idea is to share information from experience that may be different from those standard picture given. For Malaysians, you may want to change your RM to Viet in Kuala Lumpur. RM does not have big value here so you may loose big on changing it here. USD is okay. There is a nice Mariamman temple in the middle of the city. But it will be quite different, with prayers and practices are very much redesigned to Viet. You will also see people wearing sandals and shoes inside the temple. To make things easier grab a free city map at the airport. Most of the main Tourist attractions are there. Take the bus to the city centre from the airport, they know the normal places where tourist will get down (hotel areas).
I did one of the HCM River Cruise. It was USD 15. The food was not great but the experience is. You will board the cruise ship at 7.30 PM if I am not mistaken. Please check the schedules again. It will leave the dock and return to the same dock in about 1.5 hours to 2 hours time. Please note that there are few companies running this river cruise. Price differs slightly and also different ships boarding from different dock. The drinks including alcohol on board is very expensive and the food portion is very small. There will be daily traditional shows as well. Again do this only if you want to experience the ship. There are few specific shops that sells model ships and boats made from wood in HCM. You can get a 80cm long ship for USD 25. Bargain hard. I find the model ships to be a HCM specialty.
After visiting many places in Ho Chin Minh, I decided to take some risk. Cross over to Phnom Penh, Cambodia by taking the long way - a boat ride in my next post!
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