Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

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I felt there was a cult of personality around Ho Chi Minh

From the moment we landed in Saigon I had a good feeling about the place. We got a grab (with some difficulty) and drove to our hotel. The Sherwood Residence was a hotel having a few nice apartments and ours was spacious.

Virginie and her family at level 5 of the Apartment Cafe

Over the next couple of days we visited then some very interesting places. We went on a “do it yourself” walking tour and saw some of the major landmarks of Saigon. The most interesting thing for me was the Apartment Café. It is an old apartment building that is transformed into hip cafés, bars and restaurants. Each apartment is decorated differently by their new owners and it made for a great visit and stop for lunch and tea. We were also joined there by Virginie my colleague from Electrolux.

Girls on bikes - Nha is our expert driver

That evening we went on an exciting adventure. A bike tour of Saigon, at night! Now I’ve only driven a bike once and it was on deserted flat roads in the middle of orchards in Limburg, Belgium. And Roxana and the girls had never been on a bike. And we were going to go on a bike tour in one of those busy Asian capitals, at night with no experience. No problem as we had drivers, all women expert navigators in this urban jungle. 

Fruit stalls at the night market in Chinatown

We went to a night market in Chinatown, had some great street food in places we’d never set foot in, and had a tour of 4 different yet representative neighbourhoods of Saigon. We had a great night and the girls loved it!

A CH-47 Chinook - pretty impressive upclose

The following morning I woke up early to go to the war Remnants Museum which shows the happenings during the Vietnam war. It was very high on my list of places to visit and I was not disappointed! It depicted all aspects of the war from the elements leading up to it as well as all its major stages.

Posters on American bases in the 60's

It was rather biased anti-American. Although non of the elements were fabricated, the selection of facts and extracts from speeches and secret letters clearly aims at demonising the Americans. Having read a lot about this period of our history I cannot say I’m a big fan of the Americans and their conducting of this war but I think the museum would be truly top notch if they had adopted an objective approach. But knowing what they went through only 40-50 years ago, I cannot blame them either.

The beautiful theater in Saigon

Finally that evening we went to the Saigon Ballet for a representation of Bizet’s opera Carmen. The girls were mesmerised, especially Mara who made sure we inscribed her to ballet classes in September in Brussels. Lucky we already did.

It was a great performance


All in all Saigon was amazing, my favourite city in Vietnam hands down. It was with a little regret that we left Vietnam but we knew that amazing adventures await us in Indonesia.

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