Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, July 9-12: Dodging Motorcycles, Crawling through Tunnels, and Dunking Everything in Fish Sauce

This past weekend Dominic, Melinda, Kevin and I traveled to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam.

Although only a quick 2-hour flight from here, it felt like a world away from Hong Kong. We didn’t really know what to expect of HCMC; we figured it would be on par with Bangkok, but once we arrived we discovered it to be much more “third-world” – much less industrialized and westernized with much greater widespread and visible poverty. Air conditioning and refrigeration are rare commodities in the over 90-degree heat and humidity, toilets are of the squat-variety, children beg and sell cigarettes and gum in the streets, cockroaches and rats run rampant, electrical wires dangle in tangled heaps from street poles, and most roads have yet to evolve past a plain expanse of pavement. It makes for one of the wildest street scenes I’ve witnessed yet – raw and real and romantic and shocking. From the moment we set foot in this city, we witnessed one extraordinary thing after another.

Little girl trying to sell stuff to Dom

We arrived in HCMC around 10pm on Thursday evening. The first thing we did was exchange our money into Vietnamese currency: VND or Dong. The funny name aside (I won’t even mention what we joked VND was an abbreviation of) the exchange rate for VND wins the award for most complicated and most awesome: $1 USD is equal to $16,000 VND. Upon exchanging our cash into VND we each were holding about $3 million and I spent the entire weekend making purchases with $500,000 and $100,000 bills. It felt like I had won Monopoly every time I opened my wallet. This moment should have been our first indication that we would be scammed all over town.

I had been warned ahead of time about pickpockets, taxi scams, and other unfortunately common woes that Western travelers fall victim to in HCMC. Armed with some street smarts, we negotiated the price for our taxi ride into the city and then sped off toward the hotel. This first taxi ride is one we won’t forget any time soon. Apparently HCMC has the worst traffic in the world and the number one cause of death is motorcycle accidents. Driving through the streets of HCMC, it’s no wonder…most streets are just a patch of pavement with no lanes and even when dividing lines are drawn, no one seems to adhere to their boundaries. There are few traffic lights and no stop or yield signs; honestly there are no rules – it seems to be every man for himself. And there are thousands and thousands of motorcycles – it’s like a motorcycle infestation. The street is total chaos, set to the frenetic beat of a relentless cacophony of honking horns. Attempting to cross it on foot is almost madness, and don’t for a minute think you’re safe strolling down the sidewalk, which, to many motorcycle drivers, appears as a convenient bike lane. Amazingly, we arrived safely and didn’t leave any Vietnamese people dead in the street.

HCMC Street Scenes

We checked into our hotel, which was palatial (it had a giant stallion in the lobby) and offered beautiful views of the city and the Saigon River where it was located. Anxious to get out on the town and experience HCMC, we went to nearby street with bars and restaurants and street food and neon lights and all nature of vermin and hookers…everything we love about SE Asia. We grabbed a table at a packed bar, munched on peanuts and sampled some awesome local beers (Saigon and Hanoi) and danced and sang along to the music; let it be known that you can travel all the way to southern ‘Nam and still hear Michael Jackson.

Views across the Saigon River from our hotel

Me and Dom rockin out to MJ's Greatest Hits

We ended the night with, you guessed it, street food – a weird pink, purple, green and black rice concoction which Melinda astutely pointed out the vendor scooped with her bare hands…thank you, USC Travel Clinic for that hepatitis vaccine. Full of Vietnamese treats and amoebas, we went to sleep, anxious to awake for our first day in HCMC.

Street Rice