Honeymooning around the world: Things to do in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon in 3 days

Our last city in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City or as most call it - Saigon. As we mentioned in our previous post, we went there one day earlier than planned, which then turned out to be a good idea in the end. There was quite a lot to do in Saigon. One thing everyone does is visiting the Cu Chi tunnels that were used during the Vietnam war. We will return to this later on in this post, but below you can see one hole that was used for hiding. It is made a bit bigger now so that tourists can get inside as well 😃

We stayed at LaLuna Saigon, because we had found a good deal online. We were upgraded to a bigger room, which was nice! The place was clean and staff friendly, but we were quite unfortunate to have a road work next to the hotel. It wouldn't be that bad if they would use same working hours as in Finland for example. But these workers worked every night until 1 or 2 AM and started again at 5 AM. Not cool.

Our room at LaLuna Saigon

We knew that HCMC would be quite hectic and busy. It was - crossing the streets was always something you had to do with great concentration because there was never a moment that the entire street width would be clear. You had to start walking and slowly move across the street while motorcycles and cars drove behind and in front of you. But one gets the hang of it quickly.

Normal traffic in HCMC, usually it was even busier

Close to our hotel was a vegetarian restaurant (Veggie Saigon) where we ate 3 or 4 times. It was cheap and good. We got four dishes and fresh juices for about 10€. On the first night we took some mushroom dish and had we not been sitting in a vegetarian restaurant, Edda might not have tried the dish - it looked like meat and according to Markus, the consistency was also like meat. But it was mushrooms and it was good!

This looks like meat, right? 😀

Close to our hotel there was a park where people exercised during the daytime and did different activities in the evenings. On the first night when we were walking around, we saw young dancers practicing here and there. It was a nice sight!

Cao Dai Temple and Cu Chi tunnels

For the next day we booked a tour including a visit to Cao Dai Temple and then Cu Chi tunnels in the afternoon. It was a 3-hour bus ride to the temple, which felt long because the traffic moves so slowly in Vietnam. We had not checked what kind of temple it would be so everything came as a surprise to us. On the way to the temple, we visited a workshop place where handicapped people make art. We saw how they make detailed pictures of egg and sea shells.

Then we came to Cao Dai and it was unlike any temple we had seen before. Cao Dai is a temple where different religions come together. It has vibrant colors and people who practice caodaism wear mostly white outfits. We were not allowed to take pictures with ourselves in the pictures, because they believe that the only eyes in a photo should be the eyes of the temple. Also, one was not allowed to walk in front of the temple between 12 - 12.45PM.

Everyone leaves their shoes outside before entering the temple.

Eyes of the temple

People getting ready for the ceremony

After Cao Dai, we drove to Cu Chi tunnels where we got to see what kinds of traps the Vietnamese used against US army, how they made tunnel ventilation look like termite nests and how they used different holes and tunnels. Viet Cong made a tunnel network to fight US army and they had over 200km of tunnels in Cu Chi area. VC had their fighting tunnels in 3 meter depth and they had holes up to the surface every 20 meters so they could disappear quickly after shooting at their enemy. Then they had one layer of tunnels in 6 meters and one in 9 meters for living. The tunnels in 3 meters have been made bigger for tourists but they were still really small. Markus could fit in the tunnels quite well, but there was not much of extra space and he had to walk in squatting the whole way, about 200 meters where they took tourists.

Imagine stepping on this... Ouch!!

This is the first level tunnel - 3 meters under ground level. The tunnel is made a bit bigger for tourists.

Edda had found on TripAdvisor that one of the best restaurants in HCMC would be a vegetarian restaurant. So we had to check it out. It is called Hum and it certainly looks the part. The restaurant is stylish, modern and has a great vibe to it. We ordered different meals to share but were actually only really impressed by one of the dishes - the pomelo salad. The waitress said that it's spicy and wondered if we can eat spicy food. Sure! It was perfect.

After dinner we just walked back to our hotel and looked at the night lights of HCMC.

Mekong Delta

Another thing that was on our to-do-list was visiting Mekong Delta. The area is in the Southern part of Vietnam and it takes around two hours by bus from HCMC. It is known for its large floating market where you can buy different foods and goods from boats on the river. But to visit the bigger floating market one needs to stay overnight in Mekong Delta area to be able to go to the market early in the morning. But one gets to visit a smaller floating market on a one-day tour as well. Our guide explained that one knows what kind of goods all boats are selling by looking at some poles that are attached to the boat. Sellers put onions, potatoes, oranges, etc. on top of the pole and that's how one knows what everyone is selling. 😃 This origins from the times when the locals couldn't write or read so they put the thing they sell on a stick so everybody understood what they sell.

Oh, and our guide told that the eyes on boats would be to scare crocodiles and other harmful animals. When we told about the theory we heard in Hoi An (where eyes are to find fish), the guide laughed at us and said that could not be true. We told him that it was the truth in Hoi An and he still couldn't let it be. 😛

Goods hanging from a pole on the boat to know what the boat is selling

Some local people were happy to see tourists passing by 😊

After the boat ride we got to see how locals make different treats, such as rice paper, coconut candy and rice puff (like pop corn but made of rice). We got to taste them too, which was nice.

Coconut candy

Rice is put in a large bowl with sand. This is to get an even heat to the rice. After just a short moment rice starts to puff into treats. But what we were wondering a bit was the use of sand. There was still sand in the rice puffs even though they cleaned the rice.

We also got to see some bees and tasted tea with honey.

Afterwards we went by rowing boats (a bit different than the ones we are used to) to a restaurant. It was nice to just relax on the boat. We got to know to girls from Chile - Magda and Vale - and shared the boat with them. It was again nice to meet new people and exchange experiences from different places and they found it interesting to hear about our experiences when we were in Valparaiso in January.

The restaurant had a huge snake in a cage. Apparently they take it out when tourists come for lunch. Markus got to hold him (with three other people because it was so big) for a while.

After lunch we got to hear some local singing and music (similar as we heard in Hoi An) and tasted some fruits. In this picture Edda tries jack fruit, which smells bad but many like it. It wasn't Edda's favourite.

War museum and Independence Palace

On our last day we decided to do some walking in HCMC and go to some historical places. We started with the war museum. It is a museum with a lot of pictures from the Vietnam war and how it has affected Vietnamese people. It would have been even better had there been an overview of the war in the beginning of the museum that would tell when it was, how it started and why, etc. Now the museum has mainly a lot of pictures here and there. The pictures tell a lot too, but since we have not all the information about the background, it had been nice to get that too. There were also photos from different countries during the war and how they protested against USA. Below are two photos from Finland.

There were a lot of pictures of children and adults who had been severely affected by chemicals that USA sprayed on the forests/areas. People have been affected by the chemicals, mainly by agent orange, even up to 4th generation after the war. Many people have been born with terrible malformations.

Forest after spraying chemicals... 😢

After the war museum we visited the Independence Palace. It is the place where the president and his employees made all the decisions during the war and where Viet Cong came with tanks in 1975 and concurred the Saigon army after US army had been evacuated. VC demanded for reunification of Vietnam. We visited different rooms in the palace but maybe the most interesting part was their bunker where there were still old machines that were used for communication during the war.

When we were ready with the museum we planned to go to our hotel. But it was raining like crazy! We waited for a while in hopes for it to stop but no... We had one rain coat and decided to use it as a shelter for both of us when we walked about 1km back to our hotel. We were soaked! And in HCMC it's not the nicest feeling walking on the streets when it's raining heavily. The drains are not working very efficiently which means that the streets are covered in water and also all trash is just floating on the streets. Well, luckily it was not a very long walk! 😀

On our last night we went to EON51 bar for a drink. We felt a little underdressed in our flip flops but got inside anyhow. Pfiuf! The drinks were very good (well, also in Finnish prices) and views incredible. They also had live music there and the singer was very good. Overall, a nice place for a drink!

After our drinks we still wanted to get some dinner and found a place on TripAdvisor that had received good reviews and people wrote that the restaurant is open late. Many restaurants take their last orders around 9.30PM, so it can be tricky to find a place for dinner at that time. Also, Café-Restaurant Ho Chi Minh City has a Dutch owner, which made it more interesting for us. 😃 We ordered some soup and a salad and Gouda sticks. Everything was delicious and their service was professional. When we were leaving, we started to talk with the owner and heard how it's like to have a restaurant in Vietnam and how he ended up to Vietnam, etc. It was a very nice chat and they were friendly enough to give us a small discount when we didn't have enough cash and their card machine didn't work. 😊