"Saigon...shit...I'm still only in Saigon"

From the air, Saigon was the largest metropolis I had ever seen. As the plane dipped beneath the clouds, all I could see was city block after city block sprawled for miles, no ending beyond what the eye could discern. And a brown snake slithering through the middle of it. The Mekong River. Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City.

One deaf, but slightly more experienced backpacker and a map-reading aficiando Scouser disembarked the plane. 

We took a taxi - with the meter on at our insistence but still managed to get ripped off by our escort adding another zero. I took several backward steps away hastedly as Alex unleashed his scorn-ridden Liverpudlian Scouse fury upon the driver, who scratching his forehead, was really only trying to rip us off by 2 pounds. But Alex was having none of it. 

We were in the Pham Ngu Lao district. After having a good look around - we are clearly in the backpacker part of the city, we trundled down a narrow lane to where the map reading aficionado insisted the hostel would be. I learnt very quickly on this trip, his navigation skills only apply when he is wearing his glasses. 

Receiving a very warm welcome at Diep Anh Guesthouse, the owner took us through the entire history of HCMC in the space of half an hour. Quite a skill. Following this, he gave us very detailed itineraries of multiple tours we could go on. After this, we were allowed to fill in our forms and hand in our passports which would permit us entrance into the hostel. We dumped our bags in our room and headed straight out for some Ban Pho. The only thing we had really come to Vietnam for. 

Sitting on a street corner on colourful plastic chairs, crowded in at every angle by local Vietnamese men slurping away, we regaled in our feast of the Vietnamese delicacy - Ban Pho - noodle soup with beef, spring onions, beansprouts, lime and an array of herbs I did not recognise upon taste. The languid humidity which is such a staple of South East Asia left us sweating profusely into our soup, adding a nice level of salt to our already sumptuous feast. All around us were shops, bars and restaurants with fluorescent flashing lights illuminating deals and the all night ‘Happy Hour’ and all we could hear was the loud hum of thousands of scooters passing us by with no pause in the traffic. Vietnamese women in silk pyjamas carrying their wares on their shoulders with a pole holding a make-shift set of weight scales carrying bananas, pineapple and other fruit we could not put a name to. The smell was deliciously foreign - a mix of fresh food, the stench from the drains, the fumes from the bikes. The sights was a never-ending array of ethnic vibrancy so far removed from Western culture. Other backpackers hastened across the road, zig-zagging to and fro the constant ascent of Vietnamese on their scooters with face masks intended to protect them from the metropolis’s pollution. 

With coffee and tea being our staple in the mornings, the next day we encamped in a bland cafe to plan out our route to the day’s cultural beehive of places to visit and see. A long walk found ourselves at the War Remnants Museum which documents (entirely one-sidedly I must warn) the devastation caused by the Vietnam War. A sobering exhibition of Agent Orange, which was one of the poisons that American planes dropped over the forests in Vietnam as an attempt to defeat the never-ending guerrilla warfare which they had found themselves fighting in. These were graphic images of first generation or second generation children born deformed, disfigured and mentally disabled through their parents absorbing the dioxine unleashed on them. A child enraptured by a butterfly. A child holding his dad’s hand whilst locked in a tiny wooden cage (he could not prevent himself from eating anything that came his way, and his dad was an exception to these culinary habits). Children smiling as they made crafts with their feet to sell to local tourists. One would think that this was enough, but we had another three floors to explore which hit us at all angles at the supposed victimisation and cruelty the Vietnamese faced upon fighting the Americans for independence. The other three floors captured images from the war itself - a US soldier with a toothy grin holding up the head of a local farmer who had exploded from standing on a grenade, a well where three young boys had hidden from the solders (two shot and one disemboweled), the haggard faces of US solders wading through rice paddies, completely foreign to their land. The top floor was dedicated to world photographers and journalists who had chronicled their experiences of the war (and was a vast relief to the directness and one-sidedness of the Vietnamese portrayal of their images on the floors below). But it left one wondering exactly what the correct balance was in the war - which lens (none of them rosy) by which to view Vietnamese history. The US war planes, helicopters and tanks outside left Alex in an excited dance with his camera.

We meandered to the Independence Palace, of which I won’t say much, except it’s not a very pretty palace and it has lots of big rooms. The best part was probably seeing the helipad on the top floor and looking out onto the city. We stopped in the General Post Office so that I could send a postcard home to my family, Alex sitting patiently whilst I scribbled away. Then we stopped for lunch at Nha Hang Ngon which offered street food in very stylish surroundings - we sat under a domed ceiling with plants hugging the pillars around the open square. We were surrounded by Vietnamese chefs quietly cooking various local delicacies and we could watch them as they prepared our food. We ate more Ban Pho and shared what was described as ‘pork chops, egg cake, shredded pork and sticky rice’. It was all delicious and only cost us 100,000 Dong (less than £3). 

The Jade Emperor Pagoda, a 30 minute walk away, was a multi-tiered temple created by the Cantonese congregation and contained large black macabre statues, apparently made of paper mache. We stood in silence as several men and women filled the air with joss sticks, chanted and stuck candles into everything. Locals would donate a fee to light a cluster of joss sticks with their palms clasped and shaking them reverently at all of the looming gods surrounding us. Outside was a pond of terrapins, and I confess we spent more time watching these - me cooing away at them and Alex taking pictures of the biggest, the fastest or the baby.

Ben Thanh Market was a bustling street market, reminiscent of the outdoor markets in Bangkok where there was multiple ways in and out but you would never end up back where you were. People ate in the middle of the narrow corridors, thrust various cloths under our noses, grabbed our hands to get us to come and see their stalls. We emerged fairly quickly and, as always, fairly stunned at the colourful chaos that a shopping market can provide. 

Getting my way, but realistically with little resistance from Alex, we went to the Beautiful Saigon Spa for a massage to relieve those tight knots and bumps we had naturally gained from our hours of walking around the city. It was a new experience, compared to the Thai massages we both have more of a feel for (ha!) and started with the submerging of our feet in a cinnamon foot bath. We were also presented with a cup of something which could only be described as smoky bacon flavoured water. New to us indeed. The most exciting part for me, and least for Alex, is when we were asked to don a pair of grey shorts, a short chequered dressing gown and blue crocs. We were wearing exactly the same clothes for all of five minutes. It winds Alex up considerably. Sadly, we did not get any photos. I won’t go into too many details about the massage because that feels a bit like rubbing it in your faces but it was divinely indulgent. I did have a little giggle when I peeked over and Alex was lying on his front and had his arms pulled behind his back. He was being jerked around by the tiniest masseuse I had ever seen. If I had my hearing aids in, I could have sworn he let out a little yelp...

Lazily, we crossed the road for a third course of Ban Pho and some BBQ pork noodles. We read our books and fell asleep at 8.30pm, like a pair of contented dogs.

Strangely, given the size of Saigon, nearly all of the must-see sights are condensed within a square block of a couple of miles. I have no doubt that one could probably explore Saigon forever - soaking up the aromas, dodging the traffic and taking on an almost liquid diet of drinks and Ban Pho. When we walked through the park from the palace, we stopped to watch one guitarist singing soulfully in Vietnamese. A few metres further down, another guitarist was making a complete hash of The Beatles (all corroborated by Alex and not the deaf one). This was, in its own way, the lasting impression of the city of Saigon - a city which aims to please its tourists through a sharp contrast of quietly celebrating its own culture whilst loudly courting to what they believe Western travellers desire.

*Title of the blog can be attributed to one of my favourite films 'Apocalypse Now'.