Travel Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City

chillibreeze writer — Deepanjali Pandey

The ‘Lonely Planet’ series should be renamed the ‘Populous Planet’, I muse, standing in the middle of the road at a busy intersection of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Vietnam. There are no signals for pedestrians, as there are in Singapore and yet the stream of traffic deftly weaves around me. Motorbikes, scooters, cyclos, the Vietnamese ‘rickshaw’ equivalent, taxis, buses, trucks and bicycles create a palpable buzz. Vietnam is on the move and clutching my Lonely Planet guidebook I realize I should get a move on too.

Vietnam is not the first country of choice when it comes to planning a short weekend getaway from Singapore. The usual suspects are Bali, Bangkok, Malaysia, and even India. Yet this country is like an unknown talent, just begging to be discovered. From pristine beaches to bargain bazaars, from a turbulent history to its current quaint modernity I saw a side of contemporary, fast changing Vietnam in HCMC that caught me by surprise. I expected to see women in the long elegant Miss Saigon dresses or at least some conical hats, but instead saw young girls decked in denim, with highlights in their hair, clutching their backpacks and riding off on their bikes.

My exposure to Vietnam had been through cult Hollywood war films like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and to some extent even Forrest Gump. The name Vietnam always evoked images of a strife torn country, bloodshed and deadly guerillas. Today the past is on display at HCMC’s Wartime Museum and Reunification Palace through photos, tanks, reconstructed torture chambers, bomber planes, and the Cu Chi tunnels on the outskirts of HCMC, which is an amazing underground military network, constructed and used during the Vietnam War.

My friends who are based in Vietnam on expatriate postings say that the country is caught in a time warp. If you want to step back in time just cruise in a riverboat along the Mekong Delta. Its waterways are home and livelihood to thousands of Vietnamese who live on its banks. For upscale beach resorts built on soft white sands head for Danang, 964 kilometers from HCMC. The Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, is the political and cultural centre of Vietnam and HCMC is the economic and commercial hub, much in the way that New Delhi and Mumbai represent India’s tangentially diverse interests.

The Internet, guidebooks and your travel agent will throw up a variety of holiday options in Vietnam. However, there are some aspects of the country, especially of HCMC, that I discovered firsthand – the incredibly cheap and amazing massages; inexpensive tailoring services; bargains on branded garments, as many companies source directly from Vietnam; great cuisine, especially on the HCMC river cruise at night, which starts from the pier opposite Hotel Majestic; magnificent rattan furniture at attractive prices and a throbbing commercial culture, which is just starting to absorb the influences of the rest of the world. You may have some difficulty communicating in English, as the locals do not speak or understand the language. However when bargaining, the language of numbers, tapped out on calculators, speak the universal code of the shopper and the seller. The Ben Thahn market in HCMC’s District 1 is a maze of stalls selling souvenirs, sandals, rattan handicrafts, and ‘Miss Saigon’ dresses. Vietnamese artists are gaining popularity with art lovers in Asia and there are a number of galleries you can visit on the road to the airport.

Vietnam is at once hungry, growing, ambitious and proud. A friend tells me that when the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, visited Vietnam recently there was a chaotic rush to see him, something akin to a celebrity rockstar’s visit. My husband was part of the American Chamber of Commerce delegation to Vietnam, led by the American Ambassador to Singapore, Her Excellency Patricia.L. Herbold, and it was a diverse representation of American companies who are seeking an engagement with and in Vietnam – the hot magnet for investment in Asia. Vietnam is soon going to join the World Trade Organization and the world will open up to Vietnam even as Vietnam invites the rest of the world in.

If you do plan to include Vietnam in your holiday ideas this summer, try and read the following books; The Quiet Gentleman (Graham Greene), The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, Whose Image Altered the Course of the Vietnam War (Denise Chong) and Bright Shining Lie (Neil Sheehan).

HCMC is am hour and a half hour flight from Singapore. Singapore Airlines, Vietnam Airlines and Tiger Airways fly to many major cities in Vietnam. The currency of Vietnam is the dong, and there are reliable money changers in major hotels and at the airport.

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Deepanjali writes for chillibreeze.

Travel Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City

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