Random Glimpses of Ho Chi Minh City

By Gilles & Heidi on 5. January 2015 in Vietnam

A Photo Essay

Opera House at Night, Ho Chi Minh City

It is difficult to grab the complexity of a metropolis like Ho Chi Minh City in just a few days. This photo essay provides a few random glimpses of a huge and highly diverse city we visited twice, in 2003 and 2014, each time for about 5 days.

Ho Chi Minh City has changed a lot since our first trip: it has turned into a modern city, with sleek skyscrapers, elegant shops, hip restaurants for the well-off Vietnamese new middle-class and a lot of quiet and shady parks that invite you to sit down, relax or take a leisurely stroll. But there is still the Ho Chi Minh City we remember, the bustling city with zillions of motorbikes going any which way, a maze of small backstreet, vibrant and vivid markets that will challenge all your senses…

Like always, if you step away from the tourist ghetto around Pham Ngu Lao (one of the worst we experienced so far, something like Vietnam’s Khao San Road, for those who traveled Thailand in the 1980s) or other epicenters where large tour groups gather, Ho Chi Minh City can be actually pretty much Off The Beaten Track… Within a few minutes you may end-up in a maze of narrow streets, where locals obviously never see visitors and are worried that you got lost!

The Landmarks Of Ho Chi Minh City During The Day…