Ho Chi Minh City Travel Forum

Dear all,

My friends and I planning to spend 2 days in HCMC.

Please help

1) How long a journey is it to Reunification Palace from District 1?
2) How far is War Remnants Muesum from Reunification Palace?
3) Any recommended food near Reunification Palace and War Remnants?
4) Is there any good place to buy paintings? How about Bui Vien Street?
5) We may want to get a tour guide/driver to get us around - 7 of us, (without bringing us to tourist shops to earn commission) especially to Cu Chi Tunnel, any recommendation where to get that?
6) What can we do after 1700 hrs? Any recommendation?

Thanks in advance!

Hi
1. Reunification Palace is in D1
2. Just around the corner, about a 5 min walk
3. Au Parc, great little sandwich cum bistro.
4. Have to ask what sort of paintings?
6. There's lot to do, depends what you want but many options to eat drink and party

Jonny

5. Tien - Cell phone +84 0909252058. He'll give you good service at the right price with an air-conditioned minivan. Tell him Steve the Australian who speaks Vietnamese sent you!

>JonnyVN

4. Oil paintings maybe? Local paintings that are not too expensive.
6. Other than bars, anything else? Maybe night markets?

>StepWalk
5. I presume Tien speaks english? (I mean you speak VN, so maybe he communicated with you in VN) do you know about how much he charges? We will need him to bring us around for 2 days.

Thanks guys. =)

Yes, Tien does speak English. You'll probably pay something around US$60-70 per day for all seven of you (including the minivan cost). Tien does regular tours through Cu Chi tunnels and has been doing so for a number of years. He acts as a true tour guide taking you through the places instead of just taking you to the venue and waiting.

PS You need to dial +84 909252058 as the first "0" on the cell number is dropped off when dialing the country code. Or if you ring him while in HCMC it is just 0909252058. Have a good trip!

Two days in Ho Chi Minh, you won't have time to see much. If you have your heart set on Muesums, they have many but remember this, the war Muesums are to show what evil things we did and contain grafic pictures, letters and wepons used on the V.C.

It is intresting to take time to see the tunnels used by the V.C. however you have to be very slim to fit in them.

If you find yourself near Quang Ngai, close to the center of Nam, you will find the small village of My Lai where the South Vietnamese were all killed due to 2LT. William Calley. most were children, woman and elderly. many of the woman were raped prior to 2LT. William Calley choice to distroy all living things and now it stands as a Muesum. Note that they post signs all over the village, both in English and in Vietnamese, however if you read the Vietnamese part, just under the Englisg version, you will see they are very different as the Vietnamese version directly blames the Americans whereas the English version makes no reference of such. As for art, Hue has the best art and I own many hand sticted pictures. You can buy them also in H.C.M. however at a much greater cost as now you must buy them from a dealer. Last, know that most Vietnamese do not like to talk about the war. To them it's over and they have moved on.

Hi
You see a lot of oil painting shops around, not very original but you can find some decent "vietnamese style at not bad price in tourist areas.
Night markets? not really, there is the one next to Benh Thanh market but the food isn't too hot to be honest. Lots of bars and restaurants, most close around midnight (except backpacker area), but watching the street life at night is pretty interesting.
The last post, going on about the war etc, obviously the War Remnants Museum deal with some pretty hard stuff but there is a lot more to see. Also don't be afraid to ask about VN history, you'll hear some pretty interesting stories
Jonny

> Stepwalk
Thanks a lot ! We are likely to contact him this week or next. He don't by any chance have an email address?

> robertmichaelpecci
Ya! 2 days is awfully short! But it is public holidays here in Singapore, so we planing to just drop by over the weekend. If we have gotten better tickets for going back to Singapore, we would have been able to stay one more day. But guess not so lucky for us.

Thanks for the info about the tunnels. Some of the us are smaller in size (Asian builds) so maybe we will find it easy. The bigger ones we will see if they want to tunnel through. =D

>JonnyVN
I heard their abstract art is very famous. Any recommendation for that?

Thanks a lot guys! =) I am so looking forward to going to HCMC.

Yes, Tien does have an email address: its sweettien@yahoo.com and he usually replies within a day or so.

>Stepwalk

Thanks! But the email seems to be invalid, i sent an email over and it bounced. =(
If you are sure the email is correct, probably he is not using that address anymore. So maybe I will call him instead. (Just that IDD to Vietnam is so expensive.)

Sorry, I got it wrong, its sweettien2005@yahoo.com!