Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon

The first name is official, the second is the name everyone knows the city by, and the name Saigon appears everywhere, so for my first full day I decided to explore Saigon…

Ho Chi Minh City has a brand new metro, and it’s ridiculously cheap. I only needed one stop to take me where I wanted to go.

The Hotel Continental was a favourite of the press pack during the war. Several publications kept their Saigon bureaux here, many other journalists enjoyed the bar.

City Hall. Used by the French, South Vietnamese and Vietnamese local administrators.

A statue of Ho Chi Minh himself.

Independence Palace, the workplace of the President of South Vietnam.

The Hammer and Sickle, the flag of Vietnam, Santa Claus and a Christmas tree. 

Vietnam is still a communist country, and there were quite a lot of propaganda posters around the city.

There is an also a Christmas tree, and the coffee shops are playing Christmas songs on a loop. In one shop the staff are wearing plastic antlers.

One of the most famous pictures from the Vietnam War is this shot. It isn’t the US embassy but the offices of USAID, while the CIA had top floor. But is it still there ?

Yes its still there, although the surrounding area has a lot of new shiny glass buildings.