New In Town: May 25th @ 10:30am. Ho Chi Minh Vietnam

27 Hours. 10,853 miles, 2 airports, 1 ocean and one breathtaking destination.

First thing’s first: The Flight:

The flight tracker from Narita to Saigon.

I flew from Chicago O'Hare to Tokyo and then connected from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh. It all started to become real when we say our giant Boeing 747 taxied waiting for us to board. Tip: If you are ever doing this kind of flight, and you are over 6'0" upgrade to the Economy Plus (or whatever similar deals are on specific airlines). The extra leg room makes all the difference on a 13 hour flight.

Second: The City:

If I had to describe my feeling towards Vietnam so far it’s this. I. am. hooked. It still hasn’t quite sunk what an opportunity it really is to be spending time here. The second we stepped foot out of the airport and into the humid wall of air of Ho Chi Minh, I could tell it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. If you’ve ever heard that the streets of Vietnam are covered in motorcycles, you heard correctly. They are EVERYWHERE!

We had a guide on the bus who gave us some insights into tips for being safe in the city. He addressed the fact that scooters are everywhere by giving us 3 simple rules:

No fear, No run, No back step.

He also walked us through some things you can and can’t talk about. He said a few times that you CANNOT say negative things against the Vietnamese government. He said most of the cops in Ho Chi Minh are undercover, and won’t hesitate to detain anyone talking bad about the government. We were all kind of taken aback. We’re all used to having political debates, but in communist Vietnam, political debates means jail time.

The Pullman Saigon Center lobby

After we left the airport, we headed to the Pullman Saigon Center in the heart of Saigon. As soon I walked in, It finally became real that we were 10,000 miles from home, in a brand new part of the world.

Around 10:00pm we got settled in. Now, the responsible thing to do would have been to go to bed and rest up for the coming week. What did we do? Hit the streets of course! We got a map and 11 of us went out to check out what Ho Chi Minh residents do at night. Personally, I think just by walking around, going from bar to bar and taking in all the sights and sounds is the best lesson in Vietnam’s culture more than anything else.

How would I describe the culture? Electric. I mean this in two ways. First, there are neon signs, flashing lights and video boards everywhere. The street signs are a disorganized mess of English buzz words and Vietnamese phrases. There are power lines hanging from every building forming a spider web over the street. Every block you pass looks like a world of it’s own each with it’s own unique atmosphere. It would take months to explore them all.

An example of the power lines in the city.

Second, there is so much life on the streets at night. First, we headed to a restaurant that had a balcony looking over the street. For all the people watchers reading this, you would be in heaven here in Ho Chi Minh City. We spent about an hour at the first place, then moved closer to the action. The second place we went was a bar on a very busy corner. As you can probably guess, street vendors were all over us. Mostly little kids who really knew how to get the sale. We all kept saying American managers should send their sales staff to Ho Chi Minh to learn from the 5 & 6 year olds selling fans and bracelets.

Some of the guys on the trip

As I expected, there was some culture shock with the things we saw. One thing we couldn’t believe was the prevalence prostitution. On almost every street there were young girls propositioning men, sometimes even riding up on scooters just to offer their “services.” I was very surprised to see how common it was for this to take place and how there must be no laws in place against it. Another thing, was the amount of people sleeping on the street. When you look around, the buildings are very mis-matched with no real consistency in design. You can tell that the people live in whatever space is available and sometimes that means sleeping with a tarp right on the sidewalk.

Overall, it was an amazing first night. We all really got closer and got a unique view at Vietnamese culture all within the first few hours of our arriving here.

A group shot of all of us

I’ll end my post with this… Ho Chi Minh in the morning? Breathtaking…Vietnamese coffee? Best I’ve ever had… Vietnamese breakfast? Absolutely delicious!

-Aaron