Pre-trip prep
VISAS/ENTRY/DEPARTURE: US travelers will need to secure a Vietnamese visa in order to enter the country. As of this writing, the country still has not implemented the “visa-on-arrival” program at any of its airports, although it is supposed to be in the works. Unless you live near a Vietnamese embassy in the US, you will need to use a visa service to get it for you. I used Zierier Visa Service, who has gotten me a Chinese visa in the past. I highly recommend them. Total cost is about $150 USD (not counting FedEx shipping which I highly recommend that you use), and takes about a week. I had heard some word that sometimes immigration officials (usually at land and river crossings) wanted an extra bribe or 2 extra passport photos upon entry. It was a way to extract some money out of travelers, even with a legitimate visa. I used epassport.com’s free passport creating photo software to make a couple duplicates which I carried, but never used upon ingress and egress. There is an airport departure tax that is charged by Tay Son Nhat Airport (SGN), but this is usually built into the cost of most major airline carriers and you shouldn’t be charged.

GUIDEBOOKS: I used Lonely Planet, which filled me full of anxiety about intestinal maladies, corrupt police, traffic accidents, theft, and the usual annoyances that crop up during Third World travel. Since I was limited to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), most of the warnings were irrelevant, with the exception of leaning how to cross the streets, and avoiding rigged taxi meters.

MEDICAL: In terms of immunizations, I’d only recommend Hepatitis A and Tetanus. HCMC is a city and fairly devoid of exotic diseases. If you venture outside of the city, I’d look into malaria prophylaxis, and consider immunizations against some of the more exotic tropic diseases. I’m a doctor and I have Hepatitis A and B immunizations, as well as Tetanus, but that’s all had done. Make sure you take Advil and Imodium with you, to have handy. If you get a stomach bug, you will need them for fever and diarrhea control. Your regular doctor may also give you a stock of quinolone antibiotics to take if you get fever and diarrhea.

GADGETS: HCMC is on 240v, 3-prong outlets. Most hotels have US-style plug-ins for razors and the higher end hotels have all types of outlets at their desk stations. You may need a step-down transformer, however. Your cellular carrier may be able to set you up with an international roaming plan (mine did, for five bucks) which will probably cost you as much as a local sim-card. Any quad-band phone (practically all new US cell phones are quad band) will work in HCMC. Most hotels have broadband for exorbitant rates, or you can use an internet cafe.

MONEY: There are plenty of ATMs in the airport and banks, but just as in Cambodia, US dollars are taken everywhere you go. Carry plenty of one and five dollar bills to use for cabs. You can also pay with twenties, but risk getting short-changed. Any hotel can change twenties into smaller denominations that can be spent. You will acquire Vietnamese dong as you go, so don’t sweat getting any because you’ll have plenty of dong in your pocket after one day of touring. There’s no shortage of dong in Vietnam. No pun intended. The dong is traded at 16,000 to 1 USD. I found that my inner cheapskate had a hard time getting over paying 100 grand for a meal, at first. I brought no dong with me, and left with none. Well, one. I did all of my transactions in USD and a few in VND.

CULTURE: Read up a bit on the culture before you arrive. Vietnam is a formal culture, but knowing a bit about the food, social norms, and history always helps. There is a good deal of French architecture and other remnants of the colonial days.. The People’s Committee Building and the Fine Arts Museum are examples of this. Just walking down the street reminds me a bit of New Orleans—there is a wonderful sense of decay present on some of the old French buildings.

WHAT TO PACK: HCMC has two climates: hot, and hot and humid. I arrived during monsoon season (in May). Pack light. You’ll only need a pair of sandals, some comfy sneakers, and shorts with buttoning pockets (to dissuade pickpockets), and t-shirts. Sunblock. Sunglasses—helpful, but not many Vietnamese use them, as they can’t tell where your eyes are looking at as you cross the street—a major visual cue when they are swerving around you on mopeds.
During monsoon season, it rains gallons in the afternoons, but mornings are usually sunny. Watch the shopkeepers. When the wind starts to blow and they bring stock in, it means you’ve got about 15 minutes before a 2 hour rainstorm hits. An umbrella or plastic poncho is helpful, but not a necessity as you can buy it more cheaply, locally. Most hotels will provide you with an umbrella if needed. As a general rule, pack light. You can buy whatever you need over there.

Getting There
I will only cover air entry. Most likely you will fly on one of two airlines: Vietnam Airlines and United. There are several other dodgy carriers in the area, but odds are that you’ll wind up on either one of these. Vietnam Airlines is the better choice if you are coming from just a few hours away as they have a greater variety of flights. I know nothing of their service reputation or dependability. If you are coming directly from the USA, your best bet is to use United Airlines which is the first US carrier to restore service to HCMC. This is my usual flight (I fly to HKG about 4 times a year) and it stops in Hong Kong around 6pm, where you can change planes and continue on to either Singapore or HCMC. United has the advantage of having a better fleet, and direct service, but it’s arrival and departure timetables are a mixed blessing. The United flight arrives a little after 9pm at night and leaves at 6am in the morning. This means that you will not be trapped in huge immigration queues or traffic, but it does mean you essentially lose a day’s worth of visiting, and you will have to leave your hotel very early (like 4am) in the morning, to depart.. I don’t like queues or traffic so it worked out just fine for me. Unless you need essential services right out of the gate, I’d stick with United. Additionally, it may be a good idea to stopover in Hong Kong for a day or two to recharge your batteries (which is what I did). The other advantage of United is that their website is becoming very good, and even allows you to change your seat assignment a few days before you fly. You can also configure your mobile device or email to receive delay updates—something you will rarely see in Asia, but becoming more of a problem in the US.
UAL luggage will usually go to two carousels, so keep an eye on both. Elite flyers or business and first class passengers’ luggage is priority-tagged and will appear first. If you are an elite flyer (I am in UAL’s Premier Executive class) your name may actually be on a sign by the carousel that it will emerge from—which is what happened to me. Elites should always ask about an upgrade at the HKG transfer as the flights are usually overbooked.
A note on Tay Son Nhat (SGN) airport. It’s not the greatest. UAL has contracted with the First Class lounge for its Red Carpet Club members. The lounge has interesting tidbits of food, but the furniture is worn, the bathrooms are dirty, and I had a look at food preparation area which was just plain medieval by our standards. There are the usual duty-free shops and souvenir stands. They will call for boarding very early as SGN, and just like Heathrow, they security screen passengers yet again, before they enter their gate. Once you’re inside, you’re stuck.

Where to stay
By a wide margin, most travelers elect to stay in District 1, specifically the Dong Khoi area. The prices for a world-class hotel are fairly reasonable and you can get luxury rooms at great rates. As a general rule, even moderate-level hotels in Asia are well-staffed and far better than their western counterparts, as the can capitalize on cheap labor. I stayed in the Sheraton Saigon (see review) because they had a one-night free special. The Caravelle and Renaissance are very close to the Sheraton, and all of them have views of the Saigon River. Chinatown is located in District 5 which is quite a distance from District 1. Most visitors of Chinese ethnicity stay here and the hotels are quite cheap, and popular with Taiwanese or mainland visitors. As with most Asian cities I have visited, you can pay as much or as little for accommodation as you desire, but there is a commensurate decrease in quality and safety as the price drops. I personally think that Dong Khoi is the best area to stay in for first-timers (like myself) because it is a well-established and safe area. The prices in the neighborhood are a bit higher, but there is a good balance of local merchants and eateries in the area to help you branch out and get a more “local” feel for things. Dong Khoi’s proximity to the river means that you get something of an escape from the humidity and over-crowding of interior HCMC. This is more of a holistic viewpoint of things, but after a hot and sweaty day, getting into a high hotel room with a view tends to help my spirits. The Renaissance has the benefit of having a rooftop pool whereas the Caravelle and Sheraton’s are on the 5th floor terrace. If you really want to go high-end, the Grand Hyatt opened in 2006 and is getting rave reviews. It is a low-slung property with an unrepentant colonial theme like the Raffles in Singapore.

What to eat
As I mentioned, I was supposed to go on an eating tour with a chef-friend. This didn’t materialize, but I already have good experience with this type of cuisine and did just fine. You should definitely try pho (the beef noodle soup) and chao tom (which is shrimp paste grilled on sugar cane). After that, I offer no further suggestions on what to eat, other than to dive on in and be adventurous. Follow your nose, and look for spots that locals flock to. Ben Thanh Market is a good place to start. Anthony Bourdain ate a live cobra heart for his television show, which I don’t advise on the principle that consuming an animal for superstition versus survival is just not ethical. As with every SE Asian country, there are a variety of excellent and exotic fruits at rock bottom prices. Try durian if you can. Enjoy a freshly opened young coconut on a hot afternoon. Coconut water is not only sterile, but was used as substitute plasma and intravenous fluid replacement during WWII.
Now, there has been a lot of time spent warning tourists about poor sanitation and intestinal bugs. It’s a minor risk, at best. Stick with bottled water and avoid the seedier looking hawker stalls, but for the most part, the cleanliness factor is not any worse than your average American camping trip—they do have soap, after all. Paranoia can ruin a perfectly good meal, and is frankly embarrassing to a restaurateur who has no motivation to ruin his business by slacking off on hygiene. As I mentioned in the “medical” section, if you’re adequately prepared with medicines and use a bit of common sense about things, you won’t wind up in Manson’s Tropical Diseases textbook. I did some fairly adventurous eating and had zero problems.
Overall the cuisine is very similar to dishes that you will find in the US but there is something about the regional ingredients, the wood they use for grilling, and myriad of other factors that give the food a more rustic flavor.

What to do
HCMC is a bit of a let-down in the tourism department, but it’s really not their fault. This city had to survive the Vietnam War, the communist purges, and decades of crushing poverty. There is a lot of emphasis placed on touring the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai pagodas, which may be worth checking out for their historical and cultural value. I try and avoid any corporatized tourist day-trips and go it alone. If you do plan on visiting a museum or other attraction, be aware that most of them will close for lunch from as early as 11:30am to 1:00pm, as the Vietnamese take lunch very seriously. Check the hours before you go.
It is a good idea to cluster your visits based on geography. Using this logic, you should visit the Reunification Palace in the morning (before it gets hot, since the palace is not air-conditioned), eat lunch, and then check out the much smaller, but open-aired, War Remnants Museum. This will take up most of the day, but you can hit the main post office and Notre Dame Cathedral on the way back to Dong Khoi. The cathedral is generally not open for tourism. The main post office has a souvenir shop and you can pick up a set of tiny porcelain statues of Vietnamese ethnic groups for about 48000 VND (3 USD). These make great gifts and are very cool. I’ve found that most of the markets across SE Asia sell the exact same junk, but these little statues spoke to me for some reason. I saw them marked at 60000 VND at Ben Thanh. I don’t like to haggle, and the fixed prices at the post office appealed to me. Actually, one of the best parts of my trip was just going to the long, tree-lined avenue and park that leads up to the palace and just observing local life.
A second day can be spent visiting Ben Thanh Market and the Fine Arts Museum. The museum is walking distance from Ben Thanh and costs one dollar for entry. It is in an old colonial house that is in dire need of renovation, security, climate control, etc. There are priceless pieces of work just lying around, most of which are not being monitored. From the Fine Arts Museum, you can walk to Dan Sinh market which is where all the fake war memorabilia is housed. It’s a striking difference to the bustle of Ben Thanh. There is practically no foot-traffic through here and shop-keepers are sleeping most of the time.
Aside from these museums and markets, the best thing about HCMC is the cuisine. In terms of nightlife, you will find most places are jammed with tourists and ex-pats. There is club called Underground on Dong Khoi that is popular with ex-pats and the Q Bar in the Opera House (across the street from the Caravelle Hotel) is trendy and spendy. The most annoying aspect of the nightlife is that you will be constantly accosted by moped taxis, massage hawkers, and hostess bars. As with all cities, the trendy spots tend to change and I try not to mention many names as they inevitably become obsolete within months.
Overall, I’d say that you can spend two or three days in HCMC before market and beggar fatigue begin to drag on you. If I ever do return to Vietnam, I plan on bypassing HCMC and focus on the countryside or seeing colonial Hanoi.

Intangibles
THEFT AND TAXIS AND TAXES (pretty much the same): Guidebooks warned about petty theft, but to be honest, I didn’t see much of it. I was prepared for pickpockets, moto-cowboys, and the lot. The worst thing I dealt with was a taxi-driver with a rigged meter. I made the mistake of not negotiating the fare ahead of time. As he distracted me with talk of massages and girlie bars (something that you will be assaulted with constantly), he tripped the meter and my 1 mile cab ride suddenly went up to $10 USD. If this happens you have a couple of options. You can pay (which I did because it was only a few bucks). Or you can give him a few dollars and get out and walk away quickly. Or you can insist they pull into the hotel, upon which time you exit and you can get the concierge call the police who can then examine his meter—a hassle, but if the principle is important you, then go for it. Plan on paying twice as much to get back to your hotel, as you paid to get to whatever museum you visit. Negotiate rates before you enter. You will get ripped off by a taxi driver if you hail them on the street. It’s just a fact of life. Roll with it, learn, and don’t let it upset you too much.
In terms of outright street theft, I saw none, and I went to some sketchy markets. I saw tourists regularly trundling about with expensive cameras hanging from wrists. If you limit yourself to the major attractions, you won’t have a problem with pickpockets or moto-cowboys.
I read reports of police shakedowns, but it seemed that they were focusing most of their attention on pulling over local moped riders. There is a government tax on just about any kind of economic activity and this is usually displayed on your bill along with a 5% service charge (the tip, in other words).

TIPPING: It’s becoming more customary in westernized or western establishments. I always tipped my cab driver who drove me from the hotel. Most cab rides are about 2 dollars and the western hotels only allow legitimate drivers to ferry their customers away. An honest cab driver is hard to find in HCMC. A dollar won’t make much difference to a US citizen, but it will really help a local worker.

ROAD RULES: Don’t plan on driving in HCMC. Don’t plan on riding a moped unless you are prepared to wreck it. Traffic control devices are mostly an afterthought to moped riders, although most cars seemed to follow them. Crossing the street was thing I worried about the most. I’ve been hit by a car before and it hurts. A lot. And the trauma care in Vietnam is probably not the best. The guidebooks really put the fear into me. Thankfully, most roads have gaps in the traffic and control devices that will allow you to cross safely. If not, then watch the locals. Do not run across traffic. Wait for a reasonable gap, and then walk at a steady pace and let them flow around you. If you change pace, you will get creamed. Most western Nike shoes have reflective material on them that really helps visibility at night. In a worst case scenario, you can have a cyclo-driver (a cyclo is a pedal-powered rickshaw) take you across the street for a dollar.
Since most of the internal combustion engines are on mopeds, the pollution at street level is pretty bad.

Closing Thoughts
I rank HCMC somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and Manila in terms of the quality of the visit. Like Manila, it has crushing poverty, vice, pollution, overcrowding, and beggars. It lacks KL’s cleanliness, Muslim work ethics, and honest cabbies, but the food is infinitely more interesting than the Philippines. Aside from a few cultural offerings, HCMC should only be used as a waypoint on a journey into the interior of Vietnam. My biggest regret is that I didn’t bypass it completely and head into the Mekong Delta or the highlands. HCMC should never be one’s sole destination in Vietnam, in my opinion and if you want a cheap holiday in an crowded Asian city, you should focus on Bangkok, Singapore, or Kuala Lumpur, as the entry requirements and infrastructure are infinitely better.


Recommended:
Yes

Best Suited For: Students
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb