Technically speaking, you’re supposed to call it Hi Chi Minh City now,
but seeing as all the locals still refer to it as Saigon, I’m going to go with
that title too. It sounds a lot more exciting and exotic to me, so why not!
After finishing up a
long work meeting at 4pm on Friday afternoon I made my way to a Starbucks just
underneath Nick’s office in the CBD, passing the last hour of my day working
through emails until it was finally time to go, and we shuffled off to the
airport ready for our weekend adventure.
Saigon promised to be
the most ‘Asian’ place that I have ever been to, with all the blogs and reviews
that I had read stressing the importance of not getting run over when crossing
the road, and the strange mixed attitudes towards Americans (that no doubt
would be echoed against the British to an extent too by accident). I was getting
a bit over excited about the whole thing, which I think Nick might have found a
little bit tiring.
After just an hour and
a half in the air we touched down at Ho Chi Minh City airport, ready to make
our way to the waiting car that would whisk us off to our hotel.
As Nick had been to
Saigon a couple of times before with big groups of boys, staying in the
backpackers region for a couple of pounds a night, he decided that as we were
going on a bit more of a grown up trip, we ought to stay somewhere lovely. And
so it was that we were dropped at The Rex Hotel, one of the oldest hotels in the
city, and one of the most famous.
During the war, the
rooftop of the hotel was where the American war briefings would be held each
day at 5pm, in a routine that became known as the Five O’Clock Follies, and
that we felt the need to mark with a cocktail or two in the open air.
Having marked our arrival
with a quick drink with a view, we made our way to a local restaurant that Nick was
desperate to revisit. It was a no frills type of restaurnt, with big tables
scattered over three floors, and small open kitchens lining the perimeter. At
each of these bases there were local chefs, each specialising in one or two
items from the menu.
We were a little late
arriving, and so the menu was a bit limited by the time we got there as some of the small kitchens had already closed down for the day (sadly there was no Pho for us at this meal), but we
still kicked off our trip with some local fresh spring rolls, rice, veggies and
a meat kebab or two. It was a delicious way to start our holiday, and as we had
plans to be up at 7am the next day, it was a lovely low key way to ease
ourselves in to Saigon.
No comments:
Post a Comment