Awaiting the Dragon in Ho Chi Minh City

Happy Spring, cadets! Happy Nowruz to my Kurdistan, Iran, Central Asia cadets, and elsewhere. Also, a very belated happy Lunar New Year to those other cadets.

I just finished my yearly ” F off February tradition.” For those new readers, my ” F off February” is when I take my big trip of the year. February in Europe is usually pretty dull; despite being the shortest month, it might be the slowest. Usually, it is somewhere in Asia or Latin America. It hasn’t been in Southeast Asia since 2018 due to Covid issues and other opportunities. So, this year, it was time to go in that direction. So, I went to Vietnam and Cambodia for about six weeks. Vietnam has been at the top of my wishlist for a while now.

As you can see in a previous entry about the Czech-Vietnamese community, I was exposed to Vietnamese culture in the US and the Czech Republic. So I’ve been aching to go for quite sometime.

I started my trip in Ho Chi Minh City right before Tet, which is the Vietnamese name for the Lunar New Year. It’s the same as the Chinese New Year, but other countries that celebrate this prefer to refer to it as the Lunar New Year or whatever it is in their language. But many traditions overlap. Everyone is off work for a week and spends the time with their families. Kids get the red packets of cash. Adults give these red packets to their elderly parents as well.

It was fun watching the locals prepare for this. You could see many people with fruit trees on the back of their motorcycles and all the ladies filing into beauty shops one after the other. You can see all the shops and their Tet promotions.

Being born in the year of the Dragon, I was a little excited that this happened to be my year. I don’t really buy into astrology, but still a bit fun. Although, several Chinese and Vietnamese have informed me that while the Dragon is supposed to be the luckiest sign, Dragons happen to face adversity in that year.

Do people call it Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

The answer is both! Vietnamese are fine with either answer. Saigon is the original name, but both are mutually accepted. In my findings, Ho Chi Minh and his legacy seem more revered in Hanoi than in Ho Chi Minh City for various reasons.

What are some highlights of Ho Chi Minh City?

Reunification Palace

“The Walking Street” is a bit touristy and not all walking. Motorbikes would still zoom right through it. However, it was an excellent chance to do some quality people-watching.

This city offers many different food choices. Plenty of it was vegetarian-friendly, which was great for me. Some of my previous destinations left me underwhelmed, but Vietnam did not.

A Czech brewery ( Hoa Vien ) and restaurant which also serves as an honorary Czech consulate. I figured out if I ate half of my weight in Vietnamese food in Czechia. A Czech beer in Ho Chi Minh City is a must! I almost opted to get a Czech fried cheese ( Smazny Syr), but for ten bucks, I could spend a fraction on the other excellent food this city offers.

Ho Chi Minh Square

Just walking around and soaking it in! It was nice to see so many people out enjoying the Pre Tet madness

Side trips

Mekong Delta

This was a fun excursion, aside from the times they tried to get us to buy a bunch of their stuff. Some of which are unique. On the one hand, this is understandable as it is their way of earning a living. On the other hand, it is still annoying. However, the boat part was a lot of fun. It reminded me much of my neck of the woods. My childhood has fond memories of the Mississippi and Alabama deltas. The climate is close. They were obsessed and insanely proud of their catfish. There is even an element of some old French remnants in all of this.

Cui cui tunnels

This was an interesting one. On the bus, the guide calmly discussed all the atrocities (especially Agent Orange) of the Vietnam War. It was a bit funnt, as then they commercialized it and even turned it into a light joke. You could take pictures in the traps and with tanks. You could even shoot some AK-47s at a shooting range, which I did not opt for. I would have difficulty seeing this in Europe done in this fashion, but it was quite an exciting experience nonetheless.

I was expecting much more anti-Americanism in Vietnam. Considering what the US did in the 1960s and 1970s, this damage still has ramifications. It was one of the places most victimized by the US government in the 20th century. It was even worse than the American war tactics of the 21st century. However, I told people I was from the US at times. I did not encounter this. Most people asked which city or had some story about a relative there; I even met a Vietnamese-American in the sim card shop, which was a bit embarrassing as I claimed Slovenia when he asked. I’ll have more on this subject and the Vietnamese light way of dealing with dark events of the past when I write about Hanoi.

What did you ACTUALLY do during the Tet holidays?

While we were in HCMC for the days leading to Tet and saw New Year’s Eve, we took a bus to Cambodia on New Year’s Day. Vietnam is relatively expensive to travel to, and many things are overbooked during the trip, so we opted to include Cambodia. We came back to Vietnam after spending a couple of weeks in Cambodia.

Stay tuned to read more about my Southeast Asian observations. I have so many more topics to touch on, such as luxury capitalism, geopolitics, and some other stuff that is more up my alley. For this entry, I wanted to focus more on TET and the city in general.

So keep looking for some more weirdness. It is coming.