By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
I begin with a motorbike food tour. There are three other guests, all around my age: a couple from Ireland and an Indian dude who lives in South Africa and is about to get a tonsillectomy. We try shrimp pancakes, and chicken pho, amazing seafood with conch and scallops and snails, where you throw the shells on the ground (so much for peanut shells feeling novel), and balut, which is not great but not bad just gross looking, and even mashed durian, and small rice with amazing pork. I’d been told the food would be good but this is better than I expected. The guides are knowledgeable, not just about food and Vietnam in general (my hostel, prei nokor, means city in the jungle, which was HCMC’s name even before Saigon), but about other cultures and foods. At one point the young assistant says my accent doesn't sound New York, to which I repy, “yea we don’t all sound like in the movies,” and very professionally he says, “ya you don’t sound like most people I’ve met from New York. You speak much slower.” I feel like an asshole and an idiot for assuming he’s basing his judgement on movies; meanwhile, he’s got more experience speaking with New Yorkers than I have speaking with Vietnamese people. Stop assuming your world is bigger, I tell myself. What a terrible habit. After the food tour I wander down Backpackers Street, which I read is dodgy and full of prostitutes and drug dealers and pick pockets. My food tour guide drops me here and just says, “ya, this is where locals buy drugs,” which is a different sentiment to in Indonesia and Singapore, where I’m told drugs are really cracked down on. I start at a rooftop bar and then walk down the street clutching my bag, but love it. Mega bars blasting music with patrons squat in small tables pouring onto the streets. People trying to sell things and motorbikes and street car vendors. It’s the liveliest street scene I’ve ever seen. I decide it’s best to go back after walking the entirety. I wander for 15 minutes past seafood carts and make my way back to bed. I can say I've loved Ho Chi Minh the most so far. When I’m here I feel I can find a rhythm and routine. I see the war remnants museum and I’m shocked and I cry through the whole thing. I hear other Americans justifying “oh, but it was the French first.” Mom texts about auschwitz as a response, and I’m in awe of the lack of empathy, and confused why we need to compare. I drink beers and find speakeasies down Dingy alleyways. I visit the museum of medicine, following behind a group of Chinese women who brought their own dress up gear for photos. Afterwards, I get stuck in the rain but it’s gorgeous, falling hard around the ancient building, filling up the stairways with pounding drops. I go to a gym and feel at home. I get fresh coconut waters I drink right out of the coconut on the way home each day. This city just feels safe, and somehow, like home. On my last night I get a foot massage. A man getting one next to me starts chatting with me after a strange, tall, older French man comes in seeking a "private room". He’s shooed away and we’re all laughing and this other man he lives in Minnesota but he’s from Vietnam, and he asks me how I’m taking to the traffic, which is terrifying. On the first day I get scammed into paying a motorbike guy $5 to basically take me to the other side or the highway; but on the way back a lovely gentleman leads me and two other tourists through the traffic. There aren’t traffic lights here, you just walk. You just walk into traffic. “Just close your eyes and step in,” says my massage neighbor.