Sai Gon or Ho Chi Minh City

Formerly known as Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City is a sprawling metropolis that is home to more than 5 million people. Vibrant and alluring, this city offers something for everyone. It is a study in contrasts: traditional and modern, young and old, rich and poor.

If you ever wondered what Bangkok must have been like before the gridlock or Hong Kong before the high rises, this is your chance.

But don't wait too long, this place is changing fast. Plan on spending a minimum of 2 or 3 days, longer if you can.

The central downtown area is in District 1. Here's where you'll find the greatest variety of lodgings, including classic hotels like the Grand, the Majestic and the Rex, as well as most of the newer, upscale hostelries. In recent years a lot of new hotel projects have been going up, creating a temporary glut, particularly in the high end of the market. The result is some pretty good deals on some really nice hotel rooms. We recommend first-timers stay in District 1, as it's close to many museums, historical sites, and good restaurants.

Numerous worthwhile sites within Ho Chi Minh City itself include the Historical Museum, Reunification Hall and the War Remnants Museum (formerly the War Crimes Museum). Within a day's drive there are also several attractions well-worth the trip.

Bargain hunters will find good deals on native handicrafts and custom-tailored clothing. Of course Ho Chi Minh City is also a great place to just sit and watch the action or take a leisurely tour in a cyclo to visit the historical sites, including Notre Dame Cathedral and the former U.S. embassies.

Downtown streets are dominated by two-wheeled traffic. Fashionably-dressed women with designer sunglasses, high heels and elbow-length gloves cruise past on their Hondas, followed by teenage girls wearing traditional Vietnamese ao dai, peddling bicycles and holding hands. With few traffic lights, intersections are negotiated by slowing down and then weaving through the cross traffic, making eye contact with the closest riders. Pedestrians cross the street by simply walking into the melee, hardly breaking stride as the traffic swirls around them. It all sounds crazy, but it works!

Most offices, stores and museums open early, usually around 7:30 a.m. Most close their doors for lunch for up to 2 hours. The city literally shuts down between noon and 1. Doors reopen by 1:30 and stay open until around 4:30 or 5. Most restaurants stop serving at 10 p.m.

Ho Chi Minh City has essentially two seasons: dry and wet. The dry season runs from November through April; the wet season from May through October. Dry or wet, it's always hot! If you arrive during the wet season, bring a raincoat and umbrella.

Want an independent tour and private tour, please email us at: FootStepVietNam@Gmail.Com to get more information and assistance 

Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple

Cu chi district is well-known nationwide as the base where the Vietnamese mounted their operations of the Tet Offensive in 1968.The tunnels are between 0.4 to 1m wide, just enough for a person to walk along by bending or dragging. However, parts of the tunnels have been modified to accommodate visitors. The upper soil layer is between 3 to 5m thick and can support the weight of a 60-ton tank and the damage of light cannons and bombs. The underground network provided meeting rooms, sleeping quarters, commanding rooms, hospitals, and other social rooms. By visiting the Cu Chi tunnels provides a better understanding of the prolonged resistance war of the Vietnamese people and also of the persistent and clever character of the Vietnamese nation

A place that’s physically invisible, the Cu Chi tunnels have sure carved themselves a celebrated niche in the history of guerilla warfare. Its celebrated and unseen geography straddles – all of it underground – something which the Americans eventually found as much to their embarrassment as to their detriment. They were dug, before the American War, in the late 1940s, as a peasant-army response to a more mobile and ruthless French occupation. The plan was simple: take the resistance briefly to the enemy and then, literally, vanish.

Firstly, the French then the Americans were baffled as to where they melted to, presuming, that it was somewhere under cover of the night in the Mekong delta. But the answer lay in the sprawling city under their feet – miles and miles of tunnels. In the gap between French occupation and the arrival of the Americans the tunnels fell largely into disrepair, but the area’s thick natural earth kept them intact and maintained by nature. In turn it became not just a place of hasty retreat or of refuge, but, in the words of one military historian, "an underground land of steel, home to the depth of hatred and the incommutability of the people. "It became, against the Americans and under their noses, a resistance base and the headquarters of the southern Vietnam Liberation Forces. The linked threat from the Viet Cong - the armed forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam - against the southern city forced the unwitting Americans to select Cu Chi as the best site for a massive supply base – smack on top of the then 25-year old tunnel network. Even sporadic and American’s grudgingly had to later admit, daring attacks on the new base, failed for months to indicate where the attackers were coming from – and, importantly, where they were retreating to. It was only when captives and defectors talked that it became slightly more clear. But still the entries, exits, and even the sheer scale of the tunnels weren’t even guessed at. Chemicals, smoke-outs, razing by fire, and bulldozing of whole areas, pinpointed only a few of the well-hidden tunnels and their entrances. The emergence of the Tunnel Rats, a detachment of southern Vietnamese working with Americans small enough to fit in the tunnels, could only guess at the sheer scale of Cu Chi. By the time peace had come, little of the complex, and its infrastructure of schools, dormitories, hospitals, and miles of tunnels, had been uncovered. Now, in peace, only some of it is uncovered – as a much-visited part of the southern tourist trail. Many of the tunnels are expanded replicas, to avoid any claustrophobia they would induce in tourists. The wells that provided the vital drinking water are still active, producing clear and clean water to the three-tiered system of tunnels that sustained life. A detailed map is almost impossible, for security reasons if nothing else: an innate sense of direction guided the tunnellers and those who lived in them.

Many routes linked to local rivers, including the Saigon River, their top soil firm enough to take construction and the movement of heavy machinery by American tanks, the middle tier from mortar attacks, and the lower, 8-10m down was impregnable. A series of hidden, and sometimes booby-trapped, doors connected the routes, down through a system of narrow, often unlit and invented tunnels. At one point American troops brought in a well-trained squad of 3000 sniffer dogs, but the German Shepherds were too bulky to navigate the courses. One legend has it that the dogs were deterred by Vietnamese using American soap to throw them off their scent, but more usually pepper and chilly spray was laid at entrances, often hidden in mounds disguised as molehills, to throw them off. But the Americans were never passive about the tunnels, despite being unaware of their sheer complexity. Large-scale raiding operations used tanks, artillery and air raids, water was pumped through known tunnels, and engineers laid toxic gas. But one American commander’s report at the time said: "It’s impossible to destroy the tunnels because they are too deep and extremely tortuous."

Today the halls that showed propagandas films, housed educational meetings and schooled Vietnamese in warfare are largely intact. So too are the kitchens where visitors can dine on steamed manioc, pressed rice with sesame and salt, a popular meal during the war, as they are assailed with true stories of how life went on as near-normal, much of the time. Ancestors were worshipped there, teaching was well-timetabled, poultry was raised – and even couples trusted, fell in love, were wed, and honeymooned there. But visitors have it easier: those re-constructed tunnels give the flavour of the tunnels but not the claustrophobia and the sacrifice of the estimated 18,000 who served their silent and unseen war there with only around one-third surviving, the rest casualties of American assaults, snakes, rats and insects.

Now the unseen and undeclared No Man’s Land is undergoing a revival, saluted as a Relic of National History and Culture with its Halls of Tradition displaying pictures and exhibits. The nearby Ben Duoc-Cu Chi War Memorial, where the reproduced tunnels have been built, stands as an-above ground salute to a hidden war.

Cao Dai Great Temple built between 1933 and 1955. The Great Temple is 140m long and 40m wide. It has 4 towers each with a different name: Tam Dai, Hiep Thien Dai, Cuu Trung Dai, and Bat Quai Dai. The interior of the temple consists of a colonnaded hall and a sanctuary. The 2 rows of columns are decorated with dragons and are coated in white, red, and blue paint. The domed ceiling is divided into 9 parts similar to a night sky full of stars and symbolizing heaven. Under the dome is a giant star-speckled blue globe on which is painted the Divine Eye, the official symbol of Caodaism. Cao Dai followers worship Jesus Christ, Confucius, Taoism, and Buddha.

Everyday, there are 4 times of services, 6 a.m., noon, 6 p.m., and midnight, on our tour visiting Cu Chi tunnels and Tay Ninh province, we can witness the solemn ceremony of the unique religion - Caodaism at Caodai Holly See at its noon tide prayer service with followers dressed in red, blue, yellow and white robes.

Want an independent tour and private tour, please email us at: FootStepVietNam@Gmail.Com to get more information and assistance