<![CDATA[Tonight was really great. We all went out to Downtown Saigon, the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. The city at night is beautiful, with tall buildings, tons of cool places to eat and shop, and there are such a variety of vibrant colors that you simply don’t see much from many cities in the States.
We drove up to a tall building near the middle of everything, named Sunwah Tower, which is home to a variety of offices for international business. This building is actually where Hang’s cousin works for ANA, who is also responsible for getting us such a wonderful deal on plane tickets to come here. The weather was close to perfect, with the normal warm air mixed with a slight cool breeze that was leftover from the recent rain.
We walked over toward the restaurant end of the place, and sat down at some tables outside for dinner. Seriously, the only thing really missing from this atmosphere was music. We took a few minutes to check out the menu, which was mainly written in English because Saigon is tourist central for travelers. They had everything from Pho, to Burgers, to Pizza, to Lasagna, which is what I ended up ordering in the end. The food was very cheap from what the traditional meal would cost in the states as well.
This was kind of a rich place, yet the most expensive plate ordered was roughly $8USD. The beer was really the only thing that was somewhat the same, at $3 a glass, as it was imported from Germany (it tasted like a Heineken, although I don’t know if it actually was or not… I wasn’t the one that ordered it).
The meal was delicious, and after it was all said and done, the five of us got up and walked around the city for a little while. We passed by stores, markets, street vendors, tall office buildings, including Bitexco Tower, the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City (standing 68+ stories high).
During our walk back to the car, Hang and I noticed a kid sitting on the sidewalk with a sign offering to draw portraits of people for 80,000d a person ($4USD). I was skeptical about whether he could actually draw us exactly, as this would take a huge amount of talent to do in just 15 minutes. Still, it seemed like something fun to do, and so… we did!
What do you think? Does it really look like us at all? (click image to see full size)
After the photo, we found the van and headed home. It was a fantastic night out on the town! I’m sure it’s not over either, since we have plans now to return to this area tomorrow night, where we’ll take a look into the night markets, and this really big (and also the oldest) mall that was down the street from where we ate! I wonder if I’ll get any gift ideas while I’m there? Hmmmm…..
[caption id="attachment_681" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Bitexco Tower, from the bottom looking up[/caption]
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