On September 15th, with a view to welcoming all Bach Khoa’s international students from Intake 2018 and the upper, Office for International Study Programs (OISP) held a one-day city tour which took us around Ho Chi Minh City and gave us the experience of being a “Saigonese” for a day.

The trip started at 8am on the morning of Sunday, September 15th taking all of us, twenty people to the first destination: Independence Palace (Reunification Palace).

Independence Palace

Independence Palace, also known as Reunification Palace, was the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The palace is like a time capsule frozen in 1975 with well-maintained tanks, helicopters, antique furniture, tunnels, war room and telecommunications centre.

Here, together with instructions from the tour guide, we went around the palace, listened to the history and immersed ourselves into the 1980s decades’ atmosphere.

Central Post Office

The Central Post Office in Ho Chi Minh is a beautifully preserved remnant of French colonial times and perhaps the grandest post office in all of Southeast Asia. The building was designed by Alfred Foulhoux and features arched windows and wooden shutters, just as it would have in its heyday in the late 19th Century.

Currently, the Post Office still works. After taking a group photo here, we were on our own discovering the place, observing the working process then we moved to the book street, which sits next to the post office on the right. 

Den Long Restaurant

Ho Chi Minh City Book Street was our last destination in the morning. At 11am, we got the bus and headed to Den Long Restaurant, where we had lunch together.

Den Long Restaurant was a restaurant with Vietnamese traditional food and cozy atmosphere just like a family’s kitchen. We tried a lot of stunning dishes such as: grilled beef spring rolls, crunchy chicken served with light spicy passion fruit sauce, pomelo salad with shrimp, caramelized river catfish, etc.

Ao Dai Museum

Boosted up energy after a delicious lunch, we packed up and visited Ao Dai Museum. Ao Dai museum tells the story of the Vietnamese traditional long dress and its changes in the social development process.

Upon visiting the museum, we were not paying for history lesson alone, but also an enjoyable day within peaceful, theatrical atmosphere resembling life in Vietnamese countryside.

We then were given the chance to design our own paper “ao dai”, talk and share with each other our own views of Vietnamese traditional dress.

Turtle Lake

Are we missing something? Yes!

Being a Saigonese, or Vietnamese in general, eating vendor food is indispensable for a daily routine. Because of this, we travelled back to Turtle Lake, District 3, which is a gathering spot of almost all Saigon youngsters at nights and weekends.

Around 5pm, surrounding Turtle Lake, there are usually small shops selling Vietnamese street dishes such as: Vietnamese pizzas, mixed rice paper with quill eggs, dry beef and squid, crab soups and stir-fried corn served with cheese and chicken eggs, etc. We ordered some portions of those dishes, sat on small chairs and naturally the story went on.

Although the weather that day was not really supportive, we all had a great day together, experienced a Saigonese daily routine: ate what they often eat, visited places they often go and grabbed a culture touch. 

T.U