Eleven o’clock on a cold, foggy night. The Avenues desolate, the windows of Clement Street’s regarded Asian restaurants a clammy black beneath lifeless signs.
Ngon means "delicious," and, for authentic Vietnamese, this restaurant lives up to its name and gets my vote for the best in Vietnam. Ngon has become a real Ho Chi Minh institution and is always packed with both locals and tourists; they've even built a new location nearby to handle the overflow.
Pho 24 is a Vietnamese chain restaurant found from Hanoi to Saigon. If you want a good beef noodle soup without the worries of ordering on the street - this is a surefire bet.
Saigon Phu Quoc Resort and Spa is one of the top places to stay on pretty little Phu Quoc Island. It offers everything that you'd expect from a tropical resort: Comfortable bungalows, swishing palm trees, a great beach, poolside and beachside bars, several restaurants and ever-smiling staff.
The Reunification Palace in central Saigon has a long and checkered history, but is best known as the place where North Vietnamese tanks charged in to end the Vietnam War in 1975. What makes it a must-see, though, is the kitschy interior: Green leather armchairs, pink telephones, porcelain vases, romantic paintings, hunting trophies, embroidered carpets, miniature gardens, model boats, modernistic rocking chairs and military paraphernalia all clash delightfully throughout the building.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Building is a popular landmark in central Saigon. It is built in the likeness of Paris' Hotel de Ville.
There are many places that offered Vietnamese cooking lessons but the Red Bridge Cooking School had received rave reviews - now I know why. The $18 class included a wet market tour, a 25-minute boat ride on the Hoi An River to the river-side school, leaning how to prepare a complete meal including food decorations...
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is the revered final resting place of Uncle Ho. Supposedly shaped like a lotus, the building is decidedly more blocky than it is flowery - and it sits on the edge of large, desolate Ba Dinh Square.
Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers is ideally located in the heart of Saigon's bustling Dong Khoi neighborhood. From here, it's minutes on foot to Ben Thanh Market, the Reunification Palace, upmarket restaurants and most everything else that central Saigon has to offer.