Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a mysterious tourist city with rich nightlife

Vietnam, as soon as you step into it, you will be hit by the "unintelligible" atmosphere. You speak English and he speaks Vietnamese, but they can successfully communicate. From taking a taxi, ordering food, buying and selling, and finding directions, the entire process is bilingual and one-way, and there is no obstacle to all your travel and fun. I'll give you money, that's fine.
In this way, I stayed in Ho Chi Minh City for five days in a row. I visited the popular attractions and explored unknown streets and alleys. I smoked dust during the day and went about nightlife at night. I chatted with different locals who spoke English, Cantonese and Mandarin. , asking about people's livelihood, happiness.
  
Some are good, some are bad, but in the end, I will never go there a second time because of one thing, which will be mentioned later.
  
Vietnamese people are divided by English

The most intuitive impression is: people who can speak English are more polite than those who cannot.
  
The first person I met who spoke English was a young college student driver who was soliciting customers at the airport.
It takes five years to study law. When I graduate this year at the age of 25, I will go out to support my family. I don’t even dare to have a girlfriend. He has younger brothers and sisters, and he spends all day watching Korean dramas to the point where he doesn't even eat, so he can only make fun of them and say, "I'll watch them after I finish them." No, I saw a lot of Koreans walking around for a few days wearing casual shirts and shorts with pot heads. The invasion of Hallyu is really a world-class phenomenon.
  
However, the colored contact lenses here cost RMB 500,000 to RMB 1 million. If you want high quality, it’s equivalent to half a month’s salary. I asked him what drama he was following, and he said that there is a drama that is very popular in China right now. He opened it for me to watch, and it turned out to be "Story of Yanxi Palace"... Qing palace dramas finally opened the door to Chinese culture


The French architecture that first caught my eye

was the first good impression he gave me about Vietnam. When we arrived at our destination, we got off the bus and took me to the door of the B&B until we found the right door number. No matter how annoying the traffic jam was, the rush hour in Ho Chi Minh was 4-5 o'clock, which was really early. He still talked freely and kept talking. He apologized several times for the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City and told me to watch my bag carefully on the road. This kind of advice , I heard from the driver, travel agency staff, stall proprietress and student tour guide in the back that the surprisingly unanimous care cannot prevent compatriots from committing crimes. This is the only way to help outsiders suffer

The second person I met who could speak English was a college student landlord.

Reproduce the Southeast Asian smile first encountered in Thailand: sincere, friendly and warm. If you say you don't understand, she will laugh sheepishly and demonstrate the action herself, explaining, "When checking out, throw the key in through the door."
  
I won’t bother you for several days. Unless you have something to ask for, just send me an email. Originally, all the items in the room were ready, including a stack of leaflets for the popular Walking tour in Vietnam. As expected, the tourist friendliness has increased dramatically.
  
There are many such private self-built B&Bs in Vietnam. Each floor has a room, an independent bathroom, and a common washing machine and kitchen. Anyway, I don’t mind if I don’t cook, but the washing machine, even though there are two of them, was filled with clothes and bed sheets by the two floors of residents above, and it was only successfully used once in five days.
  
The third and fourth people I met who could speak English were tour guides.
I experienced two tour guides, one was a college student and the other was a tour group tour guide. It was very pleasant. The college student’s name is Hary, and he booked the Saigon Walking Tour project on TriipMe. The projects on that website are also directly private, but Airbnb experience tours are at least half the price, including food tours, craft tours, nightlife tours, rural tours, and motorcycle tours. and walking tours. You can log in by registering your email address and have one-on-one communication through the English interface, which is super cost-effective and convenient.
  
In fact, for many travel projects, most of the English websites are cheaper than domestic ones and have more information. For many online entertainment projects in China, experts take orders and directly sell them to local tour groups. After a price difference, they take advantage of the information gap.
  
I was very satisfied with Hary's plan. The first half of the trip was to visit secret attractions and listen to historical and magical stories, while the second half was to visit well-known attractions, even though his travel agency was waiting for me to read the flyers at the last stop of the attraction.
  


Fantastic stories include the decline of the middle class, the collapse of Saigon, the history of Vietnam in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the great migration of Chinese people, the origin of highland coffee, Japanese streets and lost women. It is full of interesting information, and the strange English accent cannot stop your enthusiasm for listening. . He took me to a small Tang Dynasty area. He was a Cantonese who migrated here during the Ming and Qing dynasties, including Taishan, Kaiping, Fujian and Chaozhou areas in Jiangmen. Oh my God, he could speak Cantonese. It was so friendly.
  


The safe remains after the war. The owner ran away or passed away long ago. No one knows the password and cannot open it.

Another magic language area is Japan Street, which is called the red light district, Miss. I don’t know English, but I have mastered all the important Japanese.
  
District 2 is an area where foreigners gather, District 7 is a wealthy area, District 4 and District 8 are areas with high crime rates, with robberies ranking first and rapes also occurring.Passing by a Hindu temple, it turns out that from the 9th to the 13th century, Hinduism was as popular as Buddhism, and the Mazu Temple in Vietnam was a Hindu temple. According to him, Indian customers are very demanding. They often want to buy something when they are halfway through shopping. They go in when they see a mall, and they are naughty.


Look at the first line in the upper left corner, what is Deep Fried Chicken? ?
  
The popular attractions include the Holy Cathedral, the Coffee Apartment, the Grand Theater, the Central Post Office and the Art Museum on foot. It was also a bargain for him to take photos. I met a disabled person selling lottery tickets on the road, but there were very few beggars. He said that because District 1 is a tourist area, all the beggars and homeless people have been driven away for the sake of beautiful environment. However, the roads everywhere are dirty and full of garbage every day...



The tour guide is about forty A middle-aged man, exploring the Cu Chi tunnels. His English has a much lighter accent, and he has a calm and confident voice. He tells stories about the Vietnam War, giving him the flavor of a storyteller.
  


The Cu Chi Tunnels booked by this travel agency cost 430,000 for a five-person group, super warm and nice, and one of the few people at the front desk who spoke very good English
About 92 million in Vietnam There are about 14 million people in Ho Chi Minh City alone, and about 8.5 million motorcycles. The monthly salary of Vietnamese people is 2-3 million dong a month, and they can almost buy a motorcycle (about 7-8 million dong) after working for several months. This kind of motivation has attracted a large number of North Vietnamese to move south to Ho Chi Minh City. In the largest first-tier cities, all working-class people live in rented houses. When the Spring Festival comes, everyone drives their motorcycles across dozens of kilometers to go home, and everyone flees Ho Chi Minh. The situation is comparable to that in our country.
  
The north is rural and the south is urban. In addition to historical factors, there are also seasonal differences. There are only two seasons in the south, the rainy season (May-November) and the non-rainy season, but in the north there are four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. There are three major holidays throughout the year: one day off on National Day, half a month off on Spring Festival, and four days off on Independence Day.
  
Ho Chi Minh is named after the first president after reunification. The Vietnamese admire him not only as a leader, but also as an outstanding military strategist and diplomat who led Vietnam to build and develop step by step. But in Ho Chi Minh today, two tour guides and a college student driver both said that the government is corrupt and corruption is serious. The country is a socialist country and the economy is a capitalist economy. It mainly exports coffee and fruits to the world, and also exports workers to Dubai and the Philippines. , Taiwan and Japan.
  

Poster celebrating the 320th anniversary of independence

What I am proud of is that it was Australia that helped Ho Chi Minh build the first bridge, and later it was Japan. The bridge in Japan collapsed halfway through the construction and died. More than sixty people were killed, and it was rebuilt four years later. This kind of building that was abandoned halfway through construction is still standing in the CBD. It has been on strike for seven years and is still half-finished. No one has bought it, the government doesn't care, and it has no money to continue building it.
  
The security men here are all thin and petite, and none of them look tall and capable. The only eye-catching thing is that they are wearing military uniforms. The magical thing is that even small hotels are equipped with Bell Boy, French top hats and double-breasted uniforms, and there are French coffee buildings next to them, a colonial-style modern style painting.
  
The fifth person who can speak English is the bartender.
I went to the popular Chili Sky Bar in Asia, and sure enough, the scenery upstairs is even more attractive. The music was playing EDM, and there were two or three white-haired European and American old men holding Vietnamese girls. I glanced at the two people next to me who were spending five million VND, or about 1,500 yuan, just three glasses of wine and two shots, okay? , you are proud of your sister, let me see my scenery.
  
I ordered a Bloody Mary Cocktail, but the bartender only understood cocktails, and made him a cup of something orange and spicy. It cost 400,000 Vietnamese dong. My heart beat. The most expensive Japanese meal I had the day before yesterday was only 32. Ten thousand. He saw my frown and asked me if it tasted good. I said Okay, but he still gave me another cup of orange-flavored but sweet one. He was very considerate and friendly.
  


I asked him to help me order songs and order Something Just Like This, and he successfully did it. Money can always make you like anything more. Later, he gave me a shot with twice the amount of snow foam. It tasted great, like a milkshake. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell what it was. It was beer-colored, slightly thick, and smelled of coconut. But they closed too early. They cleared out at 2 o'clock, the music turned down, and it was painful to say goodbye to the prosperous night scene of the rich.
  
After chatting for a while, he knew that I was from China and said that he really wanted to learn Chinese. There are many Chinese guests here. The stereotype that "Chinese people are rich" will probably never go away in major tourist attractions and entertainment venues around the world.
  


In contrast, the other bar is an open-air nightclub, set up directly on the roadside. EDM and rappers take turns to blast the place, just like a small electronic music festival. But when it comes to ordering drinks, you can only look at the drink labels and point to whichever one you want. You speak English, but they don’t understand! They had to ask different people to listen to the words "sweeter, order some food, and add a glass of mineral water" several times, and finally seemed to understand that it took a while before they brought the right thing.
The sixth person who can speak English is a junior high school student.
There was a motorcyclist who sold me a sightseeing tour and said that he would give me 200,000 to take me to all the attractions and would stop and wait for me. We couldn't agree on the price, so two junior high school students passed by and asked in English with an American accent: Do you need help?
  
A pillar of strength! Talent! O light of friendship! Middle school students reached out to passers-by in a friendly manner. It was the first time in my life that I experienced this scene. Growing up, I was always asked for directions by passers-by. TV taught me not to talk to strangers casually. So I judged that I got divine help because I was dressed very touristy and looked non-threatening.
  
Their schools are all smaller than those built by the government, and there is not enough space for physical education classes. Their physical education classes have to go to the park, and their swimming classes have to go to a swimming pool a few kilometers away. Yes, hospitals are also smaller than government hospitals.
  

Students in physical education class in the park

Those who don’t understand English are running into obstacles
With a Cantonese face, they thought I was a native of Vietnam. I opened my mouth to speak Vietnamese. I said I don't understand and they left me alone. The road is very narrow. You want to imitate the two blond Europeans next to you and take a shortcut through a food stall. The boss wants to refute it, but finds that you don't understand, so he turns away. It’s really not the first time to enjoy the privileges of foreigners. Are everyone so harsh on fellow soldiers?
  

This kind of food stall that occupies half of the road has the right to deny you aisle privileges

In Vietnam, the person who can help me the most is not English, but Mandarin and Cantonese.
  
You have to use your hands. Buy a compass and use it to find direction. You want it to be spicy, it’s hard to pretend to eat spicy food. If you ask how much it is, you can't make fortune-telling gestures. You have to directly take out the money and point to it. Not a verb? There is no other way but to translate the software.

Overseas Chinese do not call themselves overseas Chinese, they call themselves Tang people. They are all descendants of ancestors of the Ming Dynasty. The lady who runs the stall in front of my B&B can speak some Mandarin because she is married to a Malaysian husband.
  
She asked me why I didn’t come with my lover. The word lover seemed to go back to the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, men and women were reserved and could only refer to love songs in the lounge. One breath was a lover, the other was a lover. One morning I was woken up by the Vietnamese saying "Everyone has a dream". My neighbor was singing karaoke. The tender charm was so intoxicating.
  
Translation software is more effective than English. Only when you translate it directly into Vietnamese will they know that you want to order food. You can’t figure it out just by looking at your gestures. The Vietnamese nation has no body language habits. The tour guide said that Vietnamese has seven tones, and his daily speech is like singing. Right, the strong flavor of folk songs under the skyscrapers, the folk singers in the modern city.

Is it a truly modern city?

As for the city, my first impression was that it was dirty and messy.
  
It's so dusty. You must wear a mask when you go out. I got a lot of acne on my face. I feel so sad and regret it. A modern and luxurious building in the CBD, next to a simple outdoor vegetable market. This visual contrast can be seen everywhere in Vietnam. I obviously saw a garbage truck when I came home at four in the morning, but when I woke up the next day and walked around, it was a mess again. The stall was right next to the trash can, with broken chopsticks, dirty plastic bags and unknown water stains underfoot.
  

Beside the Financial Tower is a dilapidated residential building

Gas Station, this is a very magical place, it He actually squatted at the intersection. Everyone stopped at the Zhengzheng intersection to refuel. Have you seen it? The tour guide told me that this kind of gas station has been around for several years. I asked if I was afraid of an explosion. The shops on both sides were not five meters apart and there must be people using mobile phones. He said he had never seen an explosion.
  


Backpacker Street is longer and noisier than Khao San Road in Thailand. It always attracts tourists along the street, but here comes the magical place again. The entire street is filled with motorcycles and is so congested that it is even scarier than the domestic subway. There is no separate lane. Look at the picture, where I am standing, in front of me are two motorcycles driving in the opposite direction. That night was Halloween, and I walked at a slow pace. Every step I took made my head hurt.
  


There is also this shabby place. The food stalls with performances along the street don’t even accept anyone. If you want to walk over to find a seat and sit down, you will be pulled out directly. I can’t tell the difference. Is it discrimination against singles or against locals (because of Asian faces?). A roadside youth hostel advertises a stay as low as US$6 a night, a full-body massage for the same price, and a dish and a soup at a restaurant for the same price.
  
Consumption here is probably the cheapest in convenience stores, with a box of milk starting at 8-9k, and drinks starting at 1W, which is not as cheap as you think. Prices in non-CBD areas of domestic second-tier cities and first-tier cities.
  
Order a cup at the cafe, 4.9W. Buy a pair of shoes, 22W. Buy a T-shirt, 7W. The motorcycle fare is 1W-3W within three kilometers, and the taxi fare is 1.5-2 times. Take a cold medicine, 1.5W roadside stall fried noodles, 3.5W museum tickets, 4W masks retail pack of five pieces, 1W bracelet, 2.5W bullets, 10W, yes, I went to a military market, and there were real bullets for sale, although I couldn’t It was used and modified into a keychain, but unfortunately it was confiscated on the plane.
  

I lost it, only the photo remains


The military market is a hobby distribution center for collectors and gamers

Pastime life, Milk tea shops and coffee shops are scattered in a mess. Just like us, they will come out to play black and white games. I saw it. Everyone likes to sit around on the roadside. Instead of going inside the store, they choose to sit at a roadside stall, sitting along the road, occupying the public road, watching the traffic and vacuuming, with Vietnamese hot pot on the small table and small children's stools. Sir, this is our life of eating late night snacks.
  
Nightclub, I went to three bars, a rooftop bar Chili Sky Bar, an open-air bar Yolo, and a The Observatory. Although Yolo is EDM, a lot of it plays hip-hop, which is not my thing. I can only listen and watch the crowd dance. Later, I was called over by a foreign couple to chat, which made it less boring. But being in the open air, with big lights and cool breeze is really refreshing.
  


The Observatory plays Progressive, which sounds like Techno to me. It's composed of non-Cheng synthesizer rhythms, and it's played by a Belgian boss lady. I originally saw the DJ Sessions performance that night on Timetable and thought there was a performance party, but I didn’t expect there were very few people. This website can check the performance information of all nightclubs/restaurants/events in Ho Chi Minh City.


A very light private rooftop Livehouse, I said it was Techno, and my Italian sister said it was Progressive

shades. But, but, but, I won’t go a second time. Because I was robbed, a child about 6-7 years old. He failed because mine was a crossbody bag and he was not as strong as me. I was standing on the side of the road. It was a bit dark, but there were passers-by! He dares to rob it!
  
After shaking off his hand, he looked back at me with a look of wonder why he couldn't grab it. He was not frightened or panicked, and he was not afraid that I would go up and hit him. This was the most chilling thing for me. He was so used to it that he didn't realize that he had committed a crime. He just missed the ball as if he missed it. No referee punished him in the name of justice. If there was, he would definitely run away to avoid punishment.
  
I didn't go to Nha Trang, I heard that the robbery was more serious there.
  
I went to the War Museum the day before and bought two bracelets knitted by disabled people. But the direct impact of the bag grabbing that day was that when I went to dinner the next day, a little girl about 6-7 years old came in and sold wet wipes. I clearly saw her dirty face and innocent eyes, but I couldn't help but He waved his hand to signal her to leave.
Maybe it was only tens of thousands of dong at most, but I showed no mercy and suddenly felt very lost.
  
After being robbed, I no longer want to spend money on this country and people, and I don’t want to increase their tourism GDP. Criminals harm outsiders for personal gain, but in fact they are harming their own people.
  

I was robbed in such a bright and tall shopping mall across the street