Sunday 30th October 2022
Today is our last day in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon, and I’m actually very sad to leave it – I’ve enjoyed this hectic city much more than I’d expected to.
Our next destination is Nha Trang, which I’d initially thought we should fly to. However, flying with the budget airlines is a lot of hassle – unless we wear loads of clothing and fill our pockets with our heaviest items, our bags are over the meagre 7kg carry on limit. Plus we’d need to ditch the full size toiletries that we’d purchased in Cambodia. And I like the idea of travelling through the whole of Cambodia and Vietnam overland. There’s a train that leaves Saigon at 4pm, so we’ll get most of the day to sightsee. It doesn’t get into Nha Trang until midnight, so it’s a long journey, but it’s cheap and will be an experience if nothing else.
Our plan for the day was to visit the Independence Palace then take a walk along the river. We checked out if the hostel, left our bags there, and walked to the Independence Palace. It’s a very impressive building from the front, and has a beautiful fountain in front of it.
There’s an audio guide for the Palace, which you have to pay extra for, and which we decided to get. It’s not strictly necessary as there are a lot of text information panels in both Vietnamese and English throughout the building. The audio guide goes into a lot more detail though, so I personally thought it was worth the extra dong.
Inside of the Palace is vast, and it’s still laid out in the same way as when it was the residence of Ngô Đình Diệm, the President of South Korea.
It was very interesting wandering through the ornate and majestic rooms – it’s truly a luxurious Palace!
On the top two floors were the private living quarters. The bedrooms were laid around a central courtyard with a water fountain feature, that was open to the air. I loved the design and if ever I build my own house may well copy the rooftop courtyard idea.
We also got to see the original helicopter, sat on its helipad. They’d marked in red the spots where the bombs had been dropped by two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots.
Below the palace is a bunker, which was way larger than I was expecting and very interesting to visit.
It took quite a while to walk around the Independence Palace, so we had a coffee break in the cute little cafe. It has nice views overlooking the palace grounds, so was a good spot to relax.
There’s a museum next to the Independence Palace, which is an optional extra in the ticket price. We’d paid for entry, and I’m glad we did. It wasn’t as visually impressive as the palace but gave much more insight into the historical background. I found it fascinating.
By the time we’d been round the museum it was getting to mid-afternoon so we headed to a supermarket to stock up on snacks and wine for the train – a French Vietnamese fusion feast of fresh bread (from a Bahn Mi shop), cheese, ham, crisps, and red wine.
On the way we couldn’t resist getting another Bahn Mi to share as a snack, from the very first fried fish place we went to when we arrived in Saigon.
We then walked back to our hostel, picked up our bags, and ordered a Grab car to take us to the station, which arrived within minutes. We got to the station with plenty of time to spare, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out train ready and waiting for us.
We’d booked 2nd class seats with air con. I was impressed by how comfortable the seats were and how much leg room – definitely a big step up from the long train we’d taken in Cambodia from Battambang to Phnom Penh.
The other two options we’d had (but chosen not to book) were 1st class sleeper berths and 3rd class seats. The 1st class sleepers (which formed the majority of carriages) looked very nice and comfortable, but for a daytime journey I’d prefer to be seated. The 3rd class carriage was definitely less comfortable looking than ours, but still looked ok.
We’d bought our own food and drink onto the train, but we needn’t have bothered. Soon after we left, a drinks and snack trolley came down the train, closely followed by one selling ears of corn.
Pete was just about to open our bottle of wine, when I noticed (what I though was) a ticket inspector coming down the aisle. When travelling on foreign trains, I’m always slightly nervous about contravening any rules against drinking alcohol, so suggested we wait until the ticket inspector passed. As it transpired however, she wasn’t a ticket inspector but someone selling meal tickets, which pretty much everyone except us seemed to be purchasing. Shortly after, a trolley with some kind of hot meal served with rice passed by to serve them their pre-purchased meals (as an aside, we then noticed a lot of people drinking beer, which was indeed also sold on the train, so our wine was actually well within the rules)
As the journey progressed, various other trolleys passed through the carriage, including boiled eggs, popcorn, pot noodles, and grapes! At the end of each carriage were water machines dispensing both hot and cold water, so a lot of people took advantage of the (Vietnamese version of) pot noodles!
I was also pleasantly surprised that the toilets were very clean (no toilet paper, but I’ve been carrying my own around with me so wasn’t a problem), and the air conditioning and lights worked! After our Cambodian train, where we sat in the dark for pretty much the whole trip, this did seem a real possibility. And when the the train pulled into a station at 7.45pm and all the lights went out, I was a little worried. Pete said it was because it’s a sleeper train, so maybe it’s now bedtime? Seemed a little early to me, and fortunately it turned out to be just a blip as 10 minutes later full electricity was resumed!
A couple of hours later, another trolley came down the carriage – this time with blue train blankets. I was tempted to take one, until Pete pointed out it was 24 degrees Celsius (the air con had switched itself off by this point). Apparently this is cold for the Vietnamese though, and a lot of people took advantage of the blankets.
The journey was very pleased and actually passed by a lot quicker than I’d expected. We arrived in Nha Trang just after midnight and got our Grab to the DTX Hotel Nha Trang where we were staying. We’d gone for a more expensive hotel (a whole £22!) and felt very luxurious, with a gorgeous view over the seaside. I felt slightly sad we wouldn’t have much time to enjoy it.
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 