The sights in Saigon vary from tall skyscrapers to vendors carrying heavy loads of vegetables which may have come from Da Lat.
When I first arrived in Saigon, I went right to the hotel at which I had made a reservation. This hotel - highly touted by the guidebooks - was expecting me. I had called the day earlier, told them that I would arrive at 2:00 p.m., and I would call if I was running late. Well, I should have told them a later time (say 4:00 p.m.) and not promised to call.
I thought that it would be reasonable for our bus to cover the 140 miles from Da Lat to Saigon in six hours. Of course, we would wait for passengers to board and stop three times along the way, stopping once for lunch. But, six hours sounded reasonable to me. When we reached the six hour point, I was still on the bus. Even worse, at our next stop, I did not know how to find a phone. So when I arrived in Saigon, two hours later (total travel time being eight hours), they had already given away my room.
At the bus' stop, we were left on De Tham street right in front of all the cheap hotels. Hotel hawkers begged me to stay in their hotel. While I reassembled my bike, I confidently told them that I had a reservation elsewhere. So, you can imagine my embarrasment when I had to return to those very same hotels and asked for a room. Mind you, I didn't take the first room I saw (the room above the hair salon). Instead, I took the room in the second hotel, the "better" hotel, the hotel at the TM Brother's Cafe and Tourist office (228 De Tham). Although this was the better room and I was only paying $5 per night, there was no refrigerator, poor A.C., and were those begbugs crawling around?
This room was at the end of the Alleyway. Not available for Rent.
The next day, I set out on a journey to find a better hotel. Wandering down an alleyway, I discovered the Ngoc Minh Hotel located at 283/11-13 Pham Ngu Lau. I would now pay $12 per night, but I would get all the creature comforts as well as breakfast in the morning.
The Roof of Ngoc Minh Hotel had a Nice Porch and Free Breakfast.
The Alleyway as seen from the Roof of Ngoc Minh.
When an address is listed as two numbers separated by a forward slash, the first number is the number where the alleyway is located on the street, for example 283/11-13 Pham Ngu Lau means the alleyway is between number 281 and number 285 on Pham Ngu Lau street. The number after the slash is the location of the business in the alleyway. So 283/11-13 Pham Ngu Lau means that the business occupies the 11th to 13th properties from the entrance to the alleyway. Of course, there always exceptions to these rules and you have to make sure you enter the alleyway from the right direction because some alleyways have more than one entrance.
