7 Things to do in Saigon

Looking for more of those Vietnam experiences that make you take a moment to scratch your head and marvel at the situation you’ve found yourself in? Fred Bane finds seven mind boggling destinations, all within a day’s travel from Saigon.

Dam Sen Park is Saigon’s take on Disneyland. Hard to miss, with an enormous three-arched red gate heralding the entrance, inside the park guests are welcomed by enormous statues made of china bowls. Standard amusement park fun includes Ferris wheel, roller coaster with a loop-de-loop, a seriously fun aviary, and a fishing hole shaped like Hanoi’s West Lake. But the piece de resistance is Dam Sen’s dinosaurs. The 5000 square meter Cong Vien Khung Long (the same name the film Jurassic Park was given in Vietnamese) houses around 200 model dinosaurs, half of which are animatronic, and the smallest which are between two to four metres tall. After paying and entering you take a riverboat trip to see the things in their ‘natural habitat’. Amazing.

Also technically within the Ho Chi Minh City limits is Monkey Island, on Highway 15. Entrance to the park is only a dollar, and it includes a free bottle of water! Monkeys roam wild inside the park. They approach humans demanding food, shiny things, or sometimes just blood.

For those who are less primate-friendly than they thought, Can Gio, a surprisingly relaxing beach, is 10 kilometres further on the same road and has inexpensive seafood, beer, and Johnnie Walker Black. Though only around 70 kilometers south of the city centre Monkey Island takes over two hours to get to because of the poor road quality and the ferry.

Just outside the city limits on Highway 1 is Suoi Tien Cultural Theme Park. Suoi Tien advertises itself as an ideal place for “gifting yourself a relaxing”, however on the list of the ‘Top 500 Most Relaxing Places In and Around Ho Chi Minh City’, the park rates slightly below the screaming intersection of Hai Ba Trung and Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Streets in downtown Saigon.

The park commemorates significant events in Vietnam’s history, as well as several myths and folktales. It all makes perfect sense to the Vietnamese, but due to its size, grandiosity and completely contextualized meaning, adds up to one of the most disorientating, baffling experiences you can have in Vietnam if you’re a foreigner.

Monuments include the statues of Au Co and Lac Long Quan, the founders of Vietnam; a tribute to the famous General Tran Hung Dao, and statues of the four most important animals in Vietnamese culture - the dragon, the turtle, the phoenix and the lion. However, in addition to things you don’t really understand, there are fun rides, a water park, and a lake where you can fish for crocodiles with hunks of meat for only 2000 VND.

About 100 kilometres northwest of Ho Chi Minh City on highway 22/22B is Tay Ninh City, the seat of the Holy See of Caodaism. Cao Dai, which translates into ‘high platform’, is a religion indigenous to Vietnam with between two to three million followers. Pilloried by Graham Greene in his Vietnam book ‘The Quiet American’, it combines Buddhism, Confucianism and Catholicism, controlled parts of Vietnam’s South during the French Indochina War, and was formally established in only 1926. Its three principal saints are Sun Yat-sen, the leader of China’s 1911 revolution; Victor Hugo, prolific French author most famous for novel Les Miserables, and Nguyen Binh Khiem, Vietnamese political adviser, poet and prophet from the 16th Century.

The religion may be eclectic, but the Holy See is entirely surreal. Part-cathedral, part temple wreathed in dragons and awash in bright colours, its insides decorated with huge windows featuring a lattice work of the worshipped Divine Eye it… it needs to be seen. Not described.

Visitors are welcome at services, provided they are respectful.

Also around 100km from Saigon, but to the northwest is Nam Cat Tien National Park. Made of swamp and jungle, the park covers an area of 74,219 hectares. The jungle is thick and home to over 300 varieties of bird, and 50 species of mammal including the highly endangered Javan Rhinoceros, the Asian Elephant, and tigers. You almost definitely won’t see any. Thanks in part to the destruction wrought by chemical defoliant Agent Orange, dropped during the American War, no foreigner or scientist has ever seen a rhino.

However, there are several attractions in the park, from large trees in primary growth areas of the forest to a lake where once again you can fish for crocodiles (worth it every time). Visitors can’t bring their motorbikes into the park, so you’re stuck relying on guides to run you around in jeeps or canoes. Wait until the dry season to make your trip, unless waterlogged is your thing.

Outside that Alpine lovers’ paradise of Dalat is something… different. In Lang Ga village, known colloquially as ‘Chicken Village’ there is a statue of a giant chicken. There are various theories as to the thing’s genesis, ranging from the idea the government built it to commemorate the brave efforts of the area’s chicken farmers who fought for their country to it being constructed as a draw card for tourists. It might be aliens. Don’t rule them out.

Tourism brought by the odd statue has resulted in the town’s people becoming very aggressive about getting your money. It’s rather like a village-sized Ben Thanh Market. But who could pass up a giant chicken statue in the middle of nowhere?

Approximately the same distance away along highway 1 is Phan Rang - Thap Cham. Phan Rang - Thap Cham is in the middle of the desert, which clashes with images of a Vietnam covered in jungle. The draw of these two towns is the ruins of Cham buildings that lie in and around them. Ruins are extremely well preserved due to the piddling 60cm of rain per year the area gets. The Cham are an ethnic group living in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand; there are currently about 10,000 Cham in Vietnam. The main attraction - a couple of Cham structures about 7km up highway 27 - date back to the 13th century and served as temples to the Hindu Cham (though 80-85% are Muslims). There are statues of Shiva and other Hindu figures inside, along with a phallic symbol with a human face on it.

So there you have it, more or less. Outside the frenetic, tree-lined streets of neon-lit, inner-city Saigon lurks ever-stranger and more intriguing craziness. You’ve been warned.

by: Fred Bane - Path Finder Magazine

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