Ho Chi Minh City - a normal day...

So today was the first day I dared to take a short walk through the city. Fortunately the Oktoberfest yesterday wasn't too long, and I got home fairly sober. After a short session on the Himlan Driving Range in the morning, I wanted to start my excursions through the city.
I walked from my apartment to Ben Than Market. It's quite funny how often locals are asking you if you want a motorbike. Still, the scooter/motorbike is the number 1 transportation method in Vietnam. Secondly taxis are used rather often as well, since they are affordable.

You basically find them anywhere in the city. And when you are a paleface (western looking), and standing on the sidewalks almost instantly a taxi is showing up and offering its service. Sometimes it's a bit annoying, but when you need it, it's very convenient,

Ben Than Market is a 3 km walk from my current place, so I planned 25 minutes. Well, the sidewalks in Ho Chi Minh city are full of scooters, or small street dealers or scooter workshops, people playing or eating or anything. So it took almost an hour until I reached my goal. That's as well a reason, why you cannot go for a run in the city. The air is bad, due to the exhaust fumes and of course due to the temperature.

On may way I passed by the beautiful Notre Dame church of Ho Chi Minh City

And as well the war museum. One day of course this has to be visited, too.

Will definitely have to go inside one day. It's quite interesting. You see more colonial buildings than traditional vietnamese architecture in HCMC.
Then arriving at the Ben Than Market, you realize, that this is the touristic center of the city. Many tourist groups, or sole tourists.
Ben Than Market is a huge hall with many market stands inside, located basically in the very heart of the city.

Actually it is very busy inside. But mainly tourists are the customers. I didn't feel too comfortable, as the shop owners are very aggressive, and try to talk you into something and even try to literally pull you inside theirs booths. Complete opposite to the Russian Market, where you can browse without being "haunted". The products inside the Ben Than Market seem to be all fakes, where as in the Russian Market you get the chance to get the real stuff. The fake watches looked ok, without looking too close and the prices were reasonable (around 50 USD). Will go there again and perform a deeper check :)!

Once again, the city offers a lot. It's still rather cheap, but prices obviously have increased during the last years, as the economy is growing pretty rapidly. But it's still a long way to go.