HELLO HO CHI MINH

I have to admit, I had no real knowledge of VIETNAM other than the things I've learned from television (China Beach) and movies (Apocalypse Now, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Chuck Norris Vs. Everything) so when Michelle first suggested going to there, I said "no". Honestly it wasn't very high on my list, I had no desire, even when it's only 2 hours away it still didn't excite me. I asked a few people at work about it and everyone spoke very highly about it but when Wayne mentioned that Ho Chi Minh City has one of the 10 best Hamburgers in the world located there, I started to get interested. We found an extremely good flight and hotel rate so finally I said, "what the hell" and with our friends BARB & BRETT, we chose to visit HO CHI MINH CITY.

First off, Ho Chi Minh is pure chaos, there's 10 million people there and 8 million scooters. Nobody seems to follow any type of road rules and somehow it works: people drive, people ride and people walk without following any sort of laws or structure and it all works. The ride to the Hotel from the Airport took over an hour (it was during Rush hour), for the record, the ride to the airport from the hotel on Sunday afternoon took 20 minutes.

We stayed in District 1 which was an awesome central location, we saw some of the classic sights like the Jade Pagoda, the Reunification Hall, the Rex Hotel, Ben Thanh Market and the eerie Cu Chi Tunnels, they were all cool! The Market was massive and filled with some of the most aggressive sales people I have ever come across. (You buy t-shirt!!!). The Tunnels were a bit spooky as was the cab ride there when the cabbie stated, "oh yeah, this area, VC and America fight everyday, many battles"... hmm, now its a farm and a coffee shop. The Rex Hotel was cool but what made it even better was the Vietnamese Flamenco Band that sung "Hotel California"... what a trip.

Like I said Ho Chi Minh is crazy, it's alive, vibrant, filled with dilapidated buildings and there is construction everywhere. The people are extremely friendly and the food is dynamite, we ate Pho twice and had two great Vietnamese dinners which were out of this world. As for the "world famous" Burger joint? We found it!

Black Cat Burger is somewhat of a legend on this side of the world. In 2006, CNN stated that it was "one of the ten best hamburgers in the world," pretty heavy praise. Some of my co-workers have eaten there and they all concur that it truly is a great Hamburger, so we ofcourse had to try it... three times. I can honestly say that it was a great Hamburger, I had one called the Blues Brother which came with Blue Cheese and Bacon and I loved it. Michelle had a BBQ Burger on Rye which was also excellent. The breakfasts were also tasty, as was the Soft-Shell Crab Spicy Sandwich but I must admit that the Fish Sandwich was a little bland. Overall, I loved it and I don't know if it was the "best" burger I have ever eaten but it definitely was one of the better ones.

So all in all, I am happy I went to Vietnam and got to visit a uniquely crazy city like Ho Chi Minh, next year we will check out Hanoi but for now, you can see the pics from our weekend HERE!