Routine program of all tours to Vietnam after arrival at Tan San Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City starts with clients transfer to their hotel. Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, is a center of commerce, finance, culture and tourism in Vietnam. This bustling metropolis, a contradiction of its northern counterpart, Hanoi, is crowded with bicycles and motorbikes, teeming with shopping area and sidewalk cafés.

If the clients aren’t too tired after their overseas flight, they are taken to walk around the downtown to explore the city centre.

Nothing wrong with that except that one of the first sites to explore becomes the now-demolished wartime American Embassy, which is then followed with a visit to the the Reunification Palace, the former residence of the President of South Vietnam until end of April 1975, and so tourists on their very first day immediately get their fill of war-related sites.

Next day the tourists may be taken to Chu Chi tunnels, another war time relic, which fills a better part of the day. While the tour may eventually include some beautiful French colonial structures including the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Old Sai Gon Post Office, even a stop  the bustling Ben Thanh Market, then it’s back to war-related sites, the War Remnant Museum. The tour thus becoms a tour of Vietnam’s pagodas and battlefields.

Many continue on tours to Cambodia, arriving at the capital of Phnom Penh, which was once considered the loveliest city of Indochina. Despite its recent turbulent history, it still maintains considerable charm and sites to see are the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, the most sacred shrine in the country, the legendary temple of Wat Phnom, and then if not earlier it’s right on to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and other Killing Fields sites where many Cambodians were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Many tourists are interested to see these sites but there are also some that aren’t. Among them are those that during the draft era of the Vietnam war were “consciences objectors”. Their absolute non-violent nature, would not fight or shoot a gun even in self defence, was so strong that if unable to beat the draft they left for Scandinavia, India, even Africa, and some did not return back to US for as long as 10 years, long after the war ended.

For this reason, their utter distaste for the war and not wanting even to hear the word “war”, anything referred to “during the war”, are also among those that tour Vietnam and Cambodia but they are honestly coming to Vietnam to experience the culture and nolt to re-connet with the war they opposed.

Of course deep down they know that the war is ever present in one form or another in these countries even today.

Perpahs in their case the tour guide should be instructed not to vist Reunification Palace or War Remnant Museum and instead add for more temples, sites such as Xa Loi Pagoda and the Jade Emperor Pagoda in Saigon. He can also suggest more of local daily life sites, markets, even craft and cooking classes.

Focusing on food is always good and taking the clients to some fine top-end restaurants in town, for example Mandarine Restaurant and Temple Club in Saigon, will always strikke the right cord with such tourists. Needless to say visit to small arts and crafts studios and shops is also a good program.

In Phnom Penh Malis Restaurant is a simialar nice place to visit, although a good tour guide can also take them to scares of other simple but good eatieries in the city. Great place to visit in Phnom Penh is Friends Restaurant, and one not to miss in Siem Reap is Sala Bai.

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