I wanted to go to Laos. It was the second-to-last country in Southeast Asia that I had not visited (apart from East Timor), and it was sitting as on my map as a hole that needed to be filled; however, to get to Laos from Vancouver I would have to fly through somewhere else in Southeast Asia. I decided to fly through Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a place I had been to before, but was happy to revisit.
I would only have a little bit more than 24 hours in Ho Chi Minh, but that was more than enough to soak up a bit of atmosphere and food since my last trip to Vietnam in 2013.
I flew direct Ho Chi Minh from Vancouver and landed late morning. Things had changed since I was last there; last time I had to send my passport away to the embassy in Ottawa to get a visa. This time, I had to only do an e-visa online, which was quick and painless. It was not painless in terms of the giant queues at the airport for people with their e-visas, but I paid a little bit extra to have somebody walk me to the front of the queue. When they first approached me about this, I thought it was a scam, but it was well worth it as it probably shaved about an hour off my airport time.
I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel. I was staying at Little Saigon Boutique Hotel. It was small and located in the interior of one of those dense city blocks in Ho Chi Minh where if you can penetrate the perimeter buildings to get to the centre of the block, there’s a reasonably pleasant network of alleyways, hidden coffee shops, residences, and small hotels. This place was great. It was walking distance to pretty much everything that I wanted to do, it had free Wi-Fi, comfortable beds, an astonishingly good free breakfast, and I had my own room and a private bathroom. It was about $50 CDN per night. There were cheaper options, but after such a long flight I didn’t want to bother with hostels or staying further out of the city centre. I thought this place was ideal and was a welcome change from the egregiously overpriced hostel dorms in Barcelona and Stockholm that I had experienced on my last trip abroad.
I had an agenda visiting Ho Chi Minh City this time. There were no touristy things that I hadn’t done that I felt like I needed to do, and while I wanted to casually revisit a couple of sites, the main thing was I wanted to check out was Ho Chi Minh’s cigar lounges. Last time I went to Ho Chi Minh I did smoke, however, I was traveling with my mother and I did not visit any cigar lounges. Since then I’ve heard tales of an opulent and impressive La Casa Del Habano in Ho Chi Minh and I wanted to check it out.
I left my small hotel and went for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood, passing some familiar buildings and squares. The city felt a little bit different than I remembered it. My memories of Ho Chi Minh were of a city that felt very exotic and where the streets were so thick with humming scooters, that one could barely cross the street. It didn’t feel that way this time. I must acknowledge it in the last 12 years since I was there, I’ve been to many more places in the world and perhaps it just didn’t seem as different to me as it did before. However, it’s also possible that the city too has changed. In talking to some locals, they said that there are fewer motorcycles now and more cars and that the city is more affluent. Whatever the change, it felt good, if less exciting.
I stopped by the market for a bowl of vegetarian pho with some murderous chili peppers in it and it cost me a couple of dollars for this exquisite dish. I say murderous chili peppers because while I am someone who can usually eat and indefinite amount of extra hot chili peppers without any reaction, I put several of these raw chili peppers into my soup and when the liquid splashed on my face and hands, I felt like it was on fire.
I was walking around the city and looking for a place to grab a cup of coffee and found on my map a place on an upper floor of a tall building. I decided to go up. As I was walking up the stairs I passed on the second floor a cigar store and lounge called “Siqar Lounge”. I thought I’d done my research and pinned all the cigar stores on my maps but apparently, I had missed this one. It was small and secluded, but very stylishly decorated and had big old windows that opened up and allowed me to look out onto the street where I watched a couple of scantily clad girls engaging in a photo shoot. [2025 Update: this lounge is currently closed according to Google maps.]
I walked around a little more before finally deciding to have something else to eat. I’m not even sure if I was hungry, but it was so hot outside I just wanted to escape for a little bit. I went to a restaurant called Nhau Nhau; i just stumbled across it, but it was excellent. I had some kind of a small curry and a refreshing beverage that was both citrusy and gelatinous.
But I was on a mission, I headed to the La Casa Del Habano that I had heard so much about, but first, just around the corner I found another spot. Bakolan. A dark and romantic little cocktail bar that was virtually empty, and had cigar ashtrays on the table. I went in and had a cigar feeling incredibly sophisticated and relaxed. In doing some reading after the fact, apparently it is a “hostess bar”, but none of the young ladies gave me any attention.
Finally, I went to the La Casa Del Habano. La Casas are an international chain of cigar stores that are effectively all controlled by a cigar consortium in Cuba. Unless you happen to find yourself at an entirely counterfeit La Casa Del Habano, which I have encountered twice, in Colombia and in Iraq, La Casas are reliable for having excellent stock and good product and sophisticated lounges.
A friend of mine, Stripes, with whom I had visited Cuba for a cigar festival about 10 years prior, had recently visited this lounge and recommended it to me as one of the best he had ever visited. It was everything you’d expect a normal La Casa except it had extra touches. The walk-in humidor was two or three stories high, with cigars piled high in storage on the shelves accessible only by a tall library ladder. Once you bought your cigar and moved up to the second floor, which was a well-appointed cocktail lounge, you could look through the glass window and watch the tobacconists scurrying up and down the ladder, fetching boxes of cigars. I bought a Punch Double Corona and a vodka martini and sat there for about an hour or so relaxing. I will say that of all the things that were cheap in Vietnam, the cigars at this store were not it. This little venture cost me about $130.00 CDN for the cigar and the martini. It was worth it, but I wouldn’t make it a regular hangout. (On the upper floors of the La Casa that I did not visit there is a supper club with live music.)
I walked back to my hotel, which was only about a 5-minute walk away, and went to bed. The next day my flight was at 4:00pm and I wanted to leave myself enough time to get through the airport, so I really only had the morning. I went back to the market for some local, exotic fruits and wandered around the city.
I found three more cigar lounges or stores that I didn’t know anything about but due to the early hour both of them were closed. (The Saigon Cigar Club, Habanos Specialist, and the cigar lounge at the Rex Hotel – and these are just the ones near my hotel. There are so many more in Ho Chi Minh.)
I thoroughly enjoyed my walk around the city and thought that I would be happy to return, even if just for the food and cigars. But I was Laos bound on the 4:10pm flight to Vientiane.
