The TikTok Tower of Saigon
Where I’m At: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Travel Reads: Koh Samui Bridge, cool streets, dog-friendly flights, all-you-can-ride Shinkansen deal, and a fun new daily travel quiz.
Greetings from Saigon! Every time I come back I notice more tourists on the street, and the visitor numbers are going up, so this is good news for my friends in the tourism biz. I had some friends from Melbourne visit this week, who were on their first international trip since 2019. It was good to play tour guide again to visiting friends.
In the time that I was away, one of the city towers had a makeover with a ridiculous amount of LED on the windows. I made a hyperlapse video here. This might end up being one of the most TikTikked buildings in Southeast Asia, so I am calling it the TikTok Tower of Saigon. I rarely look at TikTok, but I made a video on my @futuresoutheastasia account. I am also on TikTok for @nomadicnotes. I don’t post there either, but you never know, maybe one day I will get inspired to post more.
[IFC One Saigon.]
This week was reminded by Facebook that it was the 10-year anniversary of when I arrived in Saigon for a one-month visit. I post that on Twitter.
Latest posts at Nomadic Notes
I’ve been working on some travel guides that are taking longer than a week, so no new posts this week. One of my publishing rules is that I must publish something new on Future Southeast Asia, so this week I made a fact sheet about the proposed Koh Samui Bridge. If this bridge happens it will be weird to be able to say “I’m getting the bus to Koh Samui”. Then again, it might have been weird to say “I’m getting the bus to Penang” when the first Penang bridge opened in 1985. For reference, the second Penang bridge (24 km) is longer than the proposed Samui bridge (18 km).
Travel reads
• The Himalaya's hidden 'paradise valleys'
• 48 Hours in any Southeast Asian city, other than the one you (an expat) live in.
• The enduring echoes of Moorish Spain
• 50 dogs join owners on pet-friendly flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai
• This luxury hotel in Malaysia will have two Boeing 747 aircraft parked by its artificial lagoon
• The 33 coolest streets in the world
It is of course impossible to rank streets by coolness, but I am interested to see what makes a good street in terms of urban planning. Melbourne and Bangkok are places I am most familiar with that made the list.
• Tokyo's mini-gardens are more than patches of green
• These are the 10 most bike-friendly cities in the world (and 9 of them are in Europe)
• Ladakh’s most offbeat yet beautiful places
Travel quiz
• Can you guess the mystery place of the day in 5 turns? Following in the footsteps of other Wordle-inspired travel quizzes is the new travel quiz Wherdle:
“After every guess, you will be shown a hint indicating how far you were from the correct place and which direction you should be heading.”
🚆Train travel
• All-you-can-ride Shinkansen deal coming to Japan for a limited time
If you can get to Japan, then this is something to look out for.
• Canada might be getting a 1,000 km/h vacuum-tube train
✈️ Air travel
• Inside Flightradar24, the website that tracks every plane in the sky
The Nomadic Notes Travel Newsletter is a weekly newsletter of the best travel reads and interesting travel news from around the web, and random ramblings by the editor.
- James Clark