Saigon After Dark tour from Ton Bao on Vimeo.
Check out our new video of The Insider’s Saigon tour – by Secret Lab
The Insider’s Saigon – Vietnam Vespa Adventures from Ton Bao on Vimeo.
Saigon motorcycle traffic is, deservedly, some of the most famous (notorious?) in the world, and every visitor with a smartphone or a video-enabled DSLR camera at some point cannnot resist the impulse to capture it on film. We’ve therefore seen a whole lot of amateur video footage of Saigon traffic. And being motorbike-riding residents ourselves, we see it every day from street level.
But we’ve never, ever seen any video footage of local traffic as compelling as this short time lapse, posted 5 days ago to Vimeo by local expat photog Rob Whitworth. Clocking in at a little over two minutes, this amazing piece of work is hands-down the best piece of film on HCMC’s urban pulse we’ve yet run across. Saigon is not a city that’s often described as beautiful, but Rob manages to make it seem that way. Of the short film, he writes: “This time lapse is a culmination of 10,000 RAW images and multiple shoots capturing some of the city’s relentless energy.”
Nicely done, Rob. We look forward to seeing more!
Vocal Locals
Nov 16
It probably goes without saying that most of the guests who join us on our tours are from out of town. But in the past few months we’ve found that more and more of our passengers are locals — people who are living in Saigon and have heard of us one way or another, eager for a chance to see the city with new eyes or to entertain visiting friends and family who’ve exhausted the limited sightseeing options listed in the guidebooks. Nothing makes us happier than to introduce area residents, whether short-term passers-through or long-timers, to a side of the city they’ve never seen before and had no idea even existed.
Last week we were joined by one such local resident named Tim Bishop, who’s here with his wife Lou working with CARE International. Yesterday Tim dropped a very nice post on his blog SaigonSays, in which he gives a full and detailed description of our Saigon Insider’s Tour, complete with an account of the young lady they encountered at the wet market in District 2 who was butchering frogs (now you know why they call it a wet market). Tim and Lou had previously joined us for our Saigon After Dark tour, which places them among the rather exclusive membership of local residents who’ve done at least two of our tours. (We need to come up with a compelling name for this club – suggestions welcome).
Thanks Tim for the excellent post! We hope to see you and Lou on our new Art & Architecture tour once we have it up and running in a few weeks!
The friendly drivers of Vietnam Vespa Adventures (©Manjit)
Tattoos have not traditionally been looked upon in Vietnam with much regard, but in the past year or so a few tattoo and piercing shops have opened in the Pham Ngu Lao ward where backpackers tend to congregate. You also see increasingly more young Vietnamese kids wearing them, which surely drives their parents berzerk (which is probably the point in many cases).
In late September we received an email from Stuart Vella, a guest on our October 2 tour to Nha Trang, who asked where he could get a tattoo in Saigon. Not unusual, in itself, but what really got our attention was his choice of artwork. What Stuart specifically asked was: “Where can I get your logo tattooed on my arm when I arrive in Vietnam?”
We could hardly believe our ears. But it was true, Stuart Vella was so juiced about the tour he was about to take with us that he wanted a tattoo of our logo on the inside of his right upper arm. We were able to direct Stuart to the new Saigon Ink on De Tham Street, just up the street from Cafe Zoom, and the rest is - well, you can see the result for yourself in the attached photos.
We like our corporate slogan, “The ride of your life.” But Stuart Vella took it literally, bless the man. That’s what we call brand loyalty. (We’re also pretty crazy about the custom helmet Stuart crafted for himself. We’re thinking about making these compulsory on all future tours. The custom helmets, not the tattos, though it is something worth considering..)
The French Connection
Oct 31
We’ve lately found ourselves awash in awesome post-tour videos shot and produced by guests who’ve joined our longer multi-day trips to either Mui Ne or Nha Trang. We don’t know if this is because of the proliferation of HD-enabled smartphone cameras out there, the availability of online video editing software, or just that film-school wannabees are drawn to our tours. Whatever the reason, we couldn’t be happier about it! This latest video is surely one of the better efforts we’ve seen. It comes to us from Marine Bourgeois-Potel, who joined our 7-day Nha Trang adventure with a passel of French-speaking amis and posted this last week. Merci, Marine!
Can this be true? Just a couple of months ago — maybe even less than that — we were celebrating 2,000 page likes at our Facebook page. And now we check in on an otherwise ordinary Sunday morning to find that we had 98 new fans over the weekend, putting us at 3,029! We wish we could give every one of them a big group hug. Thanks everyone!
More Video!
Oct 29
Andrew Percy and Christopher Marsh joined our Oct. 12 Nha Trang Coastal & Highland Adventure earlier this month, and last week Andrew shared the below video (in super-duper HD) with us. Sit back, put a bag of popcorn in the microwave, and enjoy 16 minutes of hi-definition adventure.
In Moving Pictures
Oct 22
Former guest and now new friend Tony Brinsdon may not be a world champion speller, but he’s put together one heck of a video about his recent trip on our 7-day Nha Trang Coastal & Highland Adventure. Kudos, Tony!
The Kids Are All Right
Sep 19
Last Saturday, the whole VVA team cruised out to Saigon’s District 2 where we set up a booth and a dazzling display of promotional materials at The Deck for their quarterly Bazaar @ The Deck, where a horde of regional vendors decamped on the swank grounds of the riverside restaurant/bar to ply their wares in front of the local Anh Phu and Thao Dien residents. We rubbed elbows with custom tailors and adventure trek services, makers of gecko-shaped refrigerator magnets (bought one) and handbags crafted from recycled plastic shopping bags (bought two), vendors of T-shirts bearing images of historic Vietnam and hawkers of tiny, self-contained herb gardens. But mostly we chatted up people walking into and out of the event and gave free Vespa rides around the neighborhood to their kids. That’s what we were there for, after all – to let these fine folk know about the superlative services we offer, and to give free rides. All in all it was a terrifically successful day — if you count success in promotional vouchers handed out and enormous smiles on kids’ faces, which we do.
