Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Koh Samui

Four of us, three stops

In March–April 2018 we traveled this route with another couple, four adults covering a Thai island, Vietnam’s largest city, and Bangkok as a bookend. We started in Koh Samui, moved on to Ho Chi Minh City, and finished in Bangkok — beach time, city history, and a second, different city to close things out.

Koh Samui: beach time first

We began at the Royal Muang Samui Villas on Koh Samui, one of Thailand’s best-known islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Starting with beach time rather than ending with it was a deliberate choice — a few days of doing very little before the trip got busier with city sightseeing further along.

Ho Chi Minh City: history, food, and motorbikes

From Koh Samui we flew to Ho Chi Minh City, staying at Sherwood Suites. Vietnam’s largest city is dense, fast-moving, and genuinely shaped by its history — the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum are both well-known, generally recommended stops for understanding the country’s twentieth-century history, and we found both worth a proper unhurried visit rather than a quick pass-through. Beyond the history, Ho Chi Minh City runs on street food and motorbike traffic in equal measure; crossing the road takes a bit of nerve the first few times, and the food scene, from street stalls to sit-down spots, is a real highlight of visiting.

The sheer volume of motorbikes moving through the city’s streets and intersections is something photos don’t quite prepare you for, and there’s a particular technique to crossing — walking at a steady, predictable pace and letting the traffic flow around you — that takes a bit of nerve to trust the first time but works remarkably well once you commit to it. Between the history sites and the street-level chaos, Ho Chi Minh City gave the trip its most intense, memorable stretch.

Bangkok: temples and river life

We closed the trip in Bangkok at The Quarter Saladaeng. Bangkok’s major temples — Wat Arun across the river, Wat Pho with its enormous reclining Buddha, and the Grand Palace complex — are all genuinely worth the crowds they draw, and seeing them after Ho Chi Minh City’s more modern intensity gave the trip a different kind of city energy to end on. The Chao Phraya river runs through the middle of it all, with boat traffic and riverside temples giving Bangkok a different rhythm from the motorbike-driven streets of Ho Chi Minh City, and the street markets scattered through the city rounded out our last days with easy, low-key wandering.

Taking one of the river ferries along the Chao Phraya turned out to be one of the better ways to see several of the temple sites in a single morning, hopping off at different piers rather than crossing the city by road each time. It’s a cheap, practical way to get around that also happens to give some of the best views of the riverside temples as you pass.

Traveling as two couples

Doing this trip with another couple changed the planning in small but real ways — more conversation about pace, more compromise on which sights mattered most to whom, but also built-in company for exploring unfamiliar cities at night, which felt like a fair trade. It’s worth going into a trip like this with some flexibility already agreed on, since four adults rarely want to do exactly the same thing at exactly the same pace every day.

What tied the three stops together

Koh Samui gave us beach time and a slow start, Ho Chi Minh City gave us history and food and genuine sensory overload, and Bangkok gave us temples and river life as a calmer, more traditional close. Three very different registers, but each one earned its place in the itinerary.

Practical notes

This region runs hot and humid regardless of the season, so pack for heat whether you’re traveling in the dry months or not. Domestic and regional flights connect these stops reasonably cheaply and frequently, which made a three-stop, two-country itinerary like this straightforward to piece together without much advance complexity.

[Editor’s note: add what this trip actually meant to you both — traveling as two couples, the Ho Chi Minh City history, the Bangkok temples, whatever stood out most — and swap in your own photos when ready.]