Ho Chi Minh City Airport

Technically it's no longer Saigon but Ho Chi Minh City. Live with it folks. A weird fusion of old and new - old hangars possibly relics from the South Vietnamese days and what I can see efforts made to modernise the waiting areas. The aircon was all right and the waiting area was comfortable and bright. There were enough seats and there are 4 big screen TVs in the waiting area to amuse passengers. My main bone to pick was clearing customs entering HCMC. It took me close to 50 minutes to get through! Furthermore it was a counter managed by 2 officers! Frustrating. The service was cold and a tinge of suspicion thrown in - the officers never even broke into a smile or a greeting.

Tan Son Nhat is too small to handle so many flights at a time. My flights back from Bangkok (10:20am) and Hong Kong (10:40am) - (2 times) were later than some earlier flights and thus we were at the back of the lengthy queues - a very amusing notice is that there were 2 immigration officers sitting at every counter but the two checked the same passport of the same only passenger... I wonder why they did not do their job separately as one officer checks one passenger's passport. It took nearly 90 minutes for my queue of 30 passenger to go through the immigration and I was 30th being the last passenger of the queue!

Changing planes at Saigon on transit from Melbourne to Hanoi was a nightmare. The airport was hot and humid with pedestal fans failing in their attempt to keep the heat at bay. The immigration officials did not speak and separated a mother and her 12 year old daughter and made them go through individually. The girl was terrified. There were no instructions as to how to get to our connecting flight. We had to collect our luggage which had been left in a pile in the middle of the entry way re-check it and then find our way through security and customs again to get to our domestic flight. Fly to Hanoi instead.

Saigon Airport is an outdated and undersized facility. The Immigration Hall is so small that it can barely handle one planeload of about 250 passengers. Officers in their smart Vietnamese Army uniforms are cold and indifferent. The airport only has about three jetways and there are few seats available. There is only one large cafe selling overpriced food. The Check-In area is OK at least compared to the horrendous Immigration hall.