Ancient city is a big open air park outside of Bangkok city. The buildings in the park are replicas of the originals and scaled down to smaller size of the original.
Ho Chi Minh City is rather small. The tourist attractions are very close to each other and within 2 days you could have seen all of them. I was in Vietnam during the Christmas and New Year seasons. Though there are celebrations in the city but I did not join in; I just had an early sleep in the backpacker. When I arrived in Ho Chi Mihn I stayed in a wonderful capsule hotel. I also witnessed a graduation in the Independence Palace.
Attractions in Ho Chi Minh
Crossing the road in Ho Chi Minh is a real challenge. You will require great effort and determination as the vehicles could come from any directions. According to the tour guide, out of 2 people in Ho Chi Minh there is one of them riding motorbike. I have done a search from the Internet and found that Ho Chi Minh City has a population of about 7 million and there about 4 million motorbikes on the road each day.
When I was in Hanoi, I took a 3 days and 2 nights tour package to Ho Long Bay. This is a interesting trip if only you do not mind having long waiting time for almost everything. We had one night stay in the hotel in Cat Ba island and another night sleeping in the boat (guess more co-ordination needs to be done). Most of the time we were on the sea. We had our meals on the boat, which included in the package. There was a free flow of beer on the last day.