When I went to visit my friend Shan in Miami last year, he suggested we go for a stroll along South Beach. After 5 minutes under the Floridian sun, I realised that I had placed myself in serious peril. It was Hot. Every single molecule of water in my body was suddenly trying to find a way out at once. It streamed down my back, legs, ears, fingers, completely soaking my clothes. It ran down my face and into my eyes, blinding me. I stumbled forward through the sand, one arm outstretched, the other trying to mop my face and simultaneously hide it in shame from the god-like locals.

Ho Chi Minh City was hotter than Miami.

It was 40 plus degrees in the shade - an airless, claustrophobic heat that pressed down on you under a blanket of smog. The only breeze came from passing mopeds.

Our first day in the city we set off at 0800, and already the tarmac was shimmering. We got a couple of hundred metres from our front door before a taxi-driver spotted our T-shirts stuck to our backs and lured us into his air-conditioned car. This reprieve probably made things worse when he dropped us off in the north of the city 10 minutes later. It was a like stepping into a furnace.

We were trying to get to the Jade Emperor or 'Ghost' Pagoda – a temple you visit to bribe the gods of the afterlife into going easy on you - but we just couldn't find the place. We staggered around the neighbourhood in ever-expanding circles for about an hour, trying to find it. A couple of guys working in a street-side garage watched with widening smiles as we walked past them three times – each time a little redder in the face and a little soggier.

Finally asking for directions, a friendly drive-through mango juice saleswoman pointed us in the right direction. Unfortunately, aside from a few comedy carved statues – gurning demons with farming tools – the temple was a bit of a let down. The most interesting thing there was a small dog who had hidden himself behind some old chairs so that he could growl in a ghostly fashion at anyone with the nerve to enter his domain.

From there we decided to walk (Why? WHY?!) the 7 blocks down to the museum formerly known as the 'Museum of American War Crimes' – the War Remnants Museum. I tried to stick to the shade, hopping from shadow to shadow, but was still sopping wet by the time we arrived and had to wait outside till I dried off.

The museum is dedicated to recording and highlighting the inhumanity of the Vietnam War – as long as it's American inhumanity. There were some pretty eye-opening exhibits, but I felt the museum's extreme pro-Communist bias lets it down a little, especially as it's so unnecessary. The most engaging sections were therefore those that didn't need a commentary. One floor was given over to an incredible series of photographs of the Indo-China and Vietnam wars by Larry Burrows, Robert Capa, Sean Flynn and others. We later learned that every photographer featured in the exhibition died in Vietnam or disappeared into Cambodia.

A couple of blocks East of the War Crimes Museum is the most famous sight in Saigon – The Reunification Palace. The former HQ of the South Vietnamese Government, its gates fell to NVA tanks on April 30th 1975, signifying the Fall of Saigon and victory for the North Vietnamese.

The original French Colonial palace was bombed flat in the 60s and rebuilt in a wonderful Ken Adam Bond Villian style, complete with a rooftop disco lounge and an underground bomb-proof command centre. Sandwiched between these two floors, the rest of the building is a combination of clean, bright modernist spaces linking rooms full of 70s kitch – circular leather sofas in the entertaining room, a giant oval conference table with leather armchairs and inbuilt microphones, and lots of muted beige, orange and pea green colours.