Venue: Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City
Date: 15-16 August
It wasn’t so easy when it came to this trip to Vietnam, it was quite eventful, but it all turned out quite well, lucky for us! It was my first time to Vietnam, people told me that it would be a boring trip but the other said the exact opposite, finally I’ve got the chance to see it for myself.
Starting off by getting Dong, the Vietnam currency, upon arrival. Wow! Suddenly Po, Yan and I became millionaires! Money money money! Our hotel was not an expensive one - we were just some poor backpackers! - therefore there wasn’t any car to pick us up from the airport. After hassling with a local taxi driver, we agreed to pay around HK$70 for a 20 minutes drive to the hotel. Hm, that was the first mistake we ever made in our trip, we gave up asking for further discount too quickly, the hotel manager said we should’ve paid half for the drive from airport to hotel (!!!).
According to the guide book, the hippest bar in town was called Q Bar, Po thought it would be a good idea to check it out.. so we did. Aw. I swear I didn’t enjoy any of that. Well, at least we tried the local beer.
We then headed back to the hotel and slept for the night.
On the next day, first thing first, we went to a street stuffed with travel agencies, originally we were planning to go to Nha Trang on 17th August for a day but there was no seat for the return flight (which comes back to Ho Chi Minh city ridiculously early, leaving at 4pm!), so out of the blue we found bus tickets in our hands to Mui Ne in the afternoon. We always take what we can get, so it was alright.
On the first day, already we saw many “spectacles” in Ho Chi Minh city.
One the top left, there was a homeless man sleeping right under the tall building. The weather was really hot that day, and the sun was burning. Life isn’t so easy in Ho Chi Minh as you can see. On the top right, there were 2 tires appeared out of no where, on the far end there were so many motor bikes… The telephone box on bottom left was a container for rubbish (!!) and the electric wires crawling all over…
We don’t understand any Vietnamese… (actually we do!) whenever we needed help in directions, we just walked right up to people and pointed at our travel guide book, and they showed us the way. In this regard most of them were really helpful, unlike Shanghaiese!
This definitely has something to do with the bad economy.
In Ho Chi Minh they’ve got those mini size traffic lights for bikers. Po’s tall (and she looked like a sailor)!
Right in front of the gothic Cathedral. It was a mimic of the Dotre Dame Cathedral built back in 1877. There were people taking wedding pictures there and many tourists. Shame that we didn’t get a chance to get in, it should be really beautiful inside.
Next to the Cathedral was the Central Post Office. Really French, no? It wasn’t very interesting inside, nothing much to see... but still I got my own souvenir - some very nice stamps :D
And we went to the Reunification Palace which was not so far from the Cathedral and the Post Office. We were in such a hurry (needed to catch the bus to Mui Ne!) so we didn’t really take many pictures… but this is one of the funny ones, we were pretending being ravaged by the tank :p
And the famous Ho Chi Minh, and silly Yan :D
A very nice picture taking in the highest of the Palace. I think it looked quite like the Champs-Elysees in Paris! Most of the buildings in Ho Chi Minh were not so tall.
At 3pm local time, we got on the bus to Mui Ne, talked to a German guy and a local girl on the bus and worried about the weather - it was raining like crazy (and flooded!) on our way to Mui Ne - finally we got there at around 9pm. After swimming in our luxurious hotel, we were so terribly hungry that we went to a nice restaurant nearby - the hotel restaurant was closed by then. Befriended a Vietnamese kid and learned some more Vietnamese :D
After all that, Yan and I got on a taxi to a pub which was closed and Po was already sleeping like a pig in the hotel.
That was when we called it a day.
