Vietnam Trip - Day 1

Posted by miel

May 5, 2008

Teng and I went on a trip this 5-1 holiday. We left Shanghai on the 29th April and arrived in Vietnam the next day. The trip was planned 2 weeks to departure. We paid 1000rmb for taxes in total for the trip. Yes, the air ticket was free. Haha, why so? I got this Star Alliance card, which had me accumulating mileage points over the years when I travel. So I took out some point and redempt for two tickets to Vietnam. Mind you, the trip didn’t come cheap for the points. I took out a total of 140k in mileage points for this trip, enough to set me off to Greece for two(our dream destination). It is suppose to cost only like 80k for the trip, but because of some crazy calculations by United Airlines, 80k becomes 140k because there was no direct flight, there was no more economy seat x2, so I ended up forking out 60k more as I need to transit.

Putting that aside, the trip was enjoyable. We took Singapore Airlines for both trips to transit in Singapore and Vietnam. The air crew refused us to sit together, even though there was an empty seat beside Teng, but few minutes before the plane landed in Singapore, they were nice enough to let me sit beside Teng.

We arrived in Vietnam, HCM, around 10am local Vietnam time, took our backpack and head off outside. As we did not have any Vienam currency with us, we went off to a nearby ATM to take out some cash. 2kk dong was all we took. We tried to look for a local bus to the city, but many locals kept telling us “No bus, no bus, only Taxi, cheap cheap 6 USD only”. We were quite fustrated, but a nice guy working at the airport managed to show us the direction to the local bus though. “Here no have, go domestic airport, there bus 152″. So you see, the Vietnamese isn’t really lying. There was no bus at the international airport, you just need to walk like 300 metres to the domestic airport, where you can take a bus for 3000 dong instead of paying 100,000 dong via taxi to the central.

We arrived at the City. Started raining. We settled and ate lightly at a kopi-tiam. There, we were greeted by a waiter who can speak Melayu pretty well. Vietnam is not really cheap. Maybe because I just got out from China, and I continue to calculate any conversion rates in RMB. We got ourselves a crab soup and rice noodle. Total 60k dong.

When it stopped raining, we went off to find a hostel to stay. After going in and out of hostels asking for a price and taking a looka looka, we settled with one for 15USD. Bought our bus tickets to Mui-ne for 220k (at first 320k) at Singh Cafe for day 2, and we head off to the central.

We went off for some food first. Pho 2000. Very famous. Vietnamese always like to go hoo haa Bill Gates ate there before. Its their pride. We begin our first picture taking at the restraunt.

Settling off with a nice cooling local fruit cocktail

In case you want to know where to eat when you are in HCM. the tissue got address on it.

We ordered a normal beef noodle soup and one sweet and sour shrimp soup plus drink for 62k dong.

It was holiday in Vietnam from 30 Apr - 1 May. On 29 Apr, the Olympics 2008 passed through Vietnam. Everything went pretty smoothly, much to the joy of the Chinese holding the event this year.

Saigon Beer, very interesting Asian beer, not good when not cold and flat though.

Along the way, we walked past the parliament area, the Notradame Cathedral, and the local Post Office. We kept walking till night time, looking for seafood, but apparently everywhere is expensive. In the end we ended up eating near the Central Market, some seafood. Spent like 229k in total. Not much, but seafood is something we missed so much after spending many years in China.

Cheerios. Day 2 coming soon!