Day One: HCMC, Chau Doc

Our flight takes off at 7.50am from the budget terminal at Changi Airport. It's really a SIMPLE airport. Outside, there's only HANS to get your drinks, food. After clearing the customs, there's sports connection, mini toons, some other shops and two other eating places inside. Not bad. Was expecting nothing! hahaha.

Tiger Airplanes are kind of small, but i'm ok. It's only 1h 40mins to HCMC.

We changed a portion of our USD to Vietnamese Dong. The rate is USD $1 to $16,985 dong. I became a millionaire instantly! never seen such BIG notes!

Be careful once you walked out of the airport. The taxi-drivers are vying to get your business. However, to the right, there's a queue of taxis and they seems to 'belong' to the same gang. I showed them an address of the bus company i wanted to go and some are offerring help/ interpretation to the driver. They all charged the same price. It's either usd $12 or $200,000 dong.

Mai Linh Bus
400 Le Hong Phong Street, District 10

Tel 0839292929

M and I arrived at Mai Linh Express Bus company at District 10. It's packed with locals. They are also buying bus tickets. The company has buses going to various provinces in the Mekong Delta and throughout whole of Vietnam. We managed to get our bus tickets for Chau Doc (250km away) at 11am for $110,000 dong each. One driver spoke a bit of english. They took us on a minibus from the office to Mien Tay Bus station, then transferred to another minibus for Chau Doc. The whole journey took about 6h with a toilet break in between. This is consider an express bus already. I read from other sources that it can be a 10h journey! The minibus has AC and numbered seats. It was a tiring ride, mostly because the road conditions aren't exactly good. I find it interesting when the whole bus drove into a ferry to cross the river :) Well, its a novelty for me.

Once we reached the bus station at Chau Doc, a swarm of motorbike taxi drivers surrounded us. We did our research and arrowed on a hotel to try our luck. Some bargaining to get the motorbike drivers (two of them) to pillion the two of us to the hotel for $30,000 dong *total cost.

Trung Nguyen Hotel

86 Bach Dang

The pretty receptionist spoke great english! She smiles very brightly and is very polite. We were lucky they had one room left! We took the last room at the 4th floor for usd $13 a night and went on to climb the flight of stairs.. frankly I'm bashed. The room is small and well-equipped. (AC, hot water, free wifi). Our balcony overlooks the local market.

Something to take note of: In mekong delta, the hotel needs to keep their guests passport. It seems to be the law here. I remembered reading about this somewhere before I came. The receptionist showed me her drawers full of passports so i guess I had no choice too.

After putting down our backpacks and freshen up, we went on to explore a bit of the surroundings and to hunt for our dinner. The location of the hotel is just opposite Cho Chau Doc (which means Chau Doc market). The sun sets pretty early in Vietnam.. around 5plus.. the sky dims.. outside the market, small food stalls were set up. There's Pa Te, different food stuffed into french loaf. Different stall owners came up with their version. Throughout my trip, i had many versions of my french loaves: with quail eggs; with meat balls; with chunks of roast meat; with a kind of paste of intestines stuff; with barbecued pork, etc.

We ate at a small shop near our hotel. Hmm..vegetarian food. The meat is of course not real meat. But their rice vermicelli is very nice! The soup base is sweet and refreshing naturally! I had our first Vietnam coffee (dripping) at this shop too! We spend about $40,000 dong for two mains and one side and coffee.

The time is about 8pm now and its SO dark as if its 10plus back in Singapore. Ok, on to Day Two!