Day Eight (final day) !!!

Woke up at 7am again.. The weather seems slightly better. We wandered around, took some photos then went back to check out and arrange taxi etc.

We proceeded to Highland Coffee (cos there's AC and near our hotel) to laze the next 2hours away before we took a cab to the airport. Well, can see how sian I got and how tired I am...

3.30pm and we are off to the airport. We took the 5.25pm flight back to Singapore.

This concludes my South Vietnam trip. I'll try to visit Vietnam again if I have the chance! :D

Day Seven: HCMC

We set off at 7am to explore the city. After having pho and coffee for breakfast (I still prefer the food at Chau Doc), we set off to take a bus to Cho Cholon. Bus no 1 took about 20mins to reach Cholon Bus Station. The bus station at district 1 is just opposite Ben Thanh Market. Its's easy to spot. No worries. There's signs above that lists the bus number and their destination. I'm impressed with the bus system :p You can go anywhere! There's buses to Mien Tay Bus Station too. So, you can actually just go Mekong Delta like that!

There's a bus conductor onboard. He'll come to you to collect the fare of $3000 dong. The market is just across the street. Cholon is where chinatown is, thus you will see many stalls selling liang cha, incense, etc.

So, we explore the market, explore the neighbouring streets and took the same bus back to District 1.

We went to Pho 2000 for lunch and laze there for around 2h. It's not because the food is nice, but rather this place has AC. HCMC is SO hot and humid! I've never sweat so much for the past 6 days! Its rather uncomfortable. Oh, pho 2000 boast of the place where the president dine. You'll see several photos of Bill Clinton having his meal here on the walls here.

For dinner, we decided to try out Lemongrass (also recommended by Lonely Planet). However, I have conveniently left my LP in the hotel.. and based on memory, I thought I can find Lemongrass.. After an hour of walking, I have to admit defeat. Luckily there's a tourist information office nearby and we went in to ask! It's just two streets away!

Lemongrass Vietnamese Cuisine

* 4 Nguyen Thiep St. District 1. HCMC Tel 848.38220496

* Palace Hotel Saigon (14th floor)

56-66 Nguyen Hue Blvd. District 1. HCMC Tel 848.38291520

The one at Nguyen Thiep St is the original one. However, they are full for the night. Thus the staff kindly directed us to their branch at Palace Hotel Saigon. Well, its a blessing in disguise :) The view is good from the 14th floor and it certainly looks very posh. We ordered 4 dishes and a bottle of wine. Total bill is about usd $40. hahaha. even cheaper than my french dinner last night!

We did explored Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office. The weather sucks.. sky gloomy and lots of tourists around. Below is just pics inside the Post Office. Tomorrow I'm determined to go try taking Notre Dame again...hopefully the sky will be better.

Day Six: Vinh Long to HCMC

We walked from our hotel to the bus station and reached there at about 7.30am. We waited a while then an uncle motioned us to a minibus. Wow. This is the newest one we've saw so far. Spacious and clean. Smells new too! The bus took us to another street and the driver motioned us to get down and take a seat. This place seems to be the central office of this bus company. They seems to be running a courier service or some sort. Throughout the 20 mins, we watched many, MANY motorbikes coming in and out to drop or pick up parcels.

Finally, our minibus came back with more passengers (fr other parts of Vinh Long town maybe) and we are off to HCMC. We passed by the cabled My Thuan Bridge. Think its the nicest looking around bridge already.. but I couldn't get a photo of it.

If i ever visit Vinh Long again, I'll not get a tour. Its possible to just go to An Binh Island and find a homestay and rent a bike and explore the island by yourself! M felt that we had cycled too fast round the neighbourhood that we missed out things.. ya. i agreed. The locals are very simple (on An Binh island).. when we stopped to take pictures, some of them came out of their houses, looking at us curiously. hahaha.

The bus ride is uneventful.. maybe cos we are both tired.. I didn't take much note of the journey too. Anyway, you know when you reached hcmc, the traffic is more heavy :( more buildings, around less trees.. everyone seems crowded. We reached our stop ie. the bus company office in district 5 of hcmc. Once you get down, a swarm of motorbikes drivers surrounded you again. M and i quickly get our bags and head off first. We walked a little then decided to find lunch, to settle down, to plan our route (how to walk to district 1).

We started walking to Pham Ngu Lao Street. Frankly, I'm becoming more sian. Its very city and I don't feel enthusiatic anymore. We reached District 1.. It's very evident with lots of tourists walking around. Lots of locals trying to get you a room also. We went to view one which looks quite dodgy..although its cheap, we decided to try our luck at other places.

Oh, Hong Hoa Guesthouse seems very nice, from the lobby and the convenience of having free internet and a minimart just at ground level! A pity they are full for the next 2 nights. Finally we settled down in Quyen Thanh Hotel. Downstairs, its a shop selling lacquerware. We got a fairly big room for usd $20 a night. The decor is kind of 'obiang'. Bathroom has those olden green & red tiles. Anyway, I didn't took any photos of this room.

Quyen Thah Hotel

212 De Tham St. District 1. Ho Chi Minh City.

We went to Ben Thanh Market to do some touristy shopping.. you know, had to buy some souvenirs back... I don't like the market.. I don't like bargaining too. After buying the 'necessary' stuff, we head off.

Things are generally 2 to 3 times more expensive here, compared to the delta. We tried the coffee, the food, the flavour is just not there. Disillusioned, I decided to better spend our money on not-so local food. We set off to find a nice french restuarant near Thai Van Ling Road, according to lonely planet. We passed by the City Hall, went to the ferry terminal, experienced great traffic jam and crossed the heaviest traffic of my entire trip! Night falls and worn-out, we finally decided to trot into Bibi for authentic french food. The boss is a french guy who married a Vietnamese wife and proceeded to settle down here. We are very hungry. We had onion soup, steak, salmon, Foie gras, creme bulee, 4 glass of wine! The total bill came up to be usd $87. I wasn't too happy with my Foie gras, but i love the soup and creme bulee and of course, the wine is GOOD!

Ho Kd Bibi

17A6 Le Thanh Ton. District 1. HCMC.

Interesting thing to note: the whole Thai Van Ling road seems to be littered with Korean restuarants. There are several service apartments in this area too. Once you right turned to Le Thanh Ton road, the scene changes to Japanese restuarants! Anyway, these are simply food streets.. with restuarants, pubs etc. Dong Khoi Street is one that is full of boutiques and art studios. You'll find your LV, Gucci, etc here.

We made our way back to the Pham Ngu Lao to retire for the night...

Day Five: Vinh Long

We woke up very early when its still super cold and dark. I didn't sleep much the night before because it was freezing! After our coffee, we took our boat to Cai Be floating market. The boat ride took 1h and its freezing cold on the waters too..


Gradually, the sun rose...

The floating market is not as busy as I thought it is. Even truyen thought its odd. Anyway, we spend sometime roaming around there, then went on to visit some handicrafts village, coconut candy factory, pop rice factory. We spend some time drinking tea, sampling the products and buying stuff. It was quite amazing how they could gauge the temperature of the fire from burning twigs, rice husks, longan husks etc. They can manufacture their products very fast! Really very 'pro'.

some kind of biscuits

netted rice paper (for their popiah)

pop rice

The two ladies 'threading' through the leaves to make the roof of houses.

We went on to visit rice paper factory, fish sauce factory, brick and pottery factory. At the brick and pottery factory, I'm kind of fascinated that the raw material is from the river bed! no wonder there are several cranes on the river. We had a very informative session when truyen explains to us the procedures etc.

So concludes our tour with Mekong Travel when we reached Vinh Long town. Truyen recommended us a cheap hotel to stay for the night and gave us directions to the night market so we can explore tonight. The hotel, Van Tram, is just beside Mekong Travel office! The room is very big with two queen size bed, and with AC, hot water, fridge. The lady charged us $200,000 dong for a night :)

I think i've mentioned before that the local market is near to Mekong Travel office. Even at night, there are many stalls selling fruits, food and many other stuff. We explored the surroundings and went to the bus station to buy our bus tickets to HCMC. There's a staff who can speak some english, so we bought our ticket at $65,000 dong per pax. Buses to HCMC are regularly departing every hour. We bought the 8am bus for the next day. However, the bus only goes to district 5 at HCMC. The uncle pointed to a big map in his office to show us. Well, it doesn't seems that far to walk to district 1 (where the backpackers district is). Luckily, M promptly took a photo of that big map. Back at our hotel, I drew out a map based on her photo and worked out where we should walk to go to district 1 =p kind of exciting ya?

We went to explore the night market too. Its' something like our pasar malam back in Singapore, but minus the food part. They are selling a lot of bags, clothes, shoes, caps, toys, etc etc etc. The area is quite packed with locals too. Think they enjoy shopping here :)

Its a fun experience trying to shop here, especially when they don't speak english and we are trying to bargain. The stall-owners are pretty clever, they took out their stack of cash and pulled out a note to indicate the price for the item i'm inquiring. Then i pointed to another smaller note in order to bargain! :D hahaha. Frankly, I should have brought a notebook + pen to write OR a big calculator! that'll be easier.

In any case, we packed our bags for our journey back to HCMC tomorrow.

Mekong Delta

Arghhh, I should have wrote this first!

But I don't know how to slot this entry in front! *faint*

When you look at the map, Mekong Delta is SO big. In Vietnamese, Mekong means Cuu Long, which means Nine Dragons, as the river branches into nine mouths that empty into the sea.

I printed my Mekong Delta map off ReidOn Travel's website. To travel from HCMC to Ha Tien or Chau Doc in the delta will take up at least half of a day. Thus, we need to plan our route carefully and to decide how much time we want to spend at each place.

After reading through countless blogs online, I thought I'll just concentrate on two or three places in the Mekong Delta. In the end, M and I narrowed down our choices to Chau Doc, Vinh Long and possibly My Tho. It's still considered very ambitious because we do not have a private vehicle. Anyway, we decided to play by ear =P We'll just go wherever the bus can go and sleep wherever we can sleep and makes the best out of it. Sounds super exciting right? I'm super excited the night before that I can't sleep!

Frankly, there's SO many places I've not been to........but do I have to cover everything... after this trip, I think I'll still go back to Chau Doc again if I have the chance and maybe explore a slightly different route...

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!