Ho Chi Minh City – Where to, Gumshoe?

Saigon/Hong Kong/Tokyo/Vancouver (Day 139): Our Long Journey Home

July 17, 2016

Our long travel day began when our alarms went off at 2:30am, Saigon time. We tried to go to sleep earlier but didn’t really fall asleep until 10pm. We woke up, brushed our teeth, and went downstairs to check out. When we went downstairs, the 24-hour reception turned out to be two guys who were sleeping in the lobby on the couch and a cot. The lights were all off and they didn’t hear us standing there until we dropped our bags (not that subtlety). We eventually checked out and our car was waiting outside (the driver was also sleeping too). With no traffic at 3am, we got to the airport in only about 15 minutes!

We were flying to Hong Kong on United for our first flight of the day. There were a lot of people already at the airport checking in for the flight. The majority of people on our flight were connecting to other North American cities – our flight actually continued on to Newark (different plane, same flight number). At such an early hour there was only a cafe and one souvenir stand open (surprisingly). The plane ride went smoothly and 2.5 hours later, we arrived in Hong Kong.

When we landed in Hong Kong and walked through the HSBC sponsored gangways into the terminal, we already felt like we were back in a first world country. I went to the washroom and felt thankful that it was so clean AND had soap. I’ve been to Hong Kong four times in my life and three of them have been with Tim (first time was a family trip). They were usually just layover trips (2-3 days) on our way to somewhere else in Asia. We both have friends in Hong Kong so those trips are mainly just to visit. We had a 5 hour layover in Hong Kong so our plan was to train into Central HK, have lunch with a couple of friends, and come back for our second flight to Tokyo.

When we passed through customs and went to buy our train ticket into town it felt like we were just there because it’s been less than a year since our last time in Hong Kong enroute to the Maldives for our honeymoon. Since we were coming back to the airport in a couple of hours, we bought the same day return trip ticket for 100 HKD = $16.75 CAD. The same day return train ticket is the same price as a one way ticket. The Hong Kong train into town is one of the best and most efficient airport transfers. Hong Kong Station is around 35km away from the airport on Hong Kong Island and the train only takes 24 minutes. I wish all cities had something so efficient, especially if the airport is far from the city centre.

We got to Hong Kong Station shortly after 10am, a lot quicker than we anticipated. We were meeting at Crystal Jade in IFC Mall (which is literally above Hong Kong Station) for lunch, so we didn’t even have to walk outside if we didn’t want to. One of our favourite dim sum places is Tim Ho Wan, which has a location just above the Airport Express Hall in Hong Kong Station, but it’s more of a quick eats type of place and since we were visiting with friends and a baby was going to be with us, Tim Ho Wan wouldn’t work. It also has crazy line ups at all times of the day (next trip to HK we’ll go!). Tim and I walked around IFC to kill time since we weren’t meeting at Crystal Jade until it opened at 11am.

While walking around IFC (International Finance Centre) Mall, I forgot how many stores and brands Hong Kong has. They have everything! After being in SE Asia for so long, going to Hong Kong is such a 180 degree change – especially being in IFC. We walked outside to take a quick selfie and boy was it hot out! It was so humid (felt worse than Saigon) so we quickly took a photo and went back inside the mall.

We got to Crystal Jade ten minutes before it opened and there was already a line up for a table. Howard, Tim’s childhood friend, met us outside while we were waiting and we got a table for four plus a baby. Vicki came shortly after and she made quite the trek to come meet us. She drove to Kowloon and then took the train to Hong Kong with a stroller. Her husband couldn’t make it last minute so I felt bad for her because babies are so much work. Vicki is a university friend of mine who moved to Hong Kong after graduating, and has been there since. She’s now married and a new Mom. This was the main reason for having a stopover in Hong Kong. I wanted to meet baby Ashton, who is 7 months old now. Last time we saw Vicki she was 7 months pregnant.

I didn’t take any photos of the food but we had a few orders of xiao long baos, hot and sour soup noodles, fried Shanghai noodles, green beans, spicy wonton, and pan fried dumplings. It was basically just the 3 of us eating while Vicki took care of Ashton. I think he was teething because he kept rubbing his mouth and was quite upset. Poor guy. Time flew by so quickly and it was already time for us to go back to the airport. Howard was really kind and treated us for lunch. He is part owner of a sandwich shop in New West that just opened recently called Big Star Sandwich. I’m looking forward to trying it out while we’re back in Vancouver!

We said bye to everyone and jumped back on to the train. When we got back to the airport, we went through security and exit customs. We had half an hour before our flight boarded so we walked around quickly and went to our gate. The flight boarded a bit late and we ended up being delayed about 45 minutes. Luckily we had a 2.5 hour buffer in Tokyo (Haneda) before our final flight home. The flight to Tokyo was a little less than 4 hours – you don’t realize how far north Japan is until you fly within Asia. They served us drinks and a small meal on the plane. I had grilled chicken teriyaki and Tim had stewed pork. The food on ANA is pretty decent, but I think Cathay and Singapore Airlines has better food. We both watched Zootopia, which was a really good Disney movie. We were both pretty impressed with it and the (not so subtle) message/lessons about race discrimination.

We finally landed in Tokyo, at Haneda Airport, around 8pm. We had an hour to do our (my) last minute shopping before we boarded our final flight to Vancouver. To get to our connecting gates we had to go through security again, which Tim thinks basically means that they don’t trust the security from other countries. The international terminal had a lot of high end stores, your typical duty free stores, and a food court. I was most interested in buying snacks to bring back home. The selection was alright. I bought some Royce chocolate covered chips, mochi, fried mini crabs, matcha cakes, and yubari melon Pocky. I didn’t really hold back since we didn’t have to worry about capacity because our shopping bags were our carry on. We were hoping they would have a cosmetic/drug store like they did in the domestic terminal, where they had all the Biore sunscreen and your everyday Japanese candies. We did see the sunscreen but it was double the price of what we saw at the domestic terminal so we passed. Even just being in the airport, I was really happy to be back in Japan. *Sigh* I miss Japan and can’t wait to go back one day.

Our flight left on time and we were on our way home! The flight was fairly full and filled with more Japanese tourists than Canadians. The flight time was just under 9 hours – which is a pretty short flight compared to flying home from Hong Kong (14 hours!). We were flying on a Boeing 787, Dreamliner, so the windows were nice and big. There wasn’t much turbulence which made it a pretty relaxing flight for me. The food on this flight was better than the previous flight. I had unagi rice and Tim had a tomato hamburger steak. They came around with Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream after dinner. A couple of hours before landing they gave everyone breakfast boxes that had yogurt and 3 sandwiches (they looked like high tea sandwiches). If they had an egg salad sandwich it would’ve tasted like the ones at Family Mart.

After getting a little bit of sleep, we finally landed in Vancouver! As we were descending on the city, Vancouver looked beautiful and the suburbs looked so orderly and nicely groomed from the air. We got through customs and picked up our bags without any issues. My Mom was waiting for us when we got out and my Dad picked us up upstairs. Feels nice to be home.

We unpacked, showered, and then our family came over for a family dinner. It was good that we got to visit with everyone when we got home because I think we would’ve ended up napping. I didn’t take any pictures but we had a lot of my favourite food – a good green salad, smokies, lasagna, Cantonese BBQed meats, and my Grandma’s soup. It was a mishmash of things but it was delicious. For dessert we had fruits and I opened all my Japanese and Vietnamese snacks to share. I wasn’t going to eat all those snacks myself so I was happy to share them with everyone.

After 11 countries, 49 cities, 30 flights, and sleeping in 44 different beds, we’re home! We’ll see where our next adventure takes us, but for now we’ll be enjoying beautiful Vancouver and spending time with our family and friends.

Steps today: 4,500

Saigon/Ho Chi Minh (Day 138): Our Last Day

July 16, 2016

Today is our very last full day of this trip! We can’t believe how fast these past 4.5 months went. We’re feeling a mixture of emotions as we begin our long day of travel early tomorrow morning. On one hand, we’re really excited to see all our family and friends and on the other hand, coming back home poses a lot of questions about what we’re going to be doing in the upcoming months and about our lives in general. It was only until we got to Phu Quoc when we started to really reflect on our trip and lives in general. We were both hoping we would do a lot more personal reflection on this trip, but things always seemed to get too busy to do that.

We made sure to get a good night’s sleep last night because we know we won’t be getting one for a while. Hopefully our jetlag won’t be bad when we’re back! We had a pretty simple breakfast at the restaurant downstairs – noodles and toast. After breakfast we went back to our room and did some organizing and packing for the rest of the morning.

For lunch we went to a restaurant called, Com Cali, which is a Vietnamese casual restaurant chain. We passed by a few while in Saigon and there is one down the street from us. Most of the people eating there were locals. I expected there to be more tourists. Tourists generally don’t like to eat at clear chain restaurants but we both think it’s interesting to eat at local chains. As I mentioned yesterday, we’re trying to minimize our risk if getting food poisoning the day before our long travel day, so no street food for us today. We were thinking of getting a banh mi but decided against it (warm mayo is always a risk and we’re being super cautious). We ordered com tam, broken rice with grilled pork, and it was good – no complaints.

After lunch we walked down to the Notre Dame Cathedral to walk down “Book Street”, which is a tree lined street beside the Post Office. It was a warm day out, no clouds, and it was 34 degrees. We went into the McDonald’s close by and remembered that Vietnamese McDonald’s didn’t really have any special desserts like in Malaysia. We ended up just getting a vanilla cone each – 10,000 VND = $0.58 CAD.

We walked back to the Dong Khoi area (where all the nice hotels and malls are) and browsed around at the Union Square Mall. We debated whether we should just stay in the area for 2 hours and have an early dinner or go back to the hotel. There wasn’t much else we wanted to see in the area and we would be walking around aimlessly so we went back to the hotel to rest up. When crossing the streets around Dong Khoi, there are a lot of tourists around and you can tell who has just arrived (we were those people once too, or maybe that was just me) because they’ll wait forever to cross the street. Tim is like a crossing-the-street pro now. He leads a lot of people across the street and tells them they just need to start walking (such a local..). Maybe because we’re darker now, but people have been speaking Vietnamese to us instead of English and are surprised when we say we can’t understand. That didn’t happen to us when we were here at the beginning of the month. Do we look Vietnamese? I guess we don’t look Chinese.

We went back out at around 5pm to have an early dinner. We went back to the VinCom Center basement and walked around a couple of times before deciding to go to Pepper Lunch. The majority of options at VinCom are Korean BBQ or hot pot (all you can eat). So our last meal in Vietnam was Japanese casual fast food. We’ve now had Pepper Lunch in Taiwan, Cambodia, and Vietnam – but haven’t even been to the ones in Vancouver. Since we had some leftover VND, we went back to VinMart and I grabbed a few more snacks to shove into my backpack.

When we got back to our room, we packed up, and Tim organized all our receipts (he’s the best record keeper). We’re taking a car to the airport tomorrow at 3am since our flight leaves for Hong Kong at 5:30am. We’re going to train to Central HK and have breakfast with a couple of our friends for a quick visit. We leave Hong Kong at 2:30pm for Tokyo-Haneda, where we’ll have a 2 hour layover before our last flight home! We’ll finally get home around 3pm on July 17th, which will be the longest day ever for us.

After tomorrow, we will have taken 30 flights, visited 49 cities, 11 countries, and slept in 44 different beds. We’re ready to come home!

Steps today: 14,500

Phu Quoc/Saigon (Day 137): Back to the Chaos

July 15, 2016

We woke up earlier today to get ready for our flight back to Saigon, which was at 10:25am. We had a fairly quick breakfast and made sure we each had one of the caramel flans for the last time – they were really good! After checking out, Billy was there to see how our stay was and send us on our way to the airport. We really enjoyed our stay at Daisy Resort, it was so relaxing and I appreciated how good/friendly the service was. If we ever come back, the island and the resort will probably be very different. There’s already a resort being built right beside it! We left the hotel close to 9am, and got to the airport and checked in by 9:10am with just over an hour to spare.

The Phu Quoc Airport is quite new, built in 2012, so it’s nicer than a lot of the other airports we’ve been to this trip. The majority of flights at the Phu Quoc Airport are domestic with some flights to Cambodia and Guangzhou (coming soon). There seemed to be flights to Ho Chi Minh City every half an hour.

Once we crossed security there were a few souvenir stalls, a cafe, and a Burger King. There was no free airport WiFi but there was WiFi if you buy something from the Burger King or the cafe. Since we had an hour to kill and I’m clearly addicted to being online, I went to see what the cheapest item at Burger King was so I could get their WiFi password. The cheapest menu item was an ice cream cone for 15,000 VND = $0.85 CAD, but unfortunately they didn’t have any ice cream at 9am. We sat back down in front of the Burger King and that’s when I saw a table leave and I spotted the pink receipt sitting on their table. Yup, I went to the empty table, like a scavenger, and took their receipt (I really don’t have any shame in Vietnam) (Tim: I don’t see what’s to be ashamed of grabbing a receipt left behind to get a WiFi password). If you’re at the Phu Quoc Airport, the Burger King password is “burgerkingpqc”.

To our surprise, our Vietnam Airline flight boarded at the time it actually said on the boarding pass! Considering the airport is only 4 years old, you would think they would’ve built gangways. We all had to board a bus that literally took us 20 metres away. It seemed a bit silly, we walked farther to our plane in Australia.

We were seated in an exit row for this flight and when the flight attendant gave us the spiel about what our responsibilities are, she also said it’s our responsibility to stop others from opening the door. We both feel like this isn’t something that’s told in North America. The flight was okay even though a baby was screaming for 80% of the flight and the little boy kept kicking my seat – lucky it was only 40 minutes.

We collected our bags and went out to the taxi stand to get back into town. We didn’t make the same mistake as we did last time we took a taxi from the airport, and only approached the VinaSun taxi reps. There were a lot of other companies trying to get you into their cabs but we knew better! It took us almost an hour to get to our hotel, which is only 8km away (Ah, Saigon traffic!). After being in different parts of Vietnam, Saigon has the worst and most chaotic traffic out of all the places we’ve been to.

When we got to Platinum Hotel (same hotel we stayed at before), they seemed to have lost my reservation or not know where it was recorded (I had booked before we left Vancouver) because it took them a long time to find it even after showing them my Expedia itinerary. This turned out to be a good thing because they put us in a room on the top floor that was bigger than what I originally booked. It also has a view of the city instead of an old abandoned building which was our view the last time at this hotel.

We dropped off bags and went for lunch down the block at Marukame Udon (same restaurant as Tokyo and Honolulu)! Yes, we had Japanese food today. We had passed by the restaurant on our first day here over a month ago and kept it in mind just in case we got sick of Vietnamese food. The udon choices are different from Tokyo as they are more tailored for Vietnam. We both ordered what we thought was a zaru udon (cold udon that you dip), but when we got it, they were dipping noodles but they were still sitting in the warm water. The prices here are a bit cheaper than they are in Tokyo, but pricey for Vietnamese standards. The tempura selection had the standard Japanese options as well as fish cakes and sausages, which are Vietnamese influences. What they did have that I didn’t see in Japan was a soft-boiled tempura egg (this was delicious!). Lunch was good and made me miss Japan.

After lunch we decided to go to Ben Thanh Market to see if there was anything we wanted to buy. I was looking for a toddler tuxedo for Nate but unfortunately there was nothing at the market. There were a lot of tailor stalls but when I described what I was looking for they didn’t seem interested in making one or giving a quote. They were probably like, why does a 2 year old need a tuxedo? My friend in Hong Kong said she know of a place that sells toddler tuxedos so I’ll stop by quickly before coming home after our lunch together.

In addition to searching for a tuxedo, Tim was interested in buying some dry fit t-shirts. We remembered that Ben Thanh had the biggest selection out of all the markets we went to. But the biggest con of waiting to look here was that we had to deal with the overly aggressive Vietnamese vendors. Tim made the mistake of wearing his Under Armour shirt again so as soon as we walked through the rows of stalls they were attacking. We asked about prices and one lady said 450,000 VND = $26 CAD each, which is obviously outrageous for a fake dry-fit shirt. When we saw the price we were like no way, so Tim walked out the other exit of the stall and I tried to leave but the lady blocked me and another one grabbed my arm! Tim then countered with a lower price but they didn’t really negotiate too much. I told Tim to come back for me and then he got cornered by another man and lady. They said they’d lower the price but considering how aggressive they were towards us we didn’t want to buy anything from them.

While we were at the market, it started to pour outside. It was exactly what happened last time we were here! We tried to wait it out for a bit, but then we got sick of walking around the market, so we walked back to the hotel in the rain. We spent the rest of the afternoon updating our blog and map.

We walked about 10 minutes down Le Thanh Ton St. to Vincom Center, which is the largest mall in Saigon. Vincom Center is owned by Vin Group, which is owned by Vietnam’s first billionaire (in USD). He owns a huge real estate company, resorts, and a telecom. We’re going to be eating more carefully in our last days here. We don’t want any stomach issues on our long journey home. When we go to Vincom Center, we walked around the mall a bit and then went downstairs to where all the restaurants were. They had a really good selection of Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian cuisines. There are a lot of Korean BBQ and hot pot restaurants and they were all busy (I guess it is Friday night).

We decided to try “Hotto”, which seemed like a Vietnamese rip off of Pepper Lunch. We looked at the Pepper Lunch menu and it was more expensive so we decided to give Hotto a chance, plus we’ve had Pepper Lunch a few times already this trip. I ordered the most comparable menu item to Pepper Lunch and it was okay. Instead of just corn for vegetables they also give you cabbage and beansprouts. Pepper Lunch is better.

After dinner we went to Vin Mart, a grocery store, to browse around at all the snacks/souvenirs. I bought a couple of items to bring home, not as much as I would want because of capacity issues. I saw some Japanese tourists buying crazy amounts of jackfruit chips and these coconut chocolate chip cookies (they almost cleared the shelves), so I copied and bought a pack of cookies too (they’re only $0.50 CAD).

We walked back to the hotel and called it a night. We’ll take it easy tomorrow and probably go for a nicer dinner for our last night in Vietnam. Our flight on Sunday to Hong Kong is at 5:30am (so early), so we’re barely going to be sleeping tomorrow night. Can’t wait to come home!

Steps today: 11,000

Ho Chi Minh City (Day 99): War Remnants Museum, Banh Mi, and Pho

June 7, 2016

Wow! It’s already been 99 days since we’ve gone. Feels like we should do something special to celebrate our 100th day tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll be heading to the Mekong Delta area and staying in Can Tho for a couple of nights before coming back to HCMC.

This morning we got ready, grabbed coffee and juice from downstairs and something quick to eat, and went to find the breakfast stall that Chloe had recommended that served “com tam” (broken rice with grilled pork chop). She told us the stall closes around 10am so we should try to go early just in case. We didn’t make it out early enough because by the time we got there around 9:30am, we didn’t see a stall. We’ll try again tomorrow morning and go earlier. After our failed attempt at getting com tam, we walked to the War Remnants Museum.

The admission fee for the War Remnants Museum was 15,000 VND = $0.85 CAD/person. We spent about 2 hours at the museum going through each of the exhibit rooms and looking at all the photographs captured from the war. I enjoyed looking through the photographs and reading more about the photographers who went to Vietnam to document the Vietnam War. It’s very sad that the majority of them died while capturing photographs that we get to see today (Tim: Lots of photo descriptions include the note “last roll of film” as they came from the photographers’ cameras after they recovered their bodies). About half of the photographs were directly attributed to specific photographers and included their original comments that went with the photos when they were first published. These comments were fairly neutral for the most part. The remainder of the photographs had commentary written by the musem that was very anti-American. My least favourite room was the Agent Orange room which had dead baby fetuses in jars on display. The pictures of all who had been and are affected by Agent Orange was devastating, but I think having the jars of dead baby fetuses was a bit too much. I saw them from the corner of my eye and walked the other way.

While we were still looking around an announcement came on saying the museum would be closing at 12pm and would reopen at 1:30pm. We didn’t realize the museum closed midday, but it did sound like something that would happen since I read that Vietnamese people take lunch very seriously.

Since it was lunch time for everyone else, we decided to have lunch too. We walked to a banh mi stall, Banh Mi Sau Minh, that was recommended by one of Tim’s friends who said it was the best sandwich he’s ever had (Tim: and I take his recommendations seriously). With testimonials like that, it would be an insult not to give it a try ourselves. There were two banh mi sandwiches listed on their menu so we ordered one of each. The owner was really nice and gave us two bottles of a lychee gatorade type of drink and he said it was “no money”. Maybe it was because we looked super sweaty and dehydrated to him.

We took our sandwiches to go and ate in the park we passed by earlier in the day. It was nice and shaded and there were benches all over to sit. In one of the banh mi, he spread “laughing cow” cheese on the bread. It was different but complimented all the Vietnamese deli meat well. As we were just sitting on the bench enjoying the shade, huge gusts of wind swept through the park and all of a sudden it started to pour really hard. We opened up our umbrellas and headed back to the hotel. Even with umbrellas we were both pretty soaked.

We dried off and did a bit of planning for our upcoming few days. With the help from the lady downstairs, we booked our bus ticket to Can Tho (3.5 hour bus ride). The rain continued to come down really hard and we could hear lightning from our room. We headed out for an early dinner to try out another banh mi for our appetizer and finally had pho!

We read online that Banh Mi Hyunh Hoa is one of the more famous/popular banh mi shops in HCMC. It’s pretty close to our hotel and only a street over from the place we went to last night for dinner. We tried to walk by after the park earlier in the day but they didn’t open until 2:30pm (close at midnight). This time, we passed by and they were open. The shop had tons of scooters out front ordering sandwiches for dinner. We ordered one to share and stood across the street under cover while we ate. This banh mi was definitely more hefty than the other ones we had. It had a lot of different meats in it and we could feel the heat from the pickled chili peppers. I think this one was my favourite so far. It was most similar to the ones we have at home. So far, the banh mi that we’ve had so far didn’t have as many pickled vegetables and cilantro as I would like. 2 days in and we’ve had 4 fairly different banh mis already – so delicious!

We walked another 10 minutes in the rain in search of Pho Thanh Chanh. It was recommended by Chloe and also on one of the pho lists that Tim’s cousin, Nick, sent to us. It was also the closest one on that pho list to us so we went there.

Pho Thanh Chanh is a family run restaurant, which I’m guessing the majority of the restaurants in Vietnam are. The Mom is out front preparing bowls of pho and her daughter (probably 15 years old) takes orders and cuts up the limes and chilis, and her two younger sons (probably around 12 years old) deliver the pho to tables. Since we were eating quite early, the boys looked like they just got off school as they went to the back room, got changed and put on an apron. Tim ordered two bowls of the house special (dac biet) pho, one of the few terms Tim knows in Vietnamese. The soup and meat were all very delicious. There was a really good ratio of noodles, meat and broth.

We headed back to the hotel for the night and are continuing to plan out parts the upcoming month. I’m looking forward to seeing the Mekong Delta, experiencing more of the Vietnamese countryside, and getting out of the big city for a couple of days. I really like walking around cities but walking around HCMC gives me slight anxiety. Why don’t scooters and cars obey the cross walks?

Steps today: 14,000

Ho Chi Minh City (Day 98): Independence Palace, Street Food, and Sweat

June 6, 2016

When you get one whiff of scooter exhaust, incense, and ripe tropical fruit all at once, you know exactly where you are – in SE Asia. It’s our first time in Vietnam so we’re both pretty excited to explore the country. Our last trip to SE Asia was a two week trip to Thailand 3 years ago and we both really loved it. We’ll see what Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos do for us.

All we could hear from our room were cars and constant honking. If you’re a light sleeper, HCMC is probably not ideal. It seems as though cars and scooters are really liberal with the horn. We fell asleep quite early last night and woke up naturally to the sounds on the street. We thought it was at least 9am, but it was only 5:30am! I guess we’re a bit jetlagged.

We get free breakfast at the hotel so we went downstairs shortly after it opened at 7am. The breakfast was self serve and had congee, fried noodles, sauteed green beans, bacon, sausage, fried eggs, toast, and passionfruit. I also had a cup of coffee with condensed milk. I usually don’t drink coffee but I really like Vietnamese iced coffee. The breakfast was better than I expected.

We left the hotel and walked towards Independence Palace (or also known as the Reunification Palace). As soon as we walked outside we could feel the heat and we started to sweat. Crossing the street in HCMC is a bit scary. Even if you have a right of way with a green crossing light, in HCMC, you don’t have the right of way. Basically whenever we crossed the street today, Tim would be on the side to block me from oncoming traffic and I would just hang on tight. Even when cars see pedestrians walking they just weave around you dangerously and scooters don’t stop on red lights. This is something I have to get used to. Bangkok was way more orderly in that way (in comparing SE Asian big cities). I don’t remember being scared for my life while crossing the street in Thailand. This feels more like China in that sense.

After about a 10 minute walk, we made it to the Independence Palace, which was the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. At the end of the Vietnam War, a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the gates of the palace in 1975 during the Fall of Saigon on April 30.

Entrance into the grounds and building is 30,000 VND = $1.75 CAD per person. The palace is kept the way it was when Saigon fell to the North, which made it really interesting to walk around. It felt like we were stuck in the 1960’s. While walking around, there were a lot of Vietnamese tourists taking pictures posing in front of many of the rooms. I was thinking that if I were south Vietnamese, it would be a bit sad walking around what the palace used to be given it’s only been 41 years since the fall of Saigon. The sentiment from the commentary plaques around the palace was that the south was very grateful for being saved by the north from the Americans. But obviously we have to take those opinions with a grain of salt being in a single-party communist country.

The bunker area felt a bit eerie while walking around as there weren’t as many tourists in the basement while we were there. The palace was bombed during the war so the bunker was built in the palace basement by the Americans for the President. While walking through the palace, it made me want to read more about the Vietnam War since I don’t know as much about it as WWII. We’ll be going to the War Remnants Museum tomorrow and spending time learning more about the war.

After the palace, we walked to the Notre Dame Cathedral and checked out the Saigon Central Post Office. Our plan for lunch was to walk about 30 minutes to the Lunch Lady food stall that Anthony Bourdain went to on one of his episodes in Vietnam. We (I) was really hungry when we were at the palace so we went for a snack at Popeye’s across the street from Notre Dame. We shared a meal, and the chicken was super juicy and delicious. The air con also felt heavenly. The crowds for lunch were starting to build up. The prices at Popeyes are a bit cheaper than North American prices but quite expensive for Vietnam.

After a pretty hot walk through the city, we made it to the Lunch Lady. It was about 1pm, so the lunch crowd dissipated but the ground was covered with napkins and shrimp heads (remnants of previous lunchers). We sat down on slightly grimy plastic chairs and ordered two bowls of noodles. The lunch lady makes a different soup every day of the week and usually closes when she sells out. Today’s soup was a sweet and sour tom yum type of soup (called Bun Thai) with lai fun (round rice noodles), seafood, and beef. While waiting for our noodles, people kept trying to put food on our table without us asking but we just said no to everything. We read from reviews that they’ll put food on your table and you obviously have to pay for them unless you say no.

The soup was really good, I could see why Bourdain enjoyed his meal here so much. When we paid, the guy said it was 80,000 VND =$4.60 CAD for our two bowls. This is slightly more than what we thought it would be (we’ve adjusted super quickly since Australia) since Lonely Planet says street food is usually only 20,000-30,000 VND for a bowl of pho. Any how, when you convert it to Canadian, you realize how cheap it is. At first I thought we were charged more because we were tourists but I read online that 40,000 VND is right. They do have a smaller sized bowl that locals know as an option for 30,000 VND, but majority of tourists are just given the larger bowl.

On our way back from lunch, we came across a cam sanh (green peel Vietnamese orange) juice cart that had two scooters waiting for their order. The ladies on the scooter ordered 5, they drank 2 on the spot and took the rest to go. They smiled at us and gave us the thumbs up after Tim gave them an inquisitive thumbs up, so we ordered one to share. We asked how much it was and the lady said it was 10,000 VND = $0.55 CAD. This is one of the main reasons why I love SE Asia – cheap fruit and fruit juices. After she told us the price, the ladies conversed in Vietnamese. Tim joked around and said maybe they asked her why she didn’t charge us more. She gave us the local prices and we saw the ladies pay 50,000 VND for their 5 drinks (Tim: I think Kait would enjoy herself more if she didn’t think everyone was trying to rip her off :P).

We walked towards Dong Khoi, which is one of the nicest areas in Ho Chi Minh. It’s where the Opera House, City Hall, and all the luxury stores and hotels are. We walked down the large boulevard in the middle of the street towards the Saigon River. When we got to the Saigon River, the walkway along the river wasn’t very attractive nor was there much going on so we kind of took a peek and walked towards a market.

On the walk back, we stopped by Ben Thanh Market. Luckily we did because as soon as we walked in there was a huge downpour and we would’ve gotten drenched. The market was full of rows of t-shirts, purses, backpacks, coffee, fruit, and accessories. The vendors are pretty aggressive when you walk through each aisle. Even if you’re not looking at anything at their stall, they’ll try to pull you to look. Tim was wearing his Under Armour t-shirt and it seemed like all the vendors we passed by keyed in on it and showed him what other t-shirts they had that were Under Armour. We were curious about their pricing so we asked about a purse and they quoted us 750,000 VND and we said we weren’t interested. Then they knocked it down to 500,000, then to 400,000 and when we started to walk away they said 100,000! So basically we’re guessing that the prices they’re willing to take are 10% of their initial quote.

When we passed by the food vendor area, Tim asked me if I wanted something to drink. The ladies in all the stalls got up and grabbed my arm and stuck their menus in our faces. All their fruit juices were 20,000 VND = $1.15 CAD and I guess knowing that we got our juice for 10,000 VND, I wasn’t interested. When we got back to the hotel and I typed in the conversion and realized it was only $1.15 CAD, I felt super cheap.

The rain died down so we headed back to the hotel to relax and get out of the crazy heat. We both were super sticky when we got into the room, it was actually pretty disgusting. We heard some Aussies at the market say how they’re sweating so much that it’s dripping in their eye and making it burn. That’s how we felt!

I searched online for “the best banh mi” in HCMC and wrote down a couple of places to try out. There was one only about 5 minutes away from us so we decided to give that a try for dinner. They closed at 8pm so we were cutting it a bit close at 7:30pm. We had to cross another crazy roundabout intersection to get there, which was scary at night. Luckily there were a few more people walking so we just used them as buffers.

The Banh Mi cart was called Banh Mi 37 Nguyen Trai. They specialized in a banh mis with grilled pork patties. When we got to the stall, there were several people infront of us waiting for their sandwiches. The bottle neck was the grill as they were waiting for the pork to cook. After about 20 minutes of watching the pork cook and the lady assembling sandwiches for others ahead of us, we got ours. After ours, there were only 4 more baguettes left and she had to turn away a lot of people who were coming after us. We felt pretty lucky! The banh mis were 18,000 VND = $1.03 CAD each. It started to rain while we were waiting so we took our banh mis back to the hotel to eat.

The banh mis were delicious but a bit spicy. I haven’t had a banh mi with grilled pork patty before, so it was nice and different. Instead of mayo, she put a thick brown sauce that was a bit sweet on top of the meat, along with pickled cucumber and lots of cilantro. There’s a more famous banh mi place down down the block that we’ll probably try another day.

Steps today: 23,000

Singapore (Day 97): 12 Hour Layover

June 5, 2016

Last night, we slept for most of our 7 hour red-eye flight from Melbourne to Singapore. They served two meals during the flight – a snack at 2am and a large breakfast two hours before we landed. We landed at Changi Airport just after 5am (Singapore is two hours behind Melbourne). Our connecting flight to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) would leave Singapore at 5:25pm, so we had around 12 hours for our last partial day in Singapore. With the way our flights worked out (Tim: i.e. how I planned and booked the flights) and since we wanted to fly Singapore Airlines, it was great we were able to spend ~35 hours in Singapore for “free”.

We took our time leaving the terminal since it was so early. We went to the washroom and both washed our faces and brushed our teeth. By the time we left the airport it was around 6:30am and we headed to the City Hall SMRT stop in the city. The train connecting Changi to the downtown core makes it really easy to explore the city on a layover. The train ride takes about 20-30 minutes.

We walked towards Collyer Quay to see the Merlion and views of Marina Bay Sands when it’s quiet. The city was so peaceful at 7am on a Sunday morning. There were a handful of people by the Merlion with their tripods trying to catch the sunrise, but unfortunately it was really cloudy so there wasn’t much to see. Given Singapore’s blistering heat, it was good the day was mostly overcast.

Our only plan for the day was to eat chili crab at Jumbo Seafood for lunch so our day was pretty relaxed. Since they didn’t open until noon and it was 7am, we went to look for a small breakfast at the La Pau Sat Hawker’s Market in the CBD. Online it says the market is open 24 hours, but I think it just means they don’t technically shut down the market. Vendors can open whenever they want. There were a few stalls open for breakfast and some that had some Chinese BBQ that didn’t want to serve it even though they were open.

We shared an iced coffee and a toasted breakfast sandwich (egg salad half and a Singaporean spicy tuna half). The coffee was good but the sandwich was pretty mediocre. I went to one of the Chinese BBQ stalls to order BBQ duck with noodles, but the vendor said “not yet” and there were no noodles for it. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying. My general consensus of the hawker’s market vendors are that they are fairly rude. I think this is just the way they are in general, but it’s very harsh and abrupt. For example, when I got to the stall, the guy says “what do yo want?” (in not a very nice tone).

Anyhow, we left La Pau Sat and walked towards Marina Bay Sands to check out the Gardens at the Bay. We didn’t get to walk on that side of the bay in May, so it was nice to be able to see it today. The Gardens at the Bay grounds are quite large. Most of the gardens are free to walk around but there are some parts that require admission like the Flower Dome, Cloud Forest ($28 SGD for both), and the walk between the Supertree Groves ($8 SGD). We didn’t end up going into any of them and just walked around the grounds. We heard that the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest are really cool but we didn’t think spending $56 SGD was worth it for us today. Maybe in the future when/if we come back.

After taking our time in the gardens, we walked towards Clark Quay for lunch. Jumbo Seafood is a famous Singaporean restaurant that specializes in chili crab. I didn’t know what to expect but just knew that it was something that we should probably eat. We didn’t get to have it in May and when we asked Marcus if we should eat it (Marcus is Singaporean) he said we have to eat it and order the fried bread (mantou) to use to dip in the chili sauce. So we did as the Singaporean said and ordered one chili crab and 8 pieces of mantou (we ordered 4 at first then wanted more).

There are actually two Jumbos around Clark Quay’s river walk and we went to both of them to see if they had a table. One of them said without a reservation there was no room so we went to the one we originally thought we would go to. The hostess said if we wanted a seat inside the restaurant as opposed to sitting outside in the heat, we had to share a table with others so we agreed. We were seated with four other people. Two girls and another couple. They brought out a dish of peanuts and filled our cups with tea. We later found out on our bill that the peanuts and tea were $1.20 SGD pp. I know Tim doesn’t like to eat crab (only due to the effort outweighing the reward) so I was happy he was willing to try it out. The crab came covered in a sweet and spicy chili sauce. It was really good. Are there any places in Vancouver who do chili crab? Marcus’ suggestion about the mantou made it even better. The mantou were super fresh and were cooked perfectly. We could’ve ordered more but we were both full so eating more mantou with the chili sauce would just be pure gluttony.

After lunch we made our way back to the City Hall SMRT stop to get back to Changi Airport. We were starting to get tired so heading to the airport earlier sounded like a good idea. When we got to Changi we used our Priority Pass membership (4 free lounge visits courtesy of the BMO World Elite Mastercard) to get into the SATS Premier Lounge in Terminal 2. We had 2.5 hours to kill so sitting in the lounge and showering was good use of the pass.

The Stats Premier Lounge had Singaporean/Malaysian food, drinks (alcoholic and non), and sandwiches. Since we just had a sizeable lunch, we didn’t eat anything until we were about to leave. I tried a small bowl of laksa, which they make for you on the spot and Tim had spaghetti and meatballs.

We headed to the gate to board our flight to HCMC. The flight was only an hour and 45 minutes. They served us a meal and it was basically time to land. Our descent down into HCMC was a bit scary because when we were going through the clouds the plane was going up and down sporadically. I was squeezing Tim’s hands and some people were yelping every time the plane made a sudden movement. However, the 10 year old girl in front of us was having the time of her life. She was saying it was like a ride and how it was so much fun. At least someone enjoyed it.

We passed through customs without any issues as we got a 3 month multi-entry visa before we left home. Vietnam is the only country we’ve been to on this trip that didn’t require a form to be filled out upon arrival. I guess they don’t care about any details about your trip in the country. We got our bags and headed out to take a taxi to our hotel.

There were a lot of stands with taxi signs before you get outside. We didn’t stop to see how much they would’ve cost. But according to Lonely Planet, they are usually flat rates and would cost 300,000 VND ($17 CAD) for a trip into the city. We lined up at the taxi queue and didn’t recognize any of the taxi names. I was looking for the two legit taxi companies that were deemed as being “ok”. We thought since the taxi queue at the airport should only have legit taxi companies, we lined up. We told the taxi driver to turn on the meter, which he did.

When we got to our hotel, he said the ride was 400,000 VND plus the 10,000 airport fee (which was expected). I know this was a lot higher than what Lonely Planet and the airport website said a metered cab was supposed to be (average 180,000 VND). But since we had our luggage in the back, what are you supposed to do when you don’t agree with the price. (Tim: The meter actually said it was supposed to be around 150,000 VND plus the 10,000 airport fee, but he quoted the 400,000 price using the timer that ticked up instead of the actual fare meter… e.g. the car was idle for 4 minutes during our ride). Anyway, we learned our lesson. Only stick with Vinasun or Mai Linh Taxis. I thought seeing the legit taxi company cars would be more obvious, but there was a sign saying you can’t pick which cab you want (so what are you supposed to do?!).

We’re staying at the Platinum Hotel for 3 nights. It’s located in District 1, which is where the bulk of the touristy things are in HCMC. The staff was friendly when we arrived and gave us a welcome drink. The lady showed us to our room. It’s fairly small and clean enough. We’re only paying $35 CAD a night so I guess my expectations shouldn’t be super high.

We’re both really tired. Our June 5th has been a pretty long day. We were in 3 cities today, making our way back to the Northern Hemisphere – getting closer and closer to home. HCMC is 3 hours behind Melbourne.

Steps today: 26,000