Saigon – 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

Saigon (Day 103): Our Own Food Tour

June 11, 2016

We both got a better night sleep at the Platinum Hotel than we did in Can Tho. It helped that we had more than just a thin blanket when the A/C was on all night. We didn’t have much planned today in terms of sightseeing. Saigon doesn’t have that many “must see” attractions around the city. The ones that we thought were important to see, we already saw on our first two days here. Since we didn’t have a set plan, we planned our day around what restaurants and food we wanted to try. We went downstairs for a quick breakfast and some juice before starting our walk to our first food stop, Tay Ho.

The walk to Tay Ho was about 20 minutes or so. We passed through Dong Khoi and Notre Dame again (the nicer areas in Saigon).

Tay Ho has been around since the 1960’s and specializes in “banh cuon”, which is a rice roll filled with ground pork, shallots, and minced wood-eared mushrooms. Banh Cuon is originally from Northern Vietnam, but we heard good things about Tay Ho so we wanted to give it a shot. We just ordered one “dac biet” (special) to share (they give you a menu with prices), and it was plenty for the two of us. It was really tasty and was quite filling. We dipped the banh cuon in the fish sauce that was on the table (they had a jug on the table).

When we sat down they put cold wet wipes on our table to use. So far we haven’t been charged while in Saigon to use them so we opened them and wiped our hands and neck. When it was time to pay, they charged us for them (3,000 VND each). So now we will never use them again! I’ll bring the wet wipes I bought from Australia with me from now on.

Our next stop was another pho restaurant, called Pho Phuong 25. We read on a couple of blogs about the restaurant and it was also recommended by a friend. It’s just down the street from “The Lunch Lady”, so we were already familiar with the area and how to get there. We walked along the Saigon River, and were actually the only ones (as far as our eyes could see) walking along the water. I guess it’s way too hot to be walking around at 11am.

Once we got to Pho Phuong 25, we decided to just share a bowl of pho. We knew we wouldn’t be able to finish a bowl ourselves since we just had banh cuon about 30 minutes ago. Tim ordered the “dac biet”, which is usually our go to thing to order since it’s their house special, and if we’re going to order one thing the house special is a good choice. We also shared a Vietnamese soda, which turned out to be sarsaparilla. The pho came shortly after and the bowl was quite hefty and full of a variety of brisket, beef balls, tendon, and braised animal part that we weren’t sure of (but it was very tender). It was good that we shared because I could barely eat half of it. We both thought the pho was better than the one we had on our second night at Pho Thanh Canh.

We decided to head back to the hotel for our afternoon reprieve from the scorching sun. On our way back we shared an iced milk coffee (14,000 VND = $0.80 CAD) and then passed by our orange juice lady from our first day in Saigon. She recognized us and suggested the passionfruit juice. We agreed and then also ordered a freshly squeezed orange juice (both 10,000 VND = $0.57 CAD). As we were leaving she said she’ll see us again soon. So I guess we’ll be coming back in July! Her juices are really good and she makes them (cuts the fruit infront of you) on the spot as opposed to a lot of street vendors we passed by already who have the passionfruit in the cup and ready to have ice and water mixed in.

Originally we thought we would go to this fried chicken and rice place for lunch but we were full and the sun was getting pretty unbearable so we decided to save that for dinner tonight.

On the way back to the hotel, we passed by Ben Thanh Market again. Since we were going to be in SE Asia for another month and a bit, I bought a hat. I regretted not bringing a hat from home for this portion of the trip but I guess this makes for my Vietnamese souvenir. I ended up buying a bamboo fedora from a stall at the market. I tried on a bunch of sizes and finally found one that fit me properly. The girl working asked me if I was Vietnamese. I said no and she said I looked Vietnamese. So far on this trip, two Vietnamese people have told me they thought I was Vietnamese. One today and one from the Vietnamese restaurant in Adelaide. Any how we bargained and I got my hat for 40% of what she was asking for originally. I’m a really bad bargainer so luckily Tim was there to make me “walk away” before she called us back with a much lower price.

We stayed inside for the remainder of the afternoon (as locals do), worked on the blog and I researched more about the Hanoi portion of our trip. We booked our hotel for Hanoi and narrowed down which boat tour we were going to go with for Halong Bay. We’re deciding to splurge for the Halong Bay boat tour and take a 3 day 2 night cruise with a highly rated (on Trip Advisor) company. We heard horror stories about the cheaper ones, so I’d rather pay more to be comfortable, especially on a boat. Vietnam has been really cheap so far so it’ll be a nice treat.

After a productive and restful afternoon, we headed out for dinner. The chicken place we wanted to go to was about a 25 minute walk from our hotel. The restaurant is called, “Quon Com Ga Xoi Mo Su Su”, which has a really interesting way they fry their chicken. The owner created a one of a kind deep fryer than is basically like a waterfall of oil that crisps the chicken. All the chicken has already been cooked once but before it’s served, it goes through the oil waterfall and then served with rice and a really good brown sauce (which we have no idea what it was). They have a choice between a leg and thigh or a wing and breast. We memorized what the dark and white meat options were called but when we got there they only had the wing and breast left. White meat is always the leftover meat in Asia.

We both ordered our own dish this time and lucky we did because everything was super delicious. It reminded me of crispy skin chicken at Chinese restaurants except it was juicier and piping hot as it came straight out of the oil waterfall. They had wet wipes on the table but we didn’t touch them, but at least the menu on the table said they were 1,000 VND each. After we ordered the waiter came by again and said “rings”. We were confused and weren’t sure what he was saying, he said it again and we were just like, sorry, we don’t understand. Then he left. Then a second later, I realized what he was trying to say. He was saying, “drinks”! Oh well.

I would go back there again for their chicken, maybe for lunch when they have dark meat left. We headed back towards the hotel and wanted to find coconut ice cream for dessert. We basically looked at a food tour itinerary and googled where to find certain dishes. On the way to the chicken place, we passed by an ice cream shop that looked crowded and it was exactly the dessert we were planning on getting (at another location farther away), so this worked out well.

The dessert place was called, Ca-Rem. It looked like a more hip restaurant and probably the nicest restaurant/cafe we’ve eaten in our entire time in Vietnam so far. We shared one of the coconut ice creams and it was delicious! If we go again, I would want my own. The coconut cream ice cream comes in a half coconut shell that has all its flesh scraped to eat, fried coconut flakes, corn, palm fruit, sticky rice, and peanuts. The inspiration behind Ca-Rem is Thai coconut ice cream. When we were in Thailand, we had this quite a bit from street vendor but it wasn’t as fancy. This was definitely a more refined version of the ones we had in Thailand (for only $1 CAD or less). The waitress gave us a glass of what we thought was water and it turned out to be coconut water from the hollowed out shell. At first I thought it was just regular water so I drank it and realized it was coconut water. There are only two items on the menu: ice cream and coconut water. After I drank it, I was like oh no, I didn’t want to pay for it (15,000 VND = $0.85 CAD, I know it’s not much), but it was too late. But then after we paid, it turns out that was included in the price (phew!).

We passed by a Missha (Korean cosmetic store that I bought a lot of stuff from in Seoul), so I went inside to see what the prices were like. I expected it to be on par with the prices in Korea since they were pretty cheap and most things in Vietnam are cheap. But after seeing the price of the face cream I bought, I was very wrong. I paid $12 CAD for a face cream in Seoul and it was $50 CAD here! Face masks were $2.40 CAD each, and less than a dollar in Seoul (when they were on sale). Missha and Korean products are definitely for the more wealthy Vietnamese people. We noticed there are a lot of Korean restaurants and cafes here. There’s a Tous les Jours, which is from Korea. I remember going into one and thinking it was overpriced and left, so when we went into one here, I had deja-vu since I did the exact same thing.

We’re back at the hotel for our last night in Saigon before coming back here in July (before heading home!). The hotel left some Vietnamese snacks for us with a note saying that they hope we enjoyed our stay in Vietnam. That’s nice of them! We washed up (basically have two showers a day here) and I ate the rambutans that they gave us for our welcoming fruit.

We’re heading to central Vietnam tomorrow and looking forward to seeing a different part of the country. Our flight is at 1pm tomorrow, so we’ll probably just have an easy morning and then head to the airport!

Steps today: 20,000