Saigon - Day 3

Day 3 of our Saigon trip -- a whole day tour through the Mekong River. First though, we had to travel around 2 hours by van to the start of the Mekong river tour. On the way back to Ho Chi Minh city, mega traffic! Back in Saigon, we ended the day with drinks with our tour guide and Pinoy travel mates.

Beer usually sells for 15,000 VND a bottle. There was a 5,000 VND draft beer at this sidewalk place, and for a while I thought I had found something to rival the 1,500 VND brewed beer at Hanoi. But no, this one kinda tasted metallic. So Bok and I went back to ordering Saigon Bia (both the red and the green varieties), and our tour guide's favorite beer, 333.

Saigon - Day 2

Day 2 of our Saigon trip. This was Tour Cu Chi Tunnel day. The day before, we just randomly crossed the street and booked a tour at one of the travel agencies lined up in the Pham Ngu Lau district.

Lessons learned:

1. You should probably book a tour at a travel agency near where you're actually staying. Since we just randomly decided to book a tour, we ended up booking a tour at a travel agency which was still around 20 minutes away from our hotel. Boo. Good thing the meeting time was not too early, and we still had time to eat breakfast.


2. If possible, don't book a tour at a travel agency. Hehe. Since we were only 2 people, getting a taxi to Cu Chi (2 hours away from Ho Chi Minh City) was too expensive. There are also buses from Ben Than Market, but the easiest way would probably be via a tour. But, we did wait quite a while for the tour guide, we had to stop first at some lacquer factory selling goods to tourists, and yes, the tour guide basically ignored our group since he was also handling another group. Did I mention we had to wait a long long time for the other group to arrive at Cu Chi before we could start the tour?

Everything was good once we got going though. Bok conquered his claustrophobia. :) We also met a group of pinoys from CDO in the tour. After returning from Cu Chi, we ate at an eatery around the backpacker district called Kim's. I had yummy fried noodles while Bok had seafood pho, and we shared fried vietnamese spring rolls. Sarap eh. :) After walking around some more, we had a merienda of pizza and delicious draft beer at an Italian resto. Buy 2 take 1!

Saigon - Day 1

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
March 7-9, 2009

Overall, it was a fun trip. We took a lot of pictures, which explains why it took quite some time before I posted anything. Hirap i-filter! Actually, di pa nga fully filtered ang mga pictures dito, pero what the hey. :)

Our itinerary:

Day 0: midnight flight to Ho Chi Minh via Cebu Pacific. At the airport, we were fetched by a driver from our guest house, which was a good thing because by the time we arrived at past 2am, everything was already closed! Even the guesthouse lobby was locked up already, and someone with unruly hair rubbed her eyes to direct us to our room, which was in the building at the other side of the street. (We stayed at the building across Madam Cuc 64).

• Accommodations: Madam Cuc's guesthouse. Recommended! USD 20 for a room (which can actually fit 4 people). A good deal especially since we had TV, aircon, hot water, breakfast AND dinner! Breakfast was a baguette with strawberry jam and butter. Bottomless Vietnamese coffee, juice, tea and bananas anytime of the day. Dinner consisted of instant noodles and fried vietnamese spring rolls. There were probably cheaper hotels in the area but we were happy with our place. :) Other areas worth exploring would be the numerous hotels in the backpacker district (Pham Ngu Lau, Bui Vien, De Tham Streets)

Day 1: Walking tour of Ho Chi Minh city. I was actually waiting for Bok to lose his patience some time during the morning. To his credit, he lost patience late in the afternoon already, while I was exploring the basement bunkers in the Reunification Palace. We got to see a lot of sights, and had fun even while we were stranded in the zoo, care of a very heavy downpour. I even walked barefoot in the Saigon streets (because the streets were flooded and I didn't want to get my shoes wet, haha). Because it was raining heavily for hours already, we tried to hail a taxi to our next destination. Unfortunately our first taxi rejected us. Parang Pinas! Our 2nd taxi took us in, but went around and around and around Saigon, resulting to a very expensive taxi fare :( To give him the benefit of the doubt though, he might have misunderstood our destination, since the driver didn't understand English too well.

• Walking tour: From our guesthouse in the Pham Ngo Lau backpacker area, we walked to the actual Pham Ngo Lau street, and onwards to Ben Than market, where across the street there's a park and in the middle of the rotonda, a statue of Tran Nguyen Hai on horseback. We basically followed the Lonely Planet Walking Tour, with some significant shortcuts. From Ben Than, we walked to the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City. We had lunch at Quan An Ngon, and since it was lunchbreak at the nearby Reunification Palace, we moved on to Notre Dam Cathedral, and walked all the way to the zoo and botanical gardens, returning back to Reunification Palace later in the afternoon, and revisiting Ben Than market (again). We had a yummy meal at Pho 2000, the Pho place across from the Ben Than Market. We intentionally skipped the pagodas, and the other museums. Wouldn't want to test Bok's patience too much!

Day 2: Cu Chi Tunnels tour (USD 5 with transpo) in the morning until early afternoon. Underground tunnels! In the afternoon, it was back to Ben Than Market, as requested by Bokkie Bok.

Day 3: Whole day Mekong Delta River Tour, USD 9 with transpo and lunch. I got this suggestion from one of the travel pages in the internet, forgetting of course that the person who recommended this was non-Asian and thus found this exotic. Well the tour was enjoyable, we had fun, but there were just some aspects that weren't really exotic to us (being Asians also). Come on, overpriced fish that tasted like Tilapia? Exotic fruit tasting (suha, banana, longan, pineapple)? Hehe. Davao pomelos were sweeter than what we tasted. :) Hopefully someday somebody could develop a Pasig River tour especially for tourists, hehe. But like I said, we had fun. We also went biking. Wee!

We ended the day with a few drinks with our tour guide and new found Pinoy tour mates.

• Some tips for late night flights: bring your own food! :) Or stuff yourself before going to the airport, haha. Ang mahal ng airport food! The airport was large and modern though, and had clean restrooms. :)

Day 1 pictures below.