Day 1

We Take off from Singapore on Tiger Airways at about 6am to Ho Chi Mih City! We changed some monies there and were immediately millionaires!!! hehe When we got out of the airport, we were met by the expected taxi crowd and were slightly confused, when a vietnamese girl speaking rather good english and seemingly knowing her way around, told us to only take green cabs or mah linh (something like that) or wed get ripped off. Woo hoo! Our vaca was starting off on a good note already!

We told the cab driver the street we wanted to go to and the Hotel Bich Duyen. We end up at a shady back-alley type street and there are like 20 backpacker hostels crammed down it. lol. We were greeted and served by the cutest man ever! LOL he was so friendly and helpful and sounded like he watched too many cowboy movies-cuz he always said "see ya later" in a musical type slang.


The room was nice and cosy, clean bathroom and airconditioning. All for about USD$20 a night! We took a little nap, which just ended up as a super long nap, waking about 1 or 2 pm!! (oops! well its not vacation if we're not fully rested and enjoying ourselves! hehe) We had our first vietnamese lunch at a semi touristy cafe (as all the white people were there) but were too hungry to find another place. Anyway, as touristy as it was, it still had AMAZING food and I then fell in love with the fried vietnamese spring rolls! =)~~~

Right after lunch we planned a walking tour but it started raining like cats ad dogs and we got stuck at a KFC. If only it hadn't been right after lunch i'd have been pretty estatic about it =x haha

So anyway, it was a pretty unprductive day, we popped out for dinner when the rain subsided and had a more local place-also with delicious food! (reccomended by our hotel receptionist....we thinks the owners of the restaurant are probably people hes related to as usual lol but no complaints there! good prices, good food!)

After dinner, we explored the city a little by foot, went to a night market and had the infamous Vietnamese drip coffee! (ok, I admit! I had a mango smoothie cuz I dont like strong black coffee!) Great day!

Day 2

The Next day, we had booked a Mekong River tour. Only the 10th longest river in the world and the 7th longest river in Asia connecting Vietnam, Tibet, China, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos! There was a couple hour bus ride from the city with a cute tour guide. (Although I must say, it was really stupid a little tour bus came to pick us up in the middle of breakfast-making us shove everything down- only to drive several rounds around the block for half an hour picking up passengers to drop us off at a bigger tour bus parked at a 5 minute walking distance from our hotel!)

We got on this cute little boat and they drove us through the wholesale floating market and later to these local snack making workshops. The first stop was coconut candy!! I really liked them-especially the ones mixed with chocolate hehe! (though we bought a few others and omg the ginger nut stuff is horrible!)Next was the dried rice paper and popped rice candies. They were interesting, but not that tasty.

After we got back on the big boat, we were transfered to some traditional Vietnamese river boats (4 people at a time) rowed by Vietnamese women! hehe It was a good ride and we got to wear those cute little basket-like cone hats! (I didn't buy one because I didn't need people mistaking me for a Vietnamese girl more than they already were!! I swear to god- every southeast asian country thinks I'm from their country except Singapore! I'm like a chameleon!!)

We docked at this cute restaurant for lunch (included in the package-simple food, nothing special) and had the option of bike riding (which we tried but quit cuz I felt insecure because of speeding vehicles and it was staring to rain) and chillin' in hammocks!

When lunch ended, they took us back to the boats, back through the river, back to the bus, stopped at a bonsai garden (that had really gross toilets) and back to the hotel!

For dinner, we got really adventurous and had streetside seafood for dinner! We had clams, some sort of sea thing that came in a twisty shell and fried rice with chicken! Yumm! It was so funny, my big white man couldn't really sit properly in the mini chairs they have at the food stalls all over the city. His knees me his elbows! hahaha

We finished the night off at this bar/club called Go2 Bar (reccomended by Lonely Planet). Thier mojito was actually surprisingly good and I still regret not buying a fan from the street kid selling them because 1. He was cute and 2. I really needed one for the humidity sometime later!


Day 3

We finally set off on the foot tour to the war musem, the cathedral and Ben Thanh market. We started off in hgh spirits, walked through a city park and got some brekfast of fruit and buns from some street stalls. After walking around aimlessly looking for the War museum in skin cooking heat for an hour and having some loitering locals laugh at us as we circled the block, we discovered the map our hotel gave us was a little off! (Little being an understatement!) When we finally found the building, we had about 2 hours left before the museum closed and the building served no temperature relief, built like an oven with no airconditioning. Good thing the museum content was interesting!! Haha

The yard had a bunch of planes and war tranportation devices. The building itself had some shocking details of the war. It was pretty interesting to see the Vietnam War from a different view than the Americans' in which I've only seen during my lifetime. My favorite part of the museum were the "Tiger Cages". The remaining part of an old jail, showed us how prisoners were kept, treated and lived. In my opinion, its so unfortunate how humans can treat each other so horribly :( Before we left to get some lunch, Henrik bought a book from the Museum's store.

We found this cute little Vietnamese restaurant a couple streets away and had a very delicious lunch on the porch. I had some dry noodles with fried springrolls, and baby got adventurous with bef noodles with strange beef parts I'd never touch with a 10 foot chopstick. The thing I don't like so much about Vietnamese food is all the fresh raw vegetables they like to put in. It makes me feel like a rabbit! Good thing adding the veggies is by choice as they serve it to you on the side :D


*During lunch, Henrik decided to open up his book to check it out and discovered it was a pirated copy!!! One where the pirate had taken the original book and photocopied every page of it in cluding the cover! Infuriated, we brought it back to the musem to demand for a refund (because we paid USD$6 for it and the actual price if we got an original is USD$7) only to discover the store had closed. WTH. We also tried selling it to a guy selling pirated books on the street but were even more scandalized to learn he was selling the same pirated copy for USD$1!!!! Baby was extremely disgruntled but I managed to get him to read it in the end-no point in throwing it away. Who knew even a "reputable" museum would be selling crap like that.

We went to the Reunification Palace but it was closed by the time we reached :( Another reason to go back for a visit one day! lol


We then continued our walk to the Notre Dame Cathedral and there was service going on inside. But everything was in Vietnamese so we didn't hang around for long.


We had a short trip to the Central Post office just across the street from the Cathedral. And finally got some rest at Coffee Bean! I had this really good lemony, fruity type shake. The streets would've probably been cheaper, but I went for a clean toilet and air conditioning! hehehehe

We got back to the hotel and had some time to kill before our train was to leave. So the receptionist reccomended we have dinner on a cruise boat. So we went, and there were about 4-5 boats touting for cutomers. We took the biggest boat. hehe. It was cute, the food was good but they missed one of our orders. Looking past the not so great service and tourist prices, It was pretty romantic with the boat lit up and everything. I had an awesome time! Love you baby!