On the approach to Ho Chi Minh I was disappointed to see it all smogged in and gray. Reminded me of flying into Beijing a few years earlier.
My first stop was to find the Landing Visa counter and hoped that all of my paperwork was in order to purchase my Visa on Arrival. This is a sort of pre-clearing option, cheaper than purchasing a Visa from the Vietnam Embassy in Canada. I pre-paid an agent online by sending a copy of my passport and they sent me back a pre-authorization letter. Not exactly sure what the point of the pre-authorization was as it appeared to be a pretty-not descript information letter replicating my passport information and the dates of my entrance and exit in Vietnam. Perhaps it's just a money-grab. Anyways, I handed in my passport and pre-auth letter and went and grabbed a seat. There were probably a couple hundred people doing exactly what I was doing and considering there were only two windows open - one for handing up our documents and one for collecting our documents, within 7 minutes I was out of there and out$50 US for a multiple entry Visa.
Next stop was passport control. It was a real hot mess. Literally! Probably 20 lines open and it was like any other border crossing with me trying to quickly think which line would move the fastest. Ends up the line I chose took about 45 minutes. The agent never spoke a single word to me but he did stamp my Passport so all was good.
Then it was to the currency exchange. There were many to choose from, I chose the one with no line up. Their rate wasn't as good as the kiosk next to them so when I mentioned the rate next door she exchanged my money at the same rate as her neighbour was offering. Now that I had $6 Million Vietnamese Dong (VND), I was ready to start spending it. Stopped for a SIM card. In less than 1 minute, I forked over, I think it was $13 US, and now had unlimited data and a handful of telephone minutes to cover me for the next month.
I will often talk about US $ and VND. They are kind of spoken interchangeably here although it is illegal to request payment in US $. When a vendor speaks to you, they will often say the price in US $ eventhough you're paying in VND.
I had decided that I was going to take the bus to my hotel as it was daylight and I felt it would be safe. For 20,000 VND (about $1), I easily found the yellow #109 bus outside the terminal. Really nice inside. Brand new and spacious, plenty of room for luggage. Air conditioned and tinted windows. I told the driver the stop that I needed to get off at. He assured me he would tell me when we were at my stop. I was told it was an hour drive but perhaps because it was Sunday and the traffic wasn't all that heavy, it took much less time than that.
The driver dropped me off and then it was literally like being dropped in the midst of a foreign land - well it really was exactly that. Everything was written in Vietnamese and all I had was an address for my hotel and no clue which direction to turn. I pulled out my phone, all the while being cognizant of my surroundings as reading trip advisor had made me a bit nervous with people reporting the rip-off of their phones from their hands by unscrupulous scooter riders. Google maps showed me the way but when I'm not great at following directions with landmarks (ie: turn right when you see Bar2Go) I was pretty much at a complete loss. I stopped a few people who looked like they might speak English. One guy managed to tell me to cross the busy road and he pointed over in the general direction. So me and my luggage follow the lead of a local and I take my life into my hands crossing 4 lanes of crazy traffic. I walk for about 45 minutes round in circles, Google maps showing me I'm within 1 minute of my destination BUT I can't find the place. Finally a Vietnamese guy takes pity on me and asks if he can help me. He tells me to backtrack and go down 2 sois (streets) and take a right. I've been down this street before. I remember the red lanterns. I look more carefully now and low and behold I finally spot the sign to my hotel.
After getting settled in my non-descript room, I went for a walk around the neighbourhood. The traffic is beyond description. Horns constantly honking, and it just looks like mayhem. As much as it looks that way though it actually seems to work as I never witnessed anything even close to an accident.
This is my first foray into posting videos on my blog. I made a video that was too long to add to this site so I converted it to a YouTube video. Hopefully this link will work.
At 5:25, Tre from XO Foodie Tours came to my hotel to pick me up on her scooter. She asked if I had any experience being on a scooter - nope. She gave me a quick little run down of how to get on/off the bike, to relax and if I felt the need to I could hold on to the back of the seat. We drove about 10 minutes to a meet-up spot where we met up with 11 other tourists. We were all on the same tour, so 12 scooters plus a couple of "minders", videographers and photographers. Huigh introduced each tourist in the group. We had people from the Phillippines, Denmark, Texas, New York, Vietnam, and Australia. At this first stop, we ate the most delicious soup. Heavy on the lemon grass, big chunks of beef and noodles.
This will probably end up as one of my favourite dishes from Vietnam.
Dong Ba is a spicy noodle soup
The accompaniments for Dong Ba
This is the name of the restaurant: Dong Ba is all they serve.
The soup was soooo delicious but I left about 1/2 of it in the bowl as I knew we had a bunch more stops ahead of us and I wanted to save room for what was to come.
Our second stop was for BBQ.
Our second stop was for BBQ.
Goat, beef, quail, frog and shrimp BBQ
Our tour guides did all the cooking while they explained to us all about the food and the dips. I have come to realize that Vietnamese food is usually accompanied with a myriad of dips and spices.
Our third and final destination was for seafood. We ate scallops, crab, clams and frog (skin on and off) or for the very brave there was duck embryo. I passed on that one. I also passed on the frog with skin on.
Scallops. They were covered in so many spring onions and
peanuts that it was difficult to taste the scallop.
Duck embryo
This tour focused on what Vietnamese enjoy when they go out to eat. It wasn't about the popular dishes the tourists think of when they think of Vietnam: salad rolls, pho and banh-mi sandwiches.
The soup dish was really the only think I ate this evening that I would actually order again. I just wasn't all that impressed with anything else we ate.
Dessert consisted of coconut jelly and creme caramel. Both were very good.
I was really beat and Tre sensed I had lost my enthusiasm. She said we could leave whenever I was ready so shortly thereafter she and I got back on her bike (each tour guide has to own their own scooter) and we were actually relatively close to my hotel as we were back there in only about 5 minutes.
This tour took us through five districts of Ho Chi Minh: Districts 1 and 7 are known as tourist districts (I stayed in District 1); we also went through Districts 5 and 8 (and I can't recall the other one). We stopped twice along the way, not to eat but to get a bit of a cultural/history lesson.
Our first non-food stop was in China Town. This is where the wholesalers ply their wares. If you want to buy in bulk: shoes, clothes, housewares etc., this is where you come for the best price. This is where the shop-keepers in the city come to, to buy their goods for re-sale.
Our second stop was to an area which attracts ex-pats. The drive there, well let's say you could've been in the US: Dunkin Donuts, Popeye's Chicken, Carl's Jr., and street food was non-existent There were some really beautiful hi-rises here. Despite it being dark outside, there were numerous darkened apartments. We were told that people buy up the apartments for investment purposes and they don't even rent them out. A fully furnished apartment in a brand new hi-rise rents for $600 US/month. The traffic was noticeably less in this area too. It really appeared to be more suburban, not very many scooters at all but a lot more cars. As Huigh was talking to us, my mind kept wandering to Vancouver and our housing crises and foreign buyers tax. Really, from what Huigh was saying, he very well could have been speaking of Vancouver. Here we are standing outside a nice hi-rise and across the street are three cranes building more hi-rises.
We were given a bit of a lesson on the have's and have-not's of Vietnam. Just like any country, there are ultra-rich who like to import luxury vehicles. They are taxed heavily for their desires: Add on another 50% luxury tax; add on 70% import tax and then a 10% value added tax. There's a bunch of other taxes too. I believe Huigh said it could raise the cost of a luxury vehicle by 300%.
The XO Foodie Tour group
To sum up my day, it was pretty awesome. I still can't believe that I actually rode on the back of a scooter in this mayhem. It was exhilarating and almost laughable at times. No collisions due to pure skill of all the drivers on the roads.
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