Ewan at the Crowded House Concert Rod Laver Arena | Main | Vietnam - Day 2 - Ho Chi Minh
Melbourne - Bangkok - HCM
So today we arrived in Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City in fact and after 9 months of planning (3 guide books and hundreds of hours researching online) it is all a reality. We flew out of Melbourne following the biggest downpour I have seen in years - masses of water dumped onto the road and nearly washed us away, our flight left at 12:50 (in the evening) so we were quite exhausted by the time we got on board, but the lovely people on Thai Airways spent quite a lot of the next 9 hours feeding us - 3 course dinner, followed by a two course breakfast, and when we arrived in Bangkok - amazing airport by the way - we went to the lounge and well did the obvious thing picked at food. Our flight from Bangkok to HCM was business class as well so they served breakfast - by the time we arrived I think we had eaten two dinners and three breakfasts and Eve was hungry again.
Bangkok International Airport
The 700,000 dollar taxi
Arriving at HCM the noise, the crazyness and the mass of people is quite something to behold, I had called ahead and booked a car to take us to the city, my research indicated that this was more expensive but the easiest way to get where you want to go rather than where the taxi driver wants to take you. Well of course the New World Hotel car did not turn up, there were probably 500 taxi drivers touting for fares and they jumped on the westerners as soon as they saw us - after a while of waiting we selected an honest face. One of the things you don't immediately take into account is how long it takes to get your head around the money, the Vietnamese Dong is worth 1/16,000 of the US dollar. that means when you change $100 US you get about 1.6 million dong back and that is quite a lot of paper if you get my meaning. Of course the obvious happened our Taxi driver told us it was 700,000 dong for the ride (should have been about 70,000 dong) never mind the difference of $5 to $40 is sure to mean more to him than us.
That trip was an eye opener for us, I have travelled around Asia a bit, Hongkong, Jakata and other parts of Java, PNG, Malaysia, Singapore but never have I seen traffic like this. They say there are 4.5 million scooters in this city alone - and you believe it, they come at you from all angles like locusts running in rivers, loaded with people and packages, the amazing thing is we have not seen a collision yet. Traffic lights are meaningless, if you are in a hurry it seems you just put your hand on the horn keep going and steer around the on coming cars and bikes. The noise of the horns actually never stops, it is a 24 hour cacophony that initially makes your head pound until you no longer seem to notice it. Our expensive taxi driver was a man on a speed mission, he raced up the inside pushing past the bikes and scooters, through the cars and buses, if the traffic was at a standstill he would just head up the wrong side of the road for a bit, till he found a space, to cut back in - and yes there was traffic coming straight at us!
The New World
Our hotel was not my first choice, in fact it had been quite hard to get the hotel I wanted in HCM, numerous attempts to book directly online or through online travel agencies were not successful until eventually I was offered a reasonable rate for the NW and decided it met the criteria - being that the hotel was central, it had a pool and was a reasonable size. On arrival we discovered the amazing and garish christmas decorations that seem to cover most of HCM were all over the hotel - but we checked in with no issues and the room is very good (though internet access is expensive).
Ben Than Markets
One of the best things about the location of the hotel is that it is very close to the Ben Than Markets which are fantastic, yes you get hassled by everyone as you walk around to look at this and buy that, but it has an amazing fresh food section with lots of live seafood crawling out of bowls. The other thing you note in the heat of the day how the people just find a bench near their stall and go to sleep for a while. We wandered the stalls and the surrounding shops, still trying to get our heads around the value of stuff in the new money, so we bought a pocket calculator for 25,000 VND (about 1.75 AUD) and now we get through the complicated math!
I have found myself in fake watch heaven, they have the most amazing range of fakes here, anything you can imagine has been copied and the prices vary enormously from the obvious Rolex and Omega's to Philipe Patek and even Bell and Ross (I was tempted but not for $700USD) the problem is there is also a huge range of amazing vintage watches to be found but how many are vintage and how many are dodgy reproductions well my factoring is about 1/50 - so you need to look very very closely.
Ben Than Markets
After wandering the markets and shops for hours, we felt the need for some relief from the heat and noise, so spent some time in the pool and enjoyed a few Tiger Beers, then a brief nanna nap before dinner.
Dinner at the Grand Hyatt
Thanks to Di and Will for the suggestion of going to the Grand Hyatt, we didn't stay there obviously but this is a magnificent hotel and the restaurant is truly lovely we had a cocktails and then dinner on the terrace over looking the Opera House it was expensive by Vietnam standards but still a great price by ours (dinner drinks etc $125 USD). We walked back to the hotel exhausted but the millions of scooters were all still out there!
PS there are lots more photos on Flickr so click through if you are interested.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/crispin/
Posted by crispin at December 21, 2007 10:51 AM