HCMC Day 2

051110

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

Agenda for day 2:

• Tour the nearby places such as Ben Thanh Market and the Vin Com Centre in the morning & afternoon
• Puppet Show and Dinner Cruise in the evening

As both of us wanted this trip to be a pretty relaxing one (i.e. no need to wake up super early and having to rush here and there to maximise our time in HCMC), we didn't plan to visit a lot places per day...which I thought was a good, as we had the time to immerse ourselves in the lives of the locals. Seeing kids playing hop-scotch by the roadside, it reminded me of SG in the 80s.

Having breakfast in the hotel.

Though I have read reviews that the breakfast buffet spread at Sanouva hotel was kinda limited, I think that it was acceptable...esp so as the food tasted yummy!

Touring neighbouring areas. Kinda glad that we stayed near the Ben Thanh Market so shopping was never an issue!

Selling grilled banana by the roadside.

Guess it is a dessert as it is supposed to be eaten with coconut milk cooked with sago

The hotel staff recommended this noodles place to us. Nothing to shout about though....

Tried the curry snails & french loaf


Can't believe that I was sitting right beside the dustbin and sucking the snails. So gross!

Went for the traditional puppet show in the evening

The people behind the scene


Took the trishaw to the jetty for our dinner cruise

Some of the food which was served. It was quite a sumptuous dinner.

Ho Chi Minh City Day 1

041110

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

This was quite an impromptu trip.

Was just discussing with Ee Wa over office messager on what to do over the Deepavali long weekend and ta dah...within minutes, we decided to book our flight to Ho Chi Minh City.

We took Tiger Airways and they changed our flight timing 1 week prior to our departure, which ironically, was considered lucky as Tiger Airways is notorious for either last minute change of flight or last minute cancellation of flight.

Definition of last minute: Pax has reached airport and is told that there is flight delay or flight cancellation. =(

We stayed at Sanouva Hotel which I will highly recommend it to my friends. It is simply a lovely hotel!

Our Cosy Room

Our first meal in HCMC: Lala by the roadside

The lady chef of the lala

Don't think we can ever experience this in SG.

Luckily we are not in mini skirt...or else...will probably eat in discomfort. Haha...

Guess what? When we finished our food and wanna make payment, we were told by the stall owner that they couldn't accept our 50,000 dong...Needless to say, we were puzzled as we got the note from one of the money changer in SG.

So beware, this note has expired, and thus, is not accepted.

Fortunately, the hotel staff was able to explain to us that we need to bring it to the bank to exchange this note for a newer version.

Here is where we had our 2nd meal in HCMC

Cooking by the roadside is a norm in HCMC

One of our objectives of visiting HCMC is to try the Eleplant Ear Fish. Crispy and fresh...so yummy that we had it again on our last day in HCMC.

This fried rice looked normal but it tasted really good. I couldn't believe that I actually finished 90% of it! So greedy of me. -_-

And these were not all... we ended off our day (basically of eating) with ice-cream and milk shake. It was really Fattening Day 1 in HCMC!