Updates are taking quite long because I'm a little caught up with internship right now, with a report due in a week's time and also I seem to be occupied every evening after work, leaving me little time to blog. It was rather dreadful to resume work yesterday. I remembered telling Roy and Tian at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City, while waiting for our flight back to Singapore, that I was looking forward to going back to my beautiful and clean country and that I don't think I would revisit Vietnam in the next 5 years, or even 10. I never thought that I would miss Vietnam, but I found myself thinking about Vietnam the whole time at work, thinking about how I didn't grab the opportunity to ride a motorcycle in Vietnam - the LAND of motorcycles, thinking about how I should have been wiser and plan for a longer holiday because I missed out on Hue and Sapa, and there's Phu Quoc too. Strangely, I miss the heat a little too, I miss getting burnt, and sad that perhaps Vietnam is the only place where I can actually get a tan - yes Jamie, my face is still white unfortunately. I miss the smiles of the friendly locals in Vietnam who helped us with directions, I miss being pro at crossing the roads in Vietnam, I miss sweating it out with the guys on Marble Mountain, in the Cu Chi tunnels...
Now I'm thinking of how Vietnam would be good and cheap place for my family to go on vacation, but I know my dad would still say he has no money. I can be the tour guide, bring my mum and sisters to get French mani&pedis for 10 USD, bring them to eat authentic Vietnamese dishes though I'm not very into it, and this time I'd definitely get a dress tailor-made in Hoi An. Roy, Mich, Tian and I were very fortunate to have Thomas helping us out in HCMC on the first 2 days, and then Andy who taught us how to not get cheated by taxi drivers in Hanoi who zhng their meters, and also provided us with a nice place to stay at, where we happily helped ourselves to his stack of DVDs, OSIM iSqueeze, washing machine (I ran out of clothes) and more. I am so sincerely thankful to all who helped us, and especially thankful to Mich, Roy and my darling boyfriend for making the trip unexpectedly interesting and enjoyable despite the insane heat. Unexpected because Vietnam was never THE country I was dying to visit, but now I'm glad that Tian somehow psycho-ed me to give up on places like Egypt, Korea and Japan, with the excuse that we shouldn't spend so much money on travelling to expensive places since we just went to Europe a year ago. My boyfriend's the best. Oh ya, Mich Ang and Baorong played a part in tempting me too, since they already had plans to visit Vietnam when I was still contemplating over Egypt. =p Here's a photo summary of our trip.
First stop: Ho Chi Minh City
In the minicab from airport to District 1. We were like "WOW, it's left hand drive in Vietnam" haha. And it was the first time we saw roads infested by motorcycles, not only that, but also traffic rules and regulations do not apply very much in Vietnam. Motorists do turns and U-turns as and when they like to, and taxi drivers often cross over to the other lane where there is traffic coming straight at us. And they do it so safely by horn-ing their way through and we didn't even witness an accident during our 10 days in Vietnam. Ironically, we saw a motorcycle accident on our way back from Changi Airport at noon on the expressway where there was no heavy traffic and the roads were so peaceful. I figured why the Vietnam roads are so safe and accident-free despite road users not following traffic lights, road markings and dysfunctional zebra-crossings is because they usually drive no faster than 60km/h so motorists are able to avoid anything that come in their way. And I've counted, on average, taxi drivers sound the horn every 10 seconds. So yes, the Vietnam roads amazed me. I bet Vietnam is the country with the highest number of motorcyclists.
Luan Vu Guesthouse 2. Great location in the center of the backpackers' area, rooms were very decent and clean. The cable TV had every single channel, Star Movies, Star World, MTV, HBO, Fashion TV, all the chinese channels, AXN, Discovery channel...seriously everything. Totally worth it for 6 USD per person per night. A very modest breakfast was served to us every morning, and the guesthouse owners who spoke English were of great help to us.
Through Tian's mum's friend, we got to know Thomas who works in HCMC and on our first night when we arrived, he brought us to this very affordable and good Cantonese restaurant for dinner, after which he brought us to a small club called Lush where we had drinks and watched some locals and ang mohs danced. There was this local guy who was dancing alone when all his friends were seated down, and he looked possessed while dancing haha. After that, we went to the very first, original Q bar in the world, located at the Opera house in HCMC, where we had even more drinks, courtesy of Thomas. It was a very nice chill-out place and I tried their Saigon Express.
Poor little adorable puppies for sale on our way to the War Remnants Museum. They were so so cute I tell you, I would love to have the brown one with floppy ears, in the photo below. God knows where they were captured from.
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