I had the week off work so Nick and I packed up and flew to Vietnam. We only had one week and I wanted to see everything. And man, it turned out to be quite the adventure. Overall, it was a good experience but it was definitely a roller coaster with many surprises.
For starters, it was hard to go from Japan which has such amazing public transportation to Vietnam which, as it turns out, does not. This lead me to initially plan a really ambitious trip. When I was first reading about Vietnam- well, after my initial inspiration from BBC's Top Gear- I was super stoked to tour the Mekong River Delta (in the south) and the Central Highlands so I bought round trip airline tickets to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon). Then, after I bought the tickets, I read some more about Ha Long Bay and the north and realized I couldn't miss it (and we wouldn't have time to come back)! So I bought one way tickets to Hanoi, 1100 miles to the North. But, this being Vietnam, we decided it was best to not to try to book it back to back with our other flight. So, our travel itinerary was arrive in Saigon in the South on the evening of the 5th, then fly to Hanoi in the North the next morning and somehow arrive back in Saigon on the morning of the 12th to catch our flight home. Since we had so little planned in between we also decided not to make any hotel reservations and just wing it!
So we packed our backpacks and left early on the morning of the 5th to drive to Fukuoka. From there we caught our flight to Taipei, had a short layover and boarded the plane for Saigon!
Taiwan!
Ad in Taipei's airport...lol
A bunch of the walls in the airport had plants all over them.
That's us!
We got off the plane and were greeted by a wave of heat and some sort of mystery smell. We made our way to customs but first we had to stop and get our visas. We applied for Visas on Arrival and had the letter and photos and everything should have been in order. We turned the corner and were instantly reminded that we were not in Japan anymore. Instead of there being an orderly queue with clear instructions at the visa office, there was just a mass of sweaty, frustrated people. We joined the throng and eventually shuffled our way to the front, showed them our paperwork and were handed another form and told to go off to the side and fill it out, thus losing our place in line. Would have been nice to know we needed to fill out another form before we stood in line that whole time! OK, so form filled out, we tried waiting in line again but noticed that everyone else with their papers were just cutting so we joined in. After waiting another indeterminable length of sweaty time, our names were called and we went up to the desk only to be told we needed 90USD for the visa. Wait, I had already paid $35 for the paperwork I had given them. Could this be right? Who knows, they weren't taking questions. So Nick went over to the ATM to withdrawn some money. We could only withdraw Vietnam Dong (their currency! I kid you not!) and there was no wifi to check the exchange rate so we withdrew 100,000 dong. Seemed like a lot!
We then went back to the counter and were told $90 USD is equivalent to 2 million dong. Whoa! Nick went back to the ATM to withdraw some more dong and couldn't find his debit card. Uh-oh. We looked all around the machine, asked some people who had been in line behind us if they had it and even tried to ask one of the airport officials. No luck. In fact, the airport official just pretty much laughed at us and told all his friends who laughed too. It was gone. Crap. Whelp, we would have to deal with that later once we'd found a hotel. We used my card to get the rest of the dong, paid for visas and no less than over an hour later, we were finally out of the airport and in Vietnam!!
We then went back to the counter and were told $90 USD is equivalent to 2 million dong. Whoa! Nick went back to the ATM to withdraw some more dong and couldn't find his debit card. Uh-oh. We looked all around the machine, asked some people who had been in line behind us if they had it and even tried to ask one of the airport officials. No luck. In fact, the airport official just pretty much laughed at us and told all his friends who laughed too. It was gone. Crap. Whelp, we would have to deal with that later once we'd found a hotel. We used my card to get the rest of the dong, paid for visas and no less than over an hour later, we were finally out of the airport and in Vietnam!!
Sign in the airport. Hahaha looking forward to a whole week of these jokes!
Once out of the airport, we picked a hotel from the Lonely Planet guide book we had brought with us, hailed a cab, negotiated a price (just 10USD to go over 30 miles!) and caught some of our first sights (and sounds!) of Saigon.
From our cab
The hotel we had picked was full but the woman at the desk walked us across the street to another hotel and got us a room at the hotel. It was good she helped us because they didn't speak a lick of English. We were shown to our room and given the wifi password. A quick Skype call later and the debit card was successfully cancelled! Woot woot! We got ourselves situated and set out to see Saigon at night!
$22USD worth of hotel room. Not bad!
It even came with a balcony!
This is our hotel lobby. Also happens to be a motorbike parking lot lol
We set off down the street and saw this....
and soon stumbled upon this establishment. The Spotted Cow!
75 cent beer and things were looking up again, Vietnam!
Feeling refreshed, we continued our walk.
We were exhausted and so a short while later we got some sort of tasty mint and noodle soup thing, then went to bed. We had an early flight to catch the next morning to Hanoi!
Stay tuned for the rest of the story!
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