We are here!
All went well on arrival in Saigon.
Got off the plane at midnight last night. Only plane going through customs, watched closely to see how this is done here, looks like you don't go through as couples, we went through one by one. They wanted boarding pass, passport and Visas. We passed the experiment of getting both our Visas in advance, one starting yesterday, the next in 5 weeks when we come back from our 1 week Cambodia visa run.
Off to find taxi, approached right away by someone that wanted over 400,000, my trusty notes said 200K to 250K to district 1 and I couldn't read his name tag so moved on. Continued to the left and saw what looked like real taxi lines, we ended up in a meter taxi from vinataxi. Got to our hotel and so many numbers on the meter , a bit over 150K but we just gave him 200,000 and he said OK, so we were OK. Only traffic we had was him paying the toll to get out of the airport. In our room 45 minutes after we got off the plane. I think it took longer for them to get first class off the plane before they let us at the back of the plane off.
We have a mix match of accommodations this trip, Saigon was not our splurge. We booked a no window room. We figure we did South America cruise for 2 weeks inside cabin, we can surely do 3 nights no windows in Vietnam.
Decided to set the alarm for 8am just in case we actually slept. Shocked when the alarm woke us up. One good thing about no windows is no noise. Off to included breakfast, we will need to get ourselves moving a bit earlier I think, lots of empty platters. I do love that yogurt, lots of it available in those little jars.
Time to hit the streets. Put stuff in safe, doesn't lock. Down to front desk, housekeeping comes up, can't fix it. Off she goes and comes back carrying a new safe. Lifts our old safe out of the cabinet and replaces it with new safe. Who needs to bolt down a safe? All our possessions are totally safe now.
A few errands looked after, got a Sim card on one phone, got some Remos bug spray, and came across a Samsung store who had a look at my flip phone. Major bubbling where it opens on the Screensaver, left my phone and came back in 30 minutes to pick up with new Screensaver. Turns out he didn't want to do it because it is cracked a little on the fold. Urgh, I swear this is because I am way over 20 and no longer wear skinny jeans, at least that's all the ads seem to target for these flip phones.
Hit a lot of the district 1 things we wanted to see. We had downloaded a walking route and added a few extras. From our hotel it was a good loop starting at Mariammon temple, working our way to Thich Quang Duc monument, Xa Loi Pagoda, then the war remnants museum and Independence Palace, the Post Office and the Cathedral (which is under major construction) . Headed back to our hotel for a break and decided we better eat, decided right outside our hotel was perfect. Showers and quick turnaround for AO show at the Opera House at 6pm. Jetlag and heat got the best of us , we may have both missed a few minutes with our eyes closed. Walked along the pedestrian street to the water. Put our life in danger a couple more times crossing streets, with the added fun of darkness.
9:30PM, Done for the day. A great start, looking forward to even more adventures tomorrow.
Mariammon temple:
Park between points of interest for shade
A few street scene pictures
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| Lotus flower |
Thich Quang Duc monument
Xa Loi Pagoda
War remnants museum. Hard to see some of the pictures in there
Got fresh coconut for a break
At the cathedral, no visit allowed
A couple of upper scale hotel that we are NOT staying at
Delicious Vietnamese supper that cost us $15, BBQ pork belly for Andre and BBQ chicken for Wendy
Beautiful old opera house
Apartment building with many restaurants to choose from
Market but most stalls were not open
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We appreciate any comments/questions you would have or any stories about the places we visited.