Early morning wake up for 5:30 AM pick up this morning to start the day. Did not need to set an alarm, obviously the Vietnamese families do not believe in knocking quietly on each others doors to wake each other up, just open your door and shout in the hall. We had a good laugh.
First stop this morning is to catch a boat to the Phong Dien floating market. This is quite a small market, I think the tourist boats outnumbered the vendor boats! One of the vendor boats came over and tied herself to our boat, Vietnamese coffee, dried banana chips, and an amazing mango opened up for us to eat to start the day. Doesn't get much better than this. Only annoying part was the drone that some tourist had brought along. I am not a huge fan of drones, yes they get some amazing pictures, but the noise is so annoying, and did we really all want to be filmed?
Next we took a small canal for quite a while that went along some villages and eventually we came out by the much larger Cai Rang Floating Market that is more of a wholesale market. This market still had lots of tourists but many of them were in larger boats and couldn't visit the inside sections as well as we could in the smaller boat. Interesting learning about how the pole over the boat has the produce hung for what they have for sale. We bought some amazing soup from the soup vendor boat for breakfast. We went around all of the boats in our boat and then stopped at the pineapple cafe boat. Seems like all of the small boats stop here, it must be included on their tours like ours is. Some delicious small pineapple that you dip in salt and chili peppers. Duc then asked if he could take us on a tour of the boat. So interesting to see where they sleep/cook and store their produce. Tiny homes are large mansions compared to how families live on these boats.
Boat ride back to our driver who returns us back to our hotel where we are supposed to have breakfast now. We are so full from all that we ate on the floating markets tour that no more breakfast is needed.
We are picked up at 10AM at the hotel and started back towards Saigon. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch along the way. This is definitely a local restaurant, so busy, and this time get to sit on the little blue chairs. Good thing Duc was with us, nothing in English and we had no idea what to order. Duc got us their specialty, which was noodles in a bowl of amazing broth. Noodles and broth I really enjoyed, all the other "stuff" not so much. Andre was free to pick out any seconds from my bowel that he wanted. Hu Tieu I think is what it was called. It had everything in it imaginable, organs, fish, little egg, pork, chicken, shrimp, squid, and other things not sure what they were, probably fell in the organ category. But I did love the broth :)
Next we visit Vinh Trang Pagoda. Giant Buddha statues of past, present and future.
From here back to Saigon, we actually left a little early to beat the traffic coming back to the city, we were fine with that.
Back to our hotel with the windowless room, only this time we are 3 floors higher, but the same windowless room. Laundry is picked up around the corner, and we dropped off another load for pickup in the morning.
After a bit of a rest off to check out Bui Vien street, which we hadn't been to yet. Got distracted by happy hour sign for rooftop bar at Paradise Saigon and needed to stop for a drink. It is a tiny bar with some nice views, and across the street we looked down on a beautiful wedding venue.
Drinks done move on and realize very quickly Bui Vien street probably only gets going when we are already in bed asleep. We did stop at one of the BBQ places for dinner another mistake on dinner venue.
Supper done decided to take out more cash. Find VP bank and the first ATM has wires hanging out from it won't try that one. Next over to the other 3 machines that another girl is struggling with, she is finally able to get cash from that one, we don't have success in either one.
We move on and I see HSBC ATM at the entrance to Ben Thanh market . We were successful in getting money out, but will be charged a transaction fee. We should be good to go now for the next little while
Tomorrow we are trying our first sleeper bus, we will see how 6'2" Andre will do on those beds designed for much shorter men.
Our boat for the morning
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Monkey bridge that Wendy will not go on.
Walked by a rooftop bar that had happy hour
Lobby, where have I seen this before
What a trip. I really won’t have to go to Vietnam as I am getting such a good feel from your descriptions and your photos.
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