Ho Chi Minh, Mekong River, Vietnam

Good morning, Vietnam!

Once again, our Philippines visa was about to expire, and we had to set foot outside of the country ... This time, we chose to go to Vietnam.

Nothing good to eat at NAIA 2!!

We had an afternoon flight from Manila to Ho Chi Minh, so we skipped lunch, and was looking forward to some snacking at NAIA 2 (the new international airport, but only to be used by Philippines Airlines!).

After picking up our PAPER TICKET (I think they haven't caught on to e-ticketing in the Philippines just yet), and past a couple of baggage scans, and endured a few friskings, we were at the departure "lounge".

Ladies and gents -- I recommend you bring your own food to NAIA2 if you're expecting to be waiting a long time for your flight ... there's diddly squat to eat there! And we were hoping to eat to kill time too! Well, there's a Delifrance. Nothing's baked fresh there tho, all you get is reheated bits of "food" in plastic containers ... No wonder the woman depositing her baggage into the airport x-ray scanners also had a huge bag of Jolibee scanned as well ...

 

You could hardly do any lounging at the departure "lounge" -- there weren't enough seats so everyone's just standing around ...

Ho Chi Minh

We finally landed at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh. We applied for a visa via SASCO Travel (cost quite a bit too -- Muffin found some other cheaper agents later on, so we have to remember to shop around next time!) so when we got there, someone filled out our forms for us and showed us around and out the airport ... We didn't want to get hassled trying to get a cab to the city so we got one of those SASCO taxis as well ...

After meeting Jace and Mich, and checking in at the hotel (Indochine) we had a bit of rest before heading out to dinner with some friends of Mich.

We're so glad to have had locals show us to one of the BEST meals I've had ... at Quan An Ngon. It was so good I totally forgot to take pictures of our food! D'OH!!!

Pottering about in Ho Chi Minh

Next morning, we decided to check out some shops, then ducked into Ciao Cafe for some brekky / snack / coffee.

After that we did more wandering about to work up an appetite for our next meal ...

Decided to check out the Reunification Hall to learn a bit about the history of the place ...

As it was National Day, the city looked pretty festive ...

Everybody was out on the streets with their bikes ...

Mekong River Tour

We were up bright and early for the Mekong River tour. The bus picked us up from our hotel at 8AM ...

The following are photos taken from our bus ...

A couple of hours later, we were cruising down the Mekong ...

As part of our tour, we were shown a coconut candy factory, a bee farm, a snake ... and sampled the local delicacies ...

To burn off our lunchtime gluttony, we got some locals to paddle us down some small tributaries ...

 

More eating ...

Since Jason was heading back early in the morning, we decided to squeeze in our last Vietnamese meals before heading back to Manila ...

Breakfast was at Wrap and Roll, which had really nice and fresh rolls ...

After a bit of last minute shopping, we decided to stop for cofee and a bit of traffic watching ...

By the way, the best food in Vietnam ISN'T in the airport. There's only one place to eat there ... and it's like canteen food ... We had Pho and Instant noodles ...