Amazing Vietnam - Day 1 (6 Dec 08)

Truly Amazing Vietnam (6 – 14 Dec 2008)

If you ask me to summarise my impression on the Vietnamese with one word, then it has to be that the Vietnamese are very, very, very friendly. Why repeated adverbs? I’m sure that Singaporeans are friendly too, well at least most of them, and the Americans, and the Australians, Chinese etc. But IMHO, comparatively, the Vietnamese are really super duper friendly. Perhaps you will understand better after I shared my amazing experience each day at various Vietnam cities. Actually two friends invited me to tag along for holiday this December. One is going to L.A., US and the other one (Bob) to Vietnam. I chose the latter and I think I made the right choice.

Itinerary

Bob is going to Vietnam for his business trip while I tagged along for holiday. He promised to make time for my holiday purpose. And this trip will cover two main cities (Ho Chi Minh and Ha Noi) and another town (Da Nang) located just around the centre of the vertical land. Just for your info, Ho Chi Minh is the economic capital whereas Ha Noi is the country’s capital. Altogether, we need to fly five times in order to cover all these locations. We decided to plan for a budget trip since we are going to many locations but I’ll skip the finance details. Our itinerary as follow:

6 – 8 Dec – Ho Chi Minh

8 – 11 Dec – Ha Noi

11 – 13 Dec – Da Nang

13 – 14 Dec – Ho Chi Minh

14 Dec – back to Singapore

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奇妙越南旅就此开始

D-Day

On 6 Dec 2008, we flew to Ho Chi Minh (HCM) by Tiger Airway. We reached the city in the evening. The weather is similar to Singapore. At HCM international airport, Bob told me to ignore any cab driver offering us a service. This is because these cab drivers wanted to negotiate and fix a (high) price. We should look for a meter-cab. The best carrot is none other than the tourists isn’t it? It is the same situation in any country. We don’t blame them. We hired a meter cab and it took us about half an hour to reach our hotel. The traffic was massive and messy. When I got out of the cab, the kind driver carried our luggage, crossed the road and put it at the hotel entrance (hotel is on the other side of the road). I was like “how the hell am I going to cross?”. Then the hotel staff, apparently understand their customers’ concerns, came to help us to cross the massive traffic.

After checking into our hotel (Spring House Hotel, 221 Pham Ngu Lao street, District 1), we decide to walk around and ended in a restaurant for coffee. The restaurant’s staffs were very polite and humble. We ordered french fries and Vietnamese “drip coffee”. This is very common in Vietnam. What they do is that they have some sort of coffee container on top of the cup to drip down the coffee. The taste or the fragrance is a bit different from the usual coffee in Singapore. The only thing is Vietnamese coffee is very thick and concentrated. I don’t think Singaporeans can get used to it so Bob and myself always ask for extra cup of hot water - to add onto the coffee. They sell Tiger beer too. APB has been very aggressive in expanding their position and fight for bigger market share in Vietnam. Within a few years, you can see Tiger beer and its poster almost everywhere.

Another interesting thing to highlight is the Vietnamese building. Most of the buildings are quite narrow and usually built up to level four. Take a look at some of my pictures and you’ll understand what I mean. Perhaps it is expensive to expand a building horizontally. So the alternative is to build it tall. However, the local authority controls the height of their buildings so usually people built it up to four levels. Anyway, we are not very sure.

My First Motor Bike Ride

After the coffee, we proceed to Bob’s business office. I will not talk about his business in my blog. After that, Bob’s ex-colleague, Xuan came with her roommate Tien to pick us up – with their bikes. Most of my friends and colleagues know that I don’t ride bike and that applies to many Singaporeans. But in Vietnam, this is just the other way round. Most Vietnamese own a bike as not many can afford a car. Well, I don’t have much choice then since I need to behave like a man in front of two young ladies. I told Tien that I had never ride a bike before so to pardon me if I look stupid. The traffic was massive even at night. We proceed to a restaurant for dinner but along way, we met with heavy downpour. Bob was lucky as there was extra raincoat for him. Tien took out her one and only raincoat and wanted me to “hide inside her rain coat” behind her. It’s like hiding inside Superman’s cape. I was extremely uneasy because:

1) that is rude to do that to a lady and can amounts to molest
2) it is dangerous as I will be blind to the traffic

So I got out of the bike and found a shelter. Tien was polite and she understands. She drove off to buy a raincoat for me.

(Later after the end of our holiday, then I realized that in Vietnam, it is always man driving and lady sitting behind. And only lady covers herself inside the man’s raincoat from the back seat. I was given special treatment as I am a foreigner and do not understand their culture).

A little bit of intro here - Tien is an undergrad doing her last year marketing degree. Both ladies are able to communicate in English although we need to speak slowly in order to understand each other. In fact, when you converse with Vietnamese, try not to “sing” or slang like “ang mohs”. It makes communication difficult. Xuan was previously working for APB (Tiger Beer) in Vietnam and that’s where she gets to know Bob. Bob was the internal auditor then. Both ladies are staying in a rented unit and must be back before 11:30pm otherwise they will be lockout.

After we departed, Bob and myself went to a pub for a drink. It was a very small pub with a couple of tables. There are many such small pubs at HCM. And lucky for the lady boss that I was in the mood that night so I ordered lot of drinks. I spent about 500,000 VND (equivalent to S$50).