Good Morning Vietnam

Well, after a very long day of travel and frustration, we made it to Vietnam!  If you've read our previous blogs, you'll already know that we found out last Monday morning at about 4 am that our intended flight from Macau to Ho Chi Minh City with Viva Macau did not exist.  Upon doing a bit of research, we found out that the airline no longer was in service.  In fact, they ended up shutting down a day when they couldn't afford to put enough fuel in one of their planes.  Unfortunately, they didn't send us an email or let us know in any way that our flight had been canceled.  We tried to book other flights online but, because we wanted to fly out in less than 24 hours, using the internet was not an option. After doing a bit of flight research online, we ended up just going to the airport to try and talk to any of the limited airlines that fly out of Macau.  We ended up finding an Air Asia flight that left in the late morning, but we had to stop and have a layover in Bangkok before continuing to Saigon.  Had we not already booked all of our hotel rooms and other flights, we probably would have just swapped things around and spent time in Thailand and gone to Vietnam later.  Unfortunately again, this set us back about $700 (which is more than half of the amount we spent on ALL of our flights around SE Asia put together.)  We didn't really have much of a choice in the matter so we just tried to look on the bright side that we were actually able to leave Macau and get to our destination and only about 9 hours later than we had initially planned.


Now - back to Vietnam!  Aar and I both loved Vietnam.  I was trying to describe why I liked it so much, but couldn't really put my finger on it.  I decided that I think it's because the Vietnamese are so friendly and always have smiles on their faces.  They aren't as rude/pushy as we've discovered in other parts of the region.


We arrived at our hotel in the early evening and spent some time exploring the surrounding area.  The Ben Thanh Market was right outside our hotel and it turns into a night market in the evenings.  We spent a bit of time just meandering through the different stalls and then I decided to indulge into the Vietnamese culture by visiting one of the most common businesses in the country - the nail salon :).  I got a mani and pedi (with a 30 minute leg massage) and all for about $6 US.  Needless to say, it was an amazing way to spend my evening after a long and troubling day of travel.  While I was getting the royal treatment, Aar went and found us some dinner at a local family owned Vietnamese restaurant that was recommended by some of the girls at the nail salon. He pretty much just "winged it" and ended up getting some sort of a spicy beef dish with rice.  Initially, we weren't so sure if beef was a good idea but it ended up tasting delicious and neither of us got sick at all.

On Tuesday we had a full itinerary of touristy things to do around Saigon.  After having breakfast in our hotel, we set out on a walking journey.  Central Saigon is pretty small, so we could walk pretty much everywhere.  We stopped at various historical locations such as the reunification palace, the notre dame cathedral, the post office, the opera house, and a few other places.  We had lunch at a delicious open-aired Vietnamese restaurant that was recommended by both locals and foreigners.  We also visited the War Remnants Museum, which was extremely gruesome.  They had several photographs depicting war crimes and we both left feeling very depressed.  I know a lot of bad things happen {on both sides} during war, but I don't think it's necessary to share images with the public.  Who knows, maybe it's good to make people aware of what occurs.  We spent the afternoon walking around a bit more and exploring the market near our hotel.  For dinner, we went to the number one listed restaurant on tripadvisor.com, but were less than impressed.  It was super tiny and they only had about 10 things on their menu to choose from.




On Wednesday, we hired a driver and a tour guide to take us to the city of Dong Xoai, which is about three hours away from Ho Chi Minh City.  Dong Xoai is the city where my grandfather's helicopter was shot down in during the Vietnam war in 1965.  If you're interested in reading a bit about his story, you can find a synopsis of information here.  I didn't really know what to expect and wasn't sure if we'd even be able to find the area we were looking for.  Thankfully, our guide was able to ask a few people and we eventually found the rubber plantation where his helicopter was shot down, as well as the memorial depicting the battle of Dong Xoai.  It was definitely a surreal feeling of being so close to where he was last heard from.  It was a very long and bumpy ride, but well worth the trip.  






Originally, we were planning on taking a day trip to Southern Vietnam to visit the floating markets, but we were both pretty wiped out from the long day on Wednesday.  Our initial itinerary had scheduled us a free day without any plans, but that had been taken away during our mishap in Macau.  We decided we'd have to go back to Vietnam another time and visit our places and that we would go ahead with our day of no plans.  We sat at a cafe for a while, wrote a few post cards, ate lunch at a cute little french boulangerie, and basically just enjoyed taking some time to breathe since we had constantly been on the go for the past two and a half weeks.  In the afternoon, we visited the National Art Museum, which was in a beautiful old building built by the french when they had colonized Vietnam. We had an early night and headed back to our hotel to pack, as we had to catch a morning flight to Bangkok on Friday.

As I already mentioned, we both loved Vietnam.  Even though evidence of the war is embedded in many parts of the culture that we experienced, the Vietnamese were very endearing.  I definitely hope to some day go back to Vietnam and explore the rest of the country.