Vietnam – Day 1
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh airport at around 12 midnight. We took a taxi and I showed the driver our hotel address. We weren’t far from the airport yet when I realized that it’s the wrong address I showed. I hadn’t gotten a sim card here yet so I didn’t have internet connection. I asked the driver to take us back to the airport so I could connect to the WiFi and check my email for the correct hotel address.
The driver doesn’t speak English so it was difficult to communicate with him. He used the translator on his phone but he still didn’t comprehend most of the things I said. He eventually understood after minutes of explaining then he took us back to the airport. I got the correct hotel address and showed it to him. When we reached the hotel, he took 570,000 vnd. We just realized this morning how much of a rip-off it was! We were tired and sleepy and we didn’t know how to convert vnd to peso correctly yet so we didn’t bother much. But this morning, we realized we were scammed. Oh well.
I had five hours of sleep and I still feel sleepy. We went to a hole-in-the-wall resto just a few steps from the hotel. We ordered 3 bowls of chicken noodle soup that cost 141,000 VND (47,000 VND each). The soup was good. It goes well with the rainy weather. We tasted herbs that we don’t have in the Philippines and they were surprisingly good! We also bought bread nearby. The ones we tried were all good. It was nice because it’s not an expensive bakery but their breads are amazing.
I didn’t plan anything for today because I wanted us to just rest. We’ll visit the War Remnants Museum and the Saigon Central Post Office tomorrow.
