Ho Chi Minh, another city that never sleeps! People are moving all the time up and down the roads and motorcycles like you wouldn’t believe! Our time in Ho Chi Minh was rather quick this time around, We arrived Monday morning at about 5am into the Saigon Royal hotel which was an absolute shat hole, but non the less a place to sleep. Monday was a free day so we slept in until about 10am and went to Pho 24 for breakfast! Seriously, the best Pho in Vietnam, it is clean and very Sanitary. Guaranteed it would pass a health check in Vancouver. Pho 24 is located right across the street Ben thanh market.
Monday night, our guide took us to a restaurant, the food was absolutely great, but I was extremely annoyed that upon arrival they had only given us the “set menu” to choose from which was way overpriced. I was slightly bothered so I had asked for the normal menu and had several dishes for less money! - This is one of the downsides I have found to being on tour, is that the guide takes you to restaurants that are usually “organized” and then give them kickbacks or free food for bringing the tour there.
Monday evening, once we were back at our hotel, I had an experience that I have never had before! A purse snatcher had tried to steal my “man” bag from me. Our group was about 6 of us standing in a circle drinking beer outside of our hotel, without noticing a guy on his motorcycle zoomed past me and grabbed my bag while it was still around my neck. Lucky for me the bag was touch and I had a good reaction and held my bag tight, the guy almost wiped out, lucky for him otherwise he would have got the ass kicking of his life…in any case he didn’t get my bag from me! I was quite annoyed, angered and disgruntled by this. In fact I was even more so pissed off that the security at our hotel looked and kind of laughed at what happened and our tour guide was also without any reaction which left me feeling like maybe he had something to do behind it… probably not really, but he was one strange cat (our original tour guide, had to leave us on our arrival to Saigon due to a family emergency, so I am referring to the new guide we had)…Just really was strange and didn’t give me a good impression.
Tuesday morning, we had a great tour to the Cuchi Tunnels to learn more about the Vietnam war, it is extremely interesting and really hard to put the events into perspective. All I can say is that it was a real mess and I still have no idea why the war even happened…. I thought for the distance we went out to the Cuchi Tunnels we should have also taken time to visit the Cao Dai temple and also to Nui Ba Den which is really an awesome place!
Tuesday afternoon, I took my wife and mother shopping for shoes to Charles and Keith where they shopped their hearts away. I think my wife got lucky with 4 pairs of shoes! Makes me happy when she’s happy!
Tuesday evening for dinner, I wanted our group to go to a local Vietnamese Barbecue so I had talked to our guide and suggested that we go there. It seemed that everybody enjoyed the outdoor BBQ experience and the large amounts of alcohol that we consumed!
Wednesday morning the rest of our group left for Cambodia and we headed back to Nha Trang for Good times at the beach!
