Ho Chi Minh and The Plethora of Motorcycles

Ho Chi Minh (17-20 December 2010)


Disclaimer: This trip probably my ‘step’ trip not only because I wrote the journal together with other trip journal after this, it’s also a trip deprived of pictures because I only brought my old blur blur pocket camera and didn’t bother to take a lot of pictures, it’s also a trip where we didn’t visit any of natural, special or distinctive attractions. Maybe because it’s a in-between trip, before Christmas and New Year and basically we were busy with other plannings. However, this trip still had the highlight, my crazy traveling kakis from work, and that is enough to make a trip fun.


17 December 2010

It’s half day today. I’ll be going to Ho Chi Minh with my office travelling kakis minus one, so It would be three of us.
We couldn’t really concentrate with work as we prepared last minute maps and information that we could get. Since we were all busy or not around previously, there were hardly any preparations.

As the clock struck twelve, we were on the way to airport. High spirited to be away from work, this was also our first trip together this year since a year ago to Central Vietnam. This time is South Vietnam. Why Vietnam again? I actually can’t really explain it well. Haha.. for these few kakis, we chose the location based on mini mini mani moo..

It’s either based on budget airline ticket promotion for our first trip, based on the exotic but easy destination like our second trip, and this time we based on the hotel, the lamest reason of all. :) We were aiming to go somewhere nearby so the choice were between Laos, Myanmar, Brunei, Philippine and Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was the last choice since we all actually had very good fix of Vietnam already. However, the air ticket for the rest of destinations were very high for this holiday time, and HCM has the apartment hotel that we like, it’s very good for friends travelling together, HCM it is.

Our plan is to explore Mekong Delta by boat and cycling, but things didn’t really go according to plan.

We went to Airport Terminal 2 for Burger King lunch. This has become one of our traditions to have BK meal in the airport. Easy choice and we love the breakfast, although this one was lunch. We had plenty of time to spare, so after lunch then we got in the shuttle bus to Budget terminal for Tiger Airways.

The plane was delayed, argh.. for how long..? Maybe half an hour to one hour, I can’t remember the detail anymore (!).. We played card and walked around while waiting, played card on the plane. The flight took around two hours.

The airport taxi system was clear, it cost us US$8 to reach the hotel. It kind of took forever to reach because we were stuck in HCM peak hour traffic jam. There were motorcycle everywhere, more than Jakarta, more than the other parts that I had been in the world. It probably took one hour plus before we reached.

It’s Christmas time! The hotel was decorated nicely with simple skeleton tree with Christmas ball theme, and aluminum foil crumpled paper for the entrance. The lobby was small but very cosy. Our unit has nice two bedrooms, two bathroom, living, dining, kitchen and laundry room, very spacious for three of us. Upon throwing the bags, we roamed around happily for a while, took shower and ready for our first destination.

It was dark already, we went to Ben Thanh market by cab. There were two trusted cab operator, Malinh and something Vista. (not vista only mind you, that’s another cab :) I know I’d be horrible travel writer. In my defence, if I’m paid, I write down everything! Anyway, imho, details shouldn’t be important. You want to travel, do your own research! >:))
We stop at a roundabout with a statue, and this was the first time we saw the real havoc of HCM motorcycle traffic. There were literally an ocean of motorcycles coming from and to every direction. Din din din twet twet twet pi po pi po in every colors and shapes. They have a lot of fancy and unique design helmets, together with colorful facemask, jacket and fancy color of motorcycle, it added the whole new dimension to the street. The taxi dropped us on street side, where we could see many hawker selling fruits, balloons and other random things. Vietnam has right side traffic as opposed to Singapore and Indonesia.

We started to walk to rows and rows of stall like normally seen in night market. And we were lucky, because first row we were in, it was full of food. It’s about time!!

We walked by the stall, selling miscellaneous food, seafood, Vietnamese food, the famous Pho’, certain type of local noodle. We chose the one that looked good, patronized by many customers but still has empty table for us. Sitting in the open, next to the tent is apparently the right way to get extra meat for your meal. We order noodle, springroll, what else… hmmm… I remember mine is shrimp noodle and I loved it! Food arrived first for my friend and he had to eat fast competing to those tiny suicidal insects that were also interested in dipping in hot soup. But I guess he probably ate at least five of them. At certain point, you just let the insect had their way. Lucky for mine, I had quite safe meal, at least if I ate anything, it’s not to my knowledge.
It was a nice meal and upon setting down, we started to walk around the market.

They were selling clothing, slippers, bags, shorts, souvenirs, fabrics, fruits, from anything to everything. We just went around randomly, and at one point of time made it our goal to find convenient store for some snacks and drinks.

We didn’t shop much, but at least made use of first night according to itinerary, to feel the hustle and bustle of Vietnamese night life and saw the crazy traffic. Little did we know, the traffic was not as crazy as what we would encounter the next day.

We walked quite a distance before hailing a cab to go back hotel, passing by short distance of riverside where we could see those floating restaurants glimmering in the light, although I think none of us was too interesting in dining there.

Nevermind, we went back to our hotel, cleaned up and started to do our routine, relaxed and played game. Anyway, it was quite late. Each of us brought a game, not usual Scrabble because 3 person might not be as fun as four, and we decided to rest our brain this trip. So we played number game called Rummy, which was quite fun because it was not so difficult but yet quite strategic to keep us interested. We watched an captivating but crappy show concurrently until pass midnight and called it a day.


18 December 2010

Today was the birthday of my really good friend since childhood. I remember, but too bad I couldn’t call her, worse, I also lost her number because my old handphone spoilt and half my contacts burned with it. But I’m not too worried because eventually we found our way to get in touch again. (Update: I found her!)

Our plan was to go Dai Nam Tourism Park, it’s very commercialized tourism area but was chosen because our original plan might not work. We wanted to cycle whole day along side Mekong delta and around the city, but since the traffic was really heavy, difficult to find bicycle rental and the condition of the river side was also looked industrial and not so natural.

We had simple breakfast at the hotel next to pool, then booked a cab to Dai Nam, it would take probably one hour plus to reach destination.
The traffic was not as bad as the day before but there were also some hiccup along the way.

Upon reaching the gate of Dai Nam, we went in (still with the cab) and saw massive row and row of high wall resemble Forbidden City. It took sometime to find the entrance, and from there we proceeded to the ticketing area (which was merely a table, probably that is the way for car ticketing) and still, proceed to the inside until one hut where the taxi parked. He persuaded us to book him for the way back and we agreed.

The weather was very hot that day, we walked to one of attraction where there were gigantic gargantua gaban sariban megaloman (meaning: freakiiing huuuge!) golden dragon. I think it’s a theatre, and there were shows about hell and others, the speaker outside the building was broadcasting a story in Vietnamese that we couldn’t understand. We walked around there for a short break to the loo, walked back to the main road to go to the nearest temple before decided to rent bicycle.

First, we tried to rent single person bicycle, we saw someone riding it and there were a row of it in the bicycle rental shop. But somehow they said it’s not for rent. The only type available is double rider plus one pillion bicycle. We tried to rent one for each, and somehow lost in translation because the shopkeeper kept insisting we took two bicycles or even put three of us into one bicycle.

Finally, with a lot of hand gestures, drawings, sketches and even animated actions, we managed to get her to understand that we wanted one bicycle each. How did it feel to ride 2+1 bicycle? Well, it’s basically the same except now you know how dragonflies feel, or praying mantis, or truk gandeng, or someone very very bohay. (translation: gaban sariban megaloman gargantuan long ass) Stop me. Please.

Bicycle is way to go! I have to admit that the infrastructure for the gigantic park is impressive. They have road bigger than what Pontianak has before I moved to Jakarta. They have road signages more elaborate than many parts of the world. The whole park consists of zoo, temple, theatre, artificial beach (!), huge rock formation, theme park etc. I think I am a very poor representative for Dai Nam, if you want to find out more, look at this link (http://travel.vietnamwebsite.net/post/118/), they actually have much more kind of everything including world in small scale, warm water stream, even have biggest artificial mountain range.















If you really want to go there and enjoy everything, it’s better to plan ahead, unlike us who did it without proper planning because of last minute destination, and end up scrambling around left-right-up-down as we wish. For our defense, the park looked quite bare, there were landmarks and attractions far and between, and not so much connecting recommendation or information from one place to another, perhaps because the park is still new and everything is under development. Visitors could go around by walking, cycling, park’s vehicle or blue trams. There were very few cars and trams, and few motorcycles.



We cycled around, it was nice to have big road with bicycle as the highest order. We could go wild! Basically I can conclude what we did was cycling around, passing by temple, river, mountain, and we went to the zoo.

Going to the zoo might be a mistake because everything reminded us about work. Actually, the zoo has quite impressive animal collections including a lot of white peacocks, Bengal Tigers, lions, sun bears, hippo and they also have gigantic white tigers. What I didn’t like and see was the animal show that use monkey in dress (like topeng monyet). Anyway we didn’t spend a lot of time there because we were kind of rushing (afraid to get caught in Vietnam peak hour!) and we also went around the zoo with our bicycles. Indeed, we could bring or rent bicycle to go around, it’s good because the zoo has very low visitor traffic so it’s not obstructing one another and basically we were quite lazy to walk around when it was so hot and we had spent sometime cycling up and down outside.









After lunch in the zoo, we had not much time left and decided to head back to the city. The one hour long trip left me and one of my friend collapsed in deep sleep in the cab, while my other friend had to sit in front and try to be awake. Poor her.

Although touristy artificial attraction like this is not really my cup of tea, it’s quite recommended for those who want some all-in-one instant destination. It does have quite nice ‘artificial-natural-landscaping’ and also has a lot of cultural theme attractions that represents Vietnam.

Went back hotel to shower and relaxed abit before going out to embrace the crazy crowd and ocean of motorcycle.

I don’t remember how we got there, but we were at Orchard Road of Vietnam. It was impressive, the crowd was crazy. There were buildings, malls, three sections x three lanes road, and lots and lots of Christmas decorations, on the shop front, side walk, all over the roads. Everyone was posing, taking pictures, walking, din din din motorbikes, it was super duper busy.

The challenge is to cross the road, I read that to survive the HCM traffic; or crossing the road, basically what we could do is just go and the traffic would work around you. If you hesitate, you’d spend eternity. My friend also read the same thing, so we convinced our other friend that it was the best thing to do and both of us dragged her across the road.

It was quite scary indeed, to put you neck and leg in front of ocean of moving vehicles, but it worked! The traffic really worked around you, they get used to it. From almost dislocating my shoulder on the first day, my friend had become one of the experts of crossing the HCM street. We wonder of the craziness is everyday things or was it because of Christmas. It seemed like Vietnamese, especially youngsters, embrace Christmas. They had fun and every decoration was a hit. I had headache listening to the rich musical theme, din din din, dong dong dong, poet poet, street sellers, people talking, and everywhere, you were brushing shoulders with one another. Some (mostly older ladies) didn’t hesitate to grab your hand or shoulder to get by.

I was stressed with the waffle seller, they have this 2 low basket connected with a long stick where they carried through the shoulder (very common mode of street seller in most of South East Asian country). We couldn’t really see on eye point that they actually had these two baskets below so anytime I could hit my legs to the basket while we tried to moved around in between the crowd. Why particular waffle sellers? The catch was, they put the waffle makers (those two metal round identical shape pressed together) on the very very edge or sticking out from the basket and we sometimes can see smoke coming, they were hot!
In another word, it would be like pressing you leg to motorcycle exhaust pipe if you didn’t avoid it on time.

We shopped a bit for supper, instant noodle, luncheon meat, some tidbits, water, snack and bread (whew that sound like a lot!) and it was almost closing time for the malls although the crowd never subsided, in fact, getting more. We walked around trying to find way back before settled down for dinner at the famous Pho’ (Vietnamese noodle) that was recommended by other colleague. It was okay, not as fantastic as the first day noodle with insect ingredient.

We went back to the hotel, meddling with the washer and dryer to get our clothes clean while playing Rummy and making instant noodle, usual ritual. We decided that tomorrow we could go for whole day free itinerary of shopping, going through Ben Thanh market in the day time (the main portion of the market only open in day time) and would go to another market located quite a distance away, I kind of don’t remember the name and location, and also visited Saigon Plaza, local products but air-conditioned shopping mall (sounds good!), so there goes all other itineraries about Vietnamese landmark. I kind of forget why we didn’t remember Chu Chi Tunnel. Chu Chi tunnel was used during Vietnamese war back then for local fighters to hide, it’s basically human living in tunnel system which is fascinating. We did discuss it before and decided not to go, but it was in the option if we want to visit HCM unique places. But somehow me or all of us forgot about it.

We watched TV until quite late at night, one of my friends slept first while we had to wait for our laundry to dry, so we played games, chit chat and watched TV until around 3?



Sunday, 19 December 2010

I had quite a bit of spooky dream that night, that the room that we stayed used to be someone’s cemetery, so apparently we were intruding. In the dream I responded by asking do we need to move? The answer came and I was told that it was okay. Weird dream, I remember I woke up a bit feeling a bit uneasy but I could go back to sleep and then it was fine.

We had breakfast again at the pool side. Nothing much but some noodle, sausages, bread and omelete, I skipped the omelete this time.
I like omelete but somehow always find that hotel’s omelete always lame. It’s either they only have chopped onion (I hate raw onion), some tomatoes or tiny tiny invisible ham, the omelete also always very bare and tasteless, we can add in our own pepper and sauce but basically we are tasting the sauce, not the omelete. My favorite was the one I ate in Johor long time ago, it was thick super omelete with very tasty and generous filling, yet everything compliment and didn’t take over the eggs. Wah..slurp..slurp.. anyway, good omelet are not difficult to find, which makes me dislike hotel’s omelete even more. I always try hoping it would be different but it never was.

We take cab to Saigon Plaza, did a bit of shopping but not really shopping people, we ended up in a café and tried out Vietnamese coffee, cappuccino and common green tea ice cream to relax from the weather. Did we eat? Yes, I think so, but couldn’t remember what and when. Anyway, we moved to Ben Thanh market and it was the first time we saw it on day time.

The have clothes, wet market, dry produces and miscellaneous stuff. One unique Vietnamese dry produce was fried lotus seed. It was nice, crispy and fragrant. Last time my friends brought them back so this time they want more. One of them who is very experience in dealing with shopping, chose a stall and sit down, instructed two of us the younger ones who are blur sotongs to sit down too. So begun our shopping.
I found two gems, first is pure tamarin that really kicks. Hmm.. how to say, normally tamarin was either sweeten or mixed so that it’s not too sour, or comes with sugar sprinkle. This one is not, it’s top notch so I like it a lot.
The other one is ginger. Okay, they put some sugar sprinkle but it was great, it ends up not bitter, yet the ginger was still super hot. It would be great for diving trips.. love it!

We ended up with more than few kgs buy in three plastic bags, we still walked to the wet market area and thinking of buying some fresh seafood for our supper. My friend suggested lobster, It was on sale everywhere. Hm… instant noodle lobster would be very nice but personally, I really didn’t want to think of killing it. Anyway, we decided not to buy anything because that means we needed to go back to hotel first. So we continued to another market (forget the name) located quite a distance away. It looked much more messy, really local (Ben Thanh on the other hand is already a bit touristy) but interesting. They has rows and rows of traditional toy shops where you can find various childhood and simple toys. The price were very cheap too, I got a bunch of transforming toy (those robots to cars to heli etc) for a mere two dollars, while my friend bought boxes of assemble-it-yourself transforming toys.

We were quite exhausted and hot, so stopped by an KFC after failed to find street food that we wanted. All of us are sick of Singapore KFC because that is what we eat here for every tea break since there is nothing else in convenient office proximity, but we wanted to try Vietnamese KFC, and enjoyed the air conditioning room after all the hassle and bustle of crowded market. The chicken was quite dry but tasty, my friend started to assemble her toy while the curiosity kept the rest of us looking out at the window, where motorcycle and motorcycle passed by with gigantic load on their back. One motorcycle drop its stuff in the middle of busy road, the magical traffic worked around it. He parked his bike, went down to take the stuff, put them up and there life went on.

We were a bit zombie-like and decided to go back hotel to freshen up.
Played a bit with the toys we got before going to see Water Puppet show, unique Vietnamese show. We had asked hotel to book ticket the day before and they told us the show is 5.30 pm. Originally we wanted to watch it on Saturday but the performance was fully booked. Three of us had gone to Danang and Hoi An together, and each of us had gone Hanoi separately. My two companions had watched the puppet show in Hanoi, while I hadn’t. They said they sacrificed their time and money to accompany me to watch, how nice! Haha...

Happily, we boarded the cab slightly before five, and reached the theatre around 5. The theatre had closed door, it looked a bit deserted at the entrance we figured out that they would not allow anyone to go in yet.
Next to the theatre there was a toy sale, so we went around trying to kill the excess half an hour before proceeded to the entrance again. Much to our surprise, it still looked the same, so we approached the guy who looked like staff. We saw the door being opened before and see row of seats full of audience. The guys quickly escorted us from the side, to the back. We thought, wah, this must be good-seating VIP front tickets with special entrance, maybe front row! But of course, it’s not. We had to enter from behind because we were late, half an hour late. The hotel gave us the wrong timing, the show started at 5 pm, to think that we actually reached on time but didn’t know!



So, quite pissed, three of us sat down and watched the remaining of the show. They had this small water stage in the middle, while there were three people on each sides of the stage, total 6 person. These six sang and played various musical instruments while there were also six people hiding behind the stage while controlling the puppet through stick underwater. The puppets are wooden-painted or plastic dolls that dress up in various clothes and represent various characters. There were some fighting, fishing, playing and dancing scene. I’m very impressed with the singing and musical playing because of the harmony of the rhythm and momentum, so mostly I paid a lot of attention to see the interactions and chemistry among the players, who fill in the gaps between the scene. Those traditional music instruments compliment each other to create glorious sound effect, I would think it was pre-recorded if I didn’t see it in person, the harmony was that great. According to my friends, the water puppet itself was not as good as the original one they saw in Hanoi, where they have more synchronization and challenging scenes. We were also bitten by mosquitoes and being late was not good factors, but overall we were quite happy and upon going out, we went to our next destination, the crazy ‘Orchard Road’ again, since we didn’t have any other destinations to go. It was even crazier than the night before, and wafer seller attacked everywhere.







Tonite we went back to the night market where we had our first dinner, we tried other stall and ordered some food I can’t remember.. I think it’s Pho~ again, it’s Vietnam! Anyway, that is why you shouldn’t delay in writing journal. You will end up like me, unless you have pictures of the food you ate and the places you visited, which I don’t. My point is, I’m lazy but I’m diligent to admit that I’m lazy. Got it?

We strolled around the market and decided to go back to enjoy the hotel, played games and did massive laundry. It’s either there was something not right with the washing machine, we couldn’t use same method to get same result, dry clothes. All the games and plays couldn’t get us through the waiting period and we desperately needed to sleep at 4 am.
As usual, this group is the group where I had the most sleep deprive holiday, because we enjoy same game and I’m grateful for it.
It’s hard to find same insane people like us. Yay for traditional board game!



Monday, 20th December 2010

Last day holiday… Uwaaaaaaakkkkkk… holiday always has to end, that is the part I’m trying to negotiate.
Although we didn’t really have real agenda today, all of us still woke up early. Today we had breakfast at the local place near hotel, ordering with language we don’t understand for the last touch of Pho~. Our leftover laundry was successfully dried, which led us to make some questionable decision. More on that later.

After breakfast (not bad!) we walked further away from the hotel to found a small shopping center, selling mostly stationery. After a while, we decided to split because one of my friend still wanted to buy something while two of us couldn’t find anything much. We walked to other directions and finally walked back and passed our hotel to find another shopping center which sold everything touristy. For Vietnam touristy stuff, one area is basically represents enough because it would be the same. So I guess, what you could find in South Vietnam, it would be the name in Central and North. We didn’t buy anything and went back to hotel so we could do laundry for our current clothes with the goal or bringing zero dirty laundry back.

One and half hour before check out time, we already packed everything, showered and played game, but the plentiful time was apparently still not enough to wash because the machine cocked up again and we ended up with wet laundry, although the hotel actually helped us to dry it for us and our goal was achieved. We put our stuff with the concierge, and headed to Diamond shopping center. It’s high end shopping center, chosen because we didn’t have enough time to go further and didn’t want to really walk under the hot weather because we already checked out from the hotel, no chance to freshen up. We played some game in Time Zone and entertained the idea to play bowling but we were running out of time, so we just headed back to hotel, grabbed a few bites and off we went to the airport.

We did some walk around, see-see-look-look, bought something for our missing forth-kaki and saw some crappy movie from airport TV.
I think this might be the only or one of the very few trips where I went to zero natural attraction, fortunately, the getaway and companionships were good.
We still played card in the plane, with one companion being slightly claustrophobic and the other being aisleseatlover (read slowly to understand) I always sat in the middle, I don’t mind sitting in the middle of two person I’m comfortable with. We played card but the turbulence was quite bad (if the pilot ordered the stewardess to sit down, it should be quite serious à I read this from an article written by a pilot) so we called it quit.

We reached Singapore quite late, around nine plus. Our friend had someone to pick her up, so two of us proceeded to Terminal One to grab some dinner before taking cab home. The trip itself was so-so-okay, but the companions were great! I hope that I have other chances to drive them crazy in future trips.

Until next time. Until next time.