After months of preparation and excitement, we finally made it to the first leg of our trip: Ho Chi Minh, Viet Nam.
We arrived at NAIA Terminal 3 around 8:00PM for an 11:00PM flight via Cebu Pacific to Ho Chi Minh City. The first night was a little bit of pain in the ass for our group since the immigration officers had problems letting us pass through them. Since I have enough travel stamps on my two passports, I am guessing it was one of the factors why I was able to pass through the immigration without any problems.
I traveled with a friend who is a minor (17 y.o.) and he encountered a problem immediately after presenting himself to the immigration officer. Good thing I was able to have him secure a DSWD document and after we talked to the supervisor, he just asked where is the person indicated on the card who he was going to travel with (which was me) and we were given a signal that we were good to go.
We happily entered the final x-ray gate when I figured two of my friends were having problems with the immigration officer, too. One friend has no work but was okay to go, one has but didn't have company ID yet. Our flight was to depart at 11:00PM and it was already around 10:50PM and they were still at the immigration. The officer was so strict that he really wanted a company ID but my friend couldn't present it because she just got accepted to her work, though she had Certificate of Employment.
I was very disappointed, I was fuming mad why they couldn't let go of my friend when she had proper documents such as Certificate of Employment, accommodation reservations and round trip tickets. Good thing about it was our flight was delayed by around 20 minutes and she was able to pass through the officer around 10 minutes before the Cebu Pacific crew let us board the aircraft. I was a not-so-cool night for us since we thought the trip wasn't going to push through. We tried to forget it and just enjoy the first night inside the plane.
The weather wasn't really friendly but our flight still commenced around 11:20PM bound for Saigon City. It was couple of hours inside a red-eye flight and we safely arrived at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Vietnam. The captain was so accommodating that he let us take a photo with him.
before deplaning, 40 minutes past the hour of 12 in the morning, Saigon local time
Vietnam's currency has a small value and they call it Vietnamese Dong or abbreviated as VND.
$1 is equivalent to around 21,000 VND, you just have to find a forex that has a high exchange rate.
While others are having difficulty converting their money to VND, we formulated an easy conversion for faster calculations. 100,000 VND = ~200 pesos. Just eradicate the three zeros and multiply it to two. 350,000 VND = ~700 pesos. That easy!
I exchanged $90 and I intend to spend just that during my whole stay in Vietnam.
I needed to save for 2nd & 3rd leg of the trip which were Cambodia and Thailand.
I find Ho Chin Minh City as a very nice place to just enjoy your vacation. Upon arriving at the airport, we met this Pinoy couple who had no itinerary for a week, so they decided to just go with us for the next two days until they leave for a short visit to Cambodia.
My friend read in Pinoyexchange about this restaurant named "Nha Hang Ngon" which serves authentic Vietnamese delicacies. We spent 823,000 VND or around 1,650 pesos which was divided to 6 persons.
can you beat this? 823,000 worth!
Renting a scooter in Ho Chin Minh will make your trip a lot more fun. Vietnam is literally filled with motorbikes and they are just everywhere.
It was a fun experience to ride one of these scooters and roam around the city as if you're a local.
They don't really look for driver's license for you to be able to rent a scooter. All you need is to present a photocopy of your passport, while others ask for the passport itself. You can rent a scooter for 150,000 VND (around 300 pesos) for 24 hours.
While we were driving around the city with our two scooters, the rain poured down so we decided to just take a rest and eat some donuts while waiting for the rain to cease.
We stayed at Phoenix 74 which is located in a backpackers' area. For $20/night for a double room, it was such a bargain for 4 of us. It has one single bed and one queen size bed, my female friend slept on the single bed while three of us were comfortably fitted in the queen size bed. It is near pubs, numerous restaurants and eateries, convenience stores, travel agencies, and almost anything that you will need. Just five establishments away are resto bars that serve ice cold beers.
One thing we noticed in Vietnam is they always serve fresh leafy vegetables along with something you order. In this photo, a large plate is filled with vegetables.
War Remnants Museum is also one of the places where people who explore the city go to. It displays different photos of what their country has suffered during the American occupation.
The famous Bentan Market. This is where you can buy almost anything you are looking for.
For sure I'm going to visit Vietnam again and I plan to go straight to Hanoi. I just love this country and I regret we didn't go further north to see what outside Ho Chi Minh has to offer.
If you're going to Vietnam, don't forget to try their authentic "banh mi" or what we call french bread stuffed with meat and vegetables. It's way better than what we have here locally.
* some of The North Face bags and apparels in Vietnam are original. That's where local mall stores get their supplies from. It can go as low as 800 pesos for an original The North Face bag which you can buy at local mall stores for more than 3,500 pesos. Well, that's according to a person I met who works as a manager in a famous travel luggage store in SM. *thumbs up*
