Day 2 - KL -> Vietnam

Watched the dawn from the transit lounge window and then hopped on a plane to Ho Chi Minh City (known hereforth as HCMC). Plane was a domestic jobby that was small, pretty old and packed full. I drew the lucky straw of having a child sitting behind me who not only could scream in Malaysian, but also in Mandarin and English. This amused the Australian man sitting next to his mother, and he encouraged him to shout out what he saw out the window in all three languages while kicking the back of my seat.

I am proud of my effort in eating steamed fish, broccoli and potatoes for breakfast (I had eschewed all food on the flight over from Australia). Though the alternative, rice with a chili paste would have wiped my tummy out before I even set foot in Vietnam and so it was the logical choice.

We circled HCMC for a while and I took many photos of rice paddies and rivers. I had put the camera away when we had landed and so missed taking a picture of the anti-aircraft gun on top of one of the airport buildings, but managed to get it out in time to grab some snaps of other war time architectural remnants.

Dawn arrived at 10:30am looking pale and very tired.

I am now officially a millionaire after converting $200 into 2,267,400 doung. 2 MILLION doung *puts pinkie to corner of mouth*....

Grabbed a cab at the airport for $10USD (probably ripped off but we were too tired to care...or I was anyway) and only saw one accident on the way in. Bus has met taxi's bum.

Our room is really cute. We are on the top floor (6th) of a narrow tenement style hotel place that thank goodness, has a lift. We have a goldfish pond on our balcony! We overlook some concrete monstrousity (scuse the spelling but spell check isn't working using firefox) but have a large park to the left of that that seems to have some markets setting up.



Both Dawn and I were famished and hit the streets for some genuine Vietnamese food. Slightly sidetracked we had Vietnamese beer in a bar while we redid our itinerary. We had heard such great things about Hoi An that we decided to cut out Hue days and add them elsewhere. Dawn drank a Saigon beer and I had a Halida (damn nice). Beers were about 80c each I think.

Wandering the souvenier shops on the way to grab some Pho we were both impressed with the kind of stuff that is for sale. Original art is really impressive, wood carving, silk gear and jewellery all grabbed our attention.

This blog will have lots of info about food (not that Dawn and I have ANY food obsession or anything lol) and my first Pho in Vietnam was great. I had a mediam rare beef, Dawn went for the Beef balls (I promised I wouldn't make fun of her ball choice in the blog) and medium rare beef at Pho Bo. Both cost 20,000 doung, about $1.80 all up. I left a 2,000 doung tip...Took some photos of teh food and will try and get on the blog somehow when I get the pictures put onto CD, maybe.



Crashed out at the hotel room for a couple of hours. I woke from my nap not realising Dawn was asleep and spoke to her for a few minutes thinking she was really quiet...till I saw her eyes were closed! I seem to have broken the TV!

Popped out for a coffee and chocolate croissant (yes there are pictures) and then wandered the Weekend Markets. Really got the feel of being on holiday (or maybe the caffeine kicked in and my eyes opened a bit more!) watching the various forms of Vietnamese carnival entertainment. There are no stars visible in the sky, but Mars is large and I thought about teh night before in Sydney when I last looked on it.

Booked the overnight sleeper train to Na Trangh for tomorrow night.

Numbers -
Small children begging - 1
Cats - 1
Dogs - 5
Money spent all up today -VND725,400

Day 1.5 - 2

The plane trip was pretty good and I can recommend Malaysian Airlines international flights for their nice service and nat bad entertainment system.

My seating was in the middle of a row of 5 but luckily I had 3 empty seats to curl up into to try and sleep. Alas as I was one row behind the bulkhead I had all the families with babies in front of me (the airline cots fit into the larger legroom) and so sleep was a disrupted affair as the wails of various small children during the night woke me. Which is slightly ironic as there is the family tale that on our plane trip immigrating to Australia I woke up a famous war correspondent whose name escapes me (the Vietnam war was in full swing at that time) by squealing in an airport lounge...well I see some symmetry there anyway :)

I watched 2 movies inflight, The Longest Yard and Mr and Mrs Smith, both were passable as light entertainment. Sleep totalled about 2 hours.

Best landing EVER in Kuala Lumpur with zero bumpage. It was raining and misty and dark being about 4:30am. Rode the Aerotrain between terminals and took a series of pictures to get a hang of the camera. Managed to steal another hour of sleep on the transit seats.