First day!
One photo at the airport first before I start!
The very good thing in Hochiminh Airport is that when you get out of the plane, walk into the hall for luggage claim, your luggage is already waiting for you there since when. Super fast. We didn't have to wait even for 1 minute. Rapidly got out of the airport after checking in, we took a taxi to the hotel. The hotel I already book before I went off so now they were just waiting for me to arrive. We stayed in An An 2 Hotel, located in very happening area for only foreigners and tourists. There are a lot of souvenir shops, restaurants, and especially tour companies there. And no worries, they can speak English even though their English is something like: "I sell you cheap price. This is very beautiful. How much you want?". The room here is pretty small but clean, 1 night only USD22/ room with double bed. So if you go with few of friends, you can save a lot of money for accommodation. Check HERE if you want to find out about this hotel. Settle with the accommodation part. So, what to eat? Of course, beef noodle or we called it PHO BO. I took my friends to a popular restaurant about PHO. Most of the customers were sitting inside are foreigners too. Three of us took spring roll, beef noodle (2 bowls), 1 chicken noodle. This is my food: And the total bill is VND178,000 which equals to RM40. This is a quite high-class restaurant, thus the price is slightly higher. If you eat 1 bowl of noodle at the normal store along the streets, it costs you just RM4 for once. Cam-whoring inside the restaurant for a while, hehehe: When you come to Vietnam, a tropical country, you MUST try the fruit here. Even the mango, the longan, the lychee, it tastes so different from Malaysia. We had try these plus 2 fresh fruit juices. It costs RM4- RM5 all together. While eating the fruit, we were enjoying watching people busy on the street at night. The weather was just perfect, windy and clear. It's kinda fun you know? You guess what is it? The guy who sold dry sotong (squid). with only the small bicyle and a simple stuffs, he grilled the squid on the spot to serve you. See, he was grilling the squid for me. He was standing there for so long to wait for us to buy from him, so we just supported him It looked a bit ugly but it's very yummy you know? Ok, done with the sotong session, we were heading to the Ben Thanh night market by Xichlo. I'm sure you all know what is 4 wheels drive, but.......3 wheels drive probably you don't. Lolzzz, so this is the 3 wheels drive lor:D This is very very old vehicle of Vietnam in 1990, nowadays they use it for tourism purpose only. I couldn't take any photo in this market due to busy with shopping and looking at the stuffs there. But a tip for you, if you want to purchase something there, the seller says VND600,000 for a skirt, you just pay VND150,000 only, then slowly markup. If they don't want to sell, pretend to walk away. They will call you back, trust me. What if they don't call??? Forget about it and go to the next store because you already know roughly what is the lowest price of that item. So, just go ahead and shopping but be aware of pickpocket as well. Crime is everywhere in the world! We finished our shopping session, then I needed to go to see my friend- the singer as he just ended his show also. He took us with a group of friend to go to eat again! We ate Ice-cream, we ate seafood. I was pretty tired at that time 11.30pm. So took 1 ice-cream photo only. This was mine!
And after this evening activities, we went back to our hotel to rest and prepare for the next day beach tour.
Second day!
Waking up at 7am, we quickly had our breakfast and got into the car heading to Vung Tau, a city which is far away from Ho Chi Minh about 2 hours drive. I was so looking forward to going to Vung Tau, a beach city, also a very happening area for tourists and seafood lovers. The weather was just so nice and clear. There was 7 of us all together in 1 car: 2 girls (me & my friend), 5 guys. Arrived there at 12pm (depart at 8.30am but only 12pm we reached the hotel because we stopped along the road to try the food, hahaha...All big eater!) The interesting part when u travel to Vietnam is you can eat a lot and you may feel full at that time, but after 2 hours, you still can try other food as if you have never eaten before :D) That's why once we arrived the hotel, we went out to look for our lunch also. And this is our very southern meal style: Sweet and sour fish. This one was quite nice and I kept eating it non-stop. God! :D
Fish soup with star fruit and basil leaf!!!
The big eater group: 2 singers, 1 driver ( our friend), 1 hair stylist and 1 me :D
The big eater group: 2 singers, 1 driver ( our friend), 1 hair stylist and 1 me :D
Done with our bloody full lunch. The bill was RM100 for 7 of us. We ordered 4 dishes, each dish times 2, plus those drinks, service charge, whatever. I think it's cheap! After lunch, we went to sing Karaoke, just to reduce the fullness of the stomach. I couldn't sing any Vietnamese song because all the songs are new to me, and I don't really listen to it. This gentleman was a hair stylist before, now becomes production manager who helps my singer friend (Bang Cuong) to get the shows and so on. He loves taking photos as much as I do. Everytime, I cam-whoring, he wants to photo bomb. But just a clarification, he is STRAIGHT! I mean, he's not gay. We went to sing Karaoke while waiting for the late noon to go swimming. And yeah! It was so nice to lie down there, enjoy the wind, the salty smell of the beach, the sand was still hot under your feet and looking at people around or just doze up for a while. I'd just applied Tanning lotion coz iIwant to have tan skin color, but it seemed doesn't work that much. Only can get until like this: I wanted to ask my friend to take more photos, but there were so many people kept looking at me. I don't know whether they recognize the 2 singers with me or they never seen anyone wears blue bikini before. There were 2 ladies sold seafood along the beach also want to stay there and watch. I felt wearing bikini is just very normal, but don't know why they were so keen...We swam until the sky became very dark, then we ordered the seafood from the 2 ladies behind. We bought very big crab, prawn. She steamed them on the spot with beer and we eat...Yum yumm...Can you imagine, you just finish swiming, sitting at the seaside, and eating seafood!!! What a heaven! :D See, how big is my crab! :d I feel a bit lazy after a full dinner. After the seafood feast, we went for an actual dinner :DDinner was just simple but it was tasty and the thing I like most in Vietnam food is IT'S ALL ABOUT VEGETABLE! You see: