TP Trails

As Christmas approached, we both felt a little bit homesick as this was our first time being away from home for the holidays. That’s part of the reason why we wanted to be in a country where we would have the opportunity to celebrate with the local community, and so we applied for our Vietnam visas to arrive on December 23.

The Vietnam e-visa process was surprisingly simple, especially considering this is a somewhat new system. The application was a one-page online form. We had read that even the slightest mistake (e.g., wrong digit in a date or passport number) would result in being turned away in Vietnam. So, we were very careful when filling in our information. We had to list an address in Vietnam as well on the form – we had not yet picked a hotel, so we just listed a random hotel’s address. This ended up not even being printed on our visa when we received it, so no one questioned this. You also must attach a scan of a passport photo and passport. Since we didn’t have a scanner on hand, we took pictures and cropped them. Again, no issues with this. Once we submitted, it took about 1.5 days to receive our Vietnam visas, which were emailed to us. Then, all we had to do was have the hotel print them and that was it! Super simple and quick! Once we received our visas, we booked flights from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (cheap and easier/shorter than taking a bus across the border).

With our visas in hand, we arrived at the airport about 2 hours ahead of our flight. We used Grab to get a tuk tuk to the airport, which took about 30-40 minutes and cost about $4. At check-in our visas were scrutinized by three different people (I assume they don’t want to be responsible for your flight if you can’t get into Vietnam). They also asked to see our proof of onward travel, which we did not have. Fortunately, they just told us to be prepared for an answer if we are asked at border control in Vietnam (we were not). We were checked in and through security in about 20 minutes. The flight was also very quick and easy with plenty of open seats; the large plane was continuing on somewhere to the middle east after the hour-long segment to Ho Chi Minh City. Border control in Vietnam was easier than airport check-in in Phnom Penh. We picked up our bags, purchased a SIM card (30 days, 9 GB, 300,000 VND or $13), visited an ATM, and went in search of a taxi.

Even though we had researched taxi companies in advance, we somehow ended up in one of the companies that tends to take advantage of tourists (VinaTaxi). They are all similarly named, but we should have only taken VinaSun or Mai Linh. Better yet, we should have just ordered a Grab Taxi. The cab we were in clearly had a rigged meter and drove quite a bit out of the way. We ended up paying 500,000 VND for our ride, compared to the 95,000 VND we paid with a Grab to get back to the airport at the end of our stay. Ultimately, it’s not the worst thing that could have happened, but still frustrating. Our hotel for the first night was Chez Mimosa Boutique Hotel. It was nice – good shower, comfortable bed. The balcony was not really useable, and natural light into the room was limited due to the odd room shape. The staff at the front desk were wonderful! Upon our arrival, the woman gave us a handwritten list of some restaurants after we asked. We decided to go to Bun Thit Nuong, which serves rice noodles with pork and spring rolls that you marinate with a fish/soy sauce mixture. It was delicious and cheap (28,000 VND, or $1.20 per dish) – we returned to this place many times over our stay in Ho Chi Minh City.

Unfortunately, the Chez Mimosa was sold out for all rooms at our price point, so we could only stay there one night. The next morning, we packed up and moved to a lower quality hotel (although still adequate) a few blocks down the street to save some money – OYO 108 Amanda Phan Hotel. Nothing spectacular, but a large, clean enough room for $20 per night. We ended up booking four nights here (online prices were cheaper than at the hotel). Now, having settled our accommodation, we were ready to explore Ho Chi Minh City!

Day 1 (Christmas Eve)

We always like to explore cities by walking, and that’s just what we did on Day 1. Patrick found a couple good blogs/walking tours online that we more or less followed. One blog led us to a recommended banh mi cart, Bay Ho (featured on Netflix’s “Street Food”) and adjacent coffee shop. The banh mi sandwiches were delicious and cheap (17k VND or $0.75/sandwich)! We decided to get a second one (each) at a cart just down the street, Bay Quang, to compare – also very tasty. We then got a coffee from “A Coffee House”, which has an actual storefront in between the two banh mi carts.

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The rest of the day we wandered, following a similar path as that on “Itchy Feet on the Cheap.” We wandered through small alleys (you can get lost in these!), eventually finding a cute little wine shop. We checked it out – you can buy bottles of wine or rent out the small shop for group gatherings. Neither suited us at the moment, but the woman working there recommended their two sister bars (The Alley and ATM). Next door, there was a German beer garden (Hoavien Brauhaus), so we walked in for a beer. No A/C though and the place was quite stuffy, so one beer was enough for us.

From here we made our way over to Nguyen Hue Street. There is a wide pedestrian strip in the middle, so was nice to walk down. We got a couple drinks at Saigon Saigon Rooftop Bar during happy hour – the views were great and there was live music (solo singer/guitarist). Still a bit pricey, but well worth it for us! Then we headed to The Alley around 7 pm (place recommended by the wine shop). Happy hour here ends at 8 pm, so we timed it nicely on purpose. It was Christmas Eve, so we decided to splurge a bit and got fancy cocktails, red wine, and two sirloins. There was also live Christmas music here (solo singer/pianist). It was nice to be surrounded by the holiday spirit since both of us were feeling a little homesick at the holidays. By the time we wrapped up dinner and drinks, it was getting late, so we headed back to the hotel.

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Day 2 (Christmas)

Christmas in Vietnam! And there was a Catholic Church, the Notre Dame Cathedral, with English Christmas Day services at 9 am. We arrived around 8:50 am and it was already crowded. Unfortunately, the church was undergoing renovations, so most of the stained glass was covered for protection and the interior design was rather simple with no murals. But regardless, we still enjoyed mass and were happy to be there to celebrate Christmas. The choir was also very good and sang a few songs that we knew, along with many that we had never heard before. One strange concept is that Christmas is not a holiday here, so many people were taking off from work or heading to work afterwards.

After mass, we walked down the street and got a couple banh mi sandwiches and coffees from “Ong Tam” – our Christmas brunch! We spent the afternoon wandering Ho Chi Minh, stopping at Pasteur Bar for a craft beer and a burger. A little pricey for our budget, but beer and burger were surprisingly good. One of my family traditions is to see a movie on Christmas, so Patrick and I upheld this tradition. Since we’ve seen a few movies recently on our trip, we were left with the only other English movie playing at the BND Bitoplex Theater, “Rambo.” Movie tickets, three beers, two popcorns, and one soda was 333k VND total ($14.30 USD). After the movie, we searched for a nearby bar. Somehow, we ended up in the “Gentleman’s clubs” area (bars geared towards “businessmen”), but they all had good happy hour deals and were empty, so we decided to have a glass of wine. We played a few rounds of darts and then moved on before anyone else even came into the bar. For Christmas dinner, we settled on a Pho cart near our hotel. It was delicious and the woman serving it was very nice, showing us all of the different sauces and which get mixed directly into the Pho and which act as a side dipping sauce. Not quite the same as our traditional prime rib, but a fulfilling meal nonetheless! We ended our Christmas with a few FaceTime chats with our families.

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Day 3

After a lazy morning, lunch at Bun Thit Nuong again, and coffee from a cart, we headed to the War Remnants Museum (formally names the US War Crimes Museum). Cheap entry (40k VND/person) and some of the exhibits were good, including one on the effects of Agent Orange. A lot of images and mostly focused on the US actions in Vietnam. There was practically no information on the Viet Cong and north Vietnam’s actions/crimes in war. Overall, it was an interesting museum and consumed a couple hours of our afternoon. Afterwards, we walked over to Layla Bar for happy hour. For dinner tonight, we were in the mood for some western food, specifically pizza. Based on reviews, it seemed that the best nearby pizza place was 4P’s Pizza (a chain), located in the Saigon Center mall. We had to wait about 30 minutes for a table, but it was worth it! The pizza was very good, comparable to some of our favorite places in the US, and reasonably priced.

Day 4

For our last day, we didn’t have much planned. We wanted to check out the Ben Thanh Market, which didn’t take long because it was filled with overpriced food and souvenirs. Instead we headed over to the Backpacker’s Street since we hadn’t walked this direction yet. We had also read that Five Oysters has 10k VND oysters on Fridays, so we wanted to try them. Patrick ordered a dozen oysters, and we both had a couple beers. Not bad, especially considering how cheap they were! We moved to a bar across the street after a while because we saw that there was a pool table here. Beers were more expensive than at Five Oysters, but we played a couple games of pool and then watched others (who were much better than us) play a few games. For dinner we went back to the same Pho cart from Christmas to cap off our great food experiences in Ho Chi Minh City!

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There were several other activities that we looked at doing in Ho Chi Minh City but ultimately decided against:

• Motorbike Food Tour through XO – recommended by my friend and has great online reviews. Unfortunately, this was $72 USD/person, so we couldn’t justify this in the budget. We also couldn’t find any other food tour that was much cheaper.
• Independence Palace – per advice from my friend, we skipped this, but did walk by to see it from the outside!
• Cu Chi Tunnels – neither of us are much for confined spaces, and these are located about 2 hours away. We could have visited this with a tour company on a half day tour, but we decided it wasn’t worth the money or time.

For us, our trip to Ho Chi Minh City was more about exploring the city, eating great food, and splurging on a few happy hours for the holidays. We really enjoyed our time in Ho Chi Minh City. It was a much more walkable city than everywhere else we have been (especially coming from Cambodia). A wonderful introduction to Vietnam!

Where to go next?

We debated where we wanted to go next in Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh City:

1. Head south to the Mekong Delta for a couple days. There were many cruise options where you sleep on the boat overnight, see local floating markets and villages, enjoy the sunsets. These were more expensive than our 2-day slow boat in Laos. The drive from Ho Chi Minh City is only a couple hours by bus, so very doable. We did not look into doing this trip independently (vs. cruise/tour). Ultimately, we decided we had already done a river cruise, and this wasn’t worth the money for us.
2. Head south to Phu Quoc Island or Can Dao Islands for some beach time. Both are accessible by short flight from Ho Chi Minh City – flights and hotels in Phu Quoc Island are cheaper than Can Dao when we were looking. Based on reviews, we were afraid of encountering trash on the beaches unless we wanted to pay a premium for the resorts. We are beach snobs and decided the time/money to get there with the trash risk wasn’t worth it. If we got there and didn’t like it, there was no where to go except fly back to Ho Chi Minh City since this wasn’t really “on the way” (ultimately heading north).
3. Head north to Mui Ne (old fishing village) and Dalat (mountain town). The train to Mui Ne is about 3.5 hours from Ho Chi Minh City, but you have to take a bus from the Phan Thiet train station about an hour to Mui Ne. Apparently the beaches aren’t the nicest (see “beach snobs” above) and are mostly used for water sports (e.g., kite surfing). Therefore, we figured we would need a hotel with a pool and the prices were not lining up with the quality in our eyes. Dalat is about a 3-4-hour windy bus ride from Mui Ne. I am prone to carsickness, so wasn’t eager to make this drive. It seemed like a long way to go for a mountain town-esque experience and again, somewhat out of the way on our overall route north.
4. Head north to DaNang via direct flight from Ho Chi Minh City. The overnight sleeper train (minimum 4 beds per cabin) is also an option, but flights were only $75 USD per person, so was well worth the time saved and added comfort for us.

We ultimately decided on option #4 – DaNang, here we come!