vietnam 2009 (day 6)

we had the last of our maggie and curry chicken for breakfast. even then, i was still not very full...ate the baguette the Guesthouse provided for breakfast. we went to the Ben Thanh for some last minute shopping and also to give the $2 Singapore note to the nice girl we met the night before.

we had a hard time looking for her shop. when we found it, her sister said that she was still sleeping and she should be at the shop by 11am. so we decieded to walk around the market and finish up what little money we have left.

 

the scene inside Ben Thanh market is almost like any other market in Singapore.

 

while markets in Singapore mainly sold clothes and food supplies, their market also sold souvenir items and shoes! didn't really took a good look at the shoes cos they had too many blings on them and it seemed quite gaudy. however, im sure you can find a decent pair if you look hard enough.

 

the locals seen here having their meals on makeshift tables and stools.

 

my sister bought some Vietnamese coffee and tried to haggle with the shopkeeper for a good price.

we walked around for abit and almost got pulled by some of the shopkeepers. they kept saying "kakak, murah, tak mahal". it irritated the hell out of me, especially if they keep tapping your arms and almost pull the sleeves of your t-shirt in an attempt to get you to see what they were selling! maybe it's because it was in the morning and there were not many customers around, so they had "time" and can be "bothered" to do that...haha.

later we went back to the shop to pass the girl the $2 note, but she was still not there. so we just told her sister to pass it to her. lucky the sister did not pester us to buy more t-shirts!

we were hungy when we got to the airport...couldn't find any decent snacks at the airport, not even tuna sandwich! so we bought 2 cups of milo on the flight...costs a freaking $3 SGD per cup!

vietnam 2009 (day 5)

day 3 was mainly sight-seeing at HCMC. started with visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels (pronounced koo-chee). we booked the tour with Sinh Cafe. the Cu Chi Tunnels are located about 70km from HCMC and the bus ride took about 2 hours. whoa, we've been having rather long bus rides nowdaways...my butt is hurting already.

anyway, the tunnels are a representation of Vietnam's struggles to achieve independence and freedom. you can read more about it from here.

the guide who took us was Mr Duc (pronounced Dook). he is a super funny man and kept us entertained with his stories and jokes. although his jokes can be quite lame, he has a pretty good command of English to be able to make others laugh. one of the things he said was, "in Vietnam, if you don't smoke it's like you're smoking. but if you smoke, you are young! you die young so you remain young forever..." haha, quite cute, eh?

upon reaching the place, Mr Duc gave us a short lecture on what to expect when he brings is for the tour around the area. you can see from the picture below that the tunnel is of 3 levels underground. the soldiers would crawl into the underground by holes dug out.

 

below is one of the holes dug out from many years ago. the actual hole is smaller...i think they made this wider to that ang mohs and other tourists are able to fit in them.

 

wanted to try and fit myself in there but decided not to, cos i saw someone had a difficult time pulling herself out. must have good arms strength...i don't have...later paiseh lah. haha.

 

so after you have fitted yourself into the hole, you take the lid and cover it with leaves for camouflage before you close and crawl to the tunnel underneath.

another distinctive feature of the Cu Chi Tunnels is the booby-traps! just take a look at this huge one.

 

it's pretty scary...you step on it, the top part will swivel downards and there you land yourself on a bed full of spikes! there are other various types of booby traps...can check out the other photos on my facebook.

there are different types of holes for entrance to the undergound tunnel. some are with steps...

 

others just a round hole...

 

later we took the opportunity to crawl into one of the holes. the first level of the tunnel goes about 30m (if im not wrong, i have poor memory) below ground. the tunnel that we went through spans for about 10m long only and you can find the next exit up.

it was super dark and narrow...we had to either crawl or waddle our way through. oh man, it was damn tiring! really works on your thigh muscles. the dark environment made it especially claustrophobic! and there's no directions so you just follow the dim lights located in the tunnel. ya, either the dim lights of the person in front of you or someone else's handphone light!

after finding the exit out, we started perspiring profusely! and not to mention panting...cos we're super unfit!

later we were brought to the shooting range where you can try out shooting on a number of different models of guns. not interested...i didn't understand what model of guns Mr Duc was telling us about. i don't even know how to hold a rifle so just hung out at the souvenir shop. anyway, lots of the ang mohs went to try the shooting...i dunno what's so fascinating about shooting. but i guess guys who have gone through NS would find it equally exciting.

the bullets were quite expensive! you have to buy at least 10. so 10,000 dong is approximately equal to <$1 SGD.

 

later we were treated to a light snack. there was tea - meaning water boiled with pandan leaves. got nice smell...in the hot weather, any kind of drink tastes good. haha...

 

later we ate VC (Viet Cong) hamburger! yup, hamburger that's Halal. cos it's actually boiled tapioca! haha...just like during Japanese Occupation, tapioca is the staple food.

when we reached HCMC, it was a little past 2pm. we were pressed for time cos we were supposed to visit the Independence Palace which closes at 4pm and the War Crimes Museum which closes at 5pm! we rushed back to the Guesthouse to wash up. so lunch was bread from the local bakery eaten along the way.

we managed to rush to get the tickets to the Independence Palace. reached there at around 3+pm. later we discovered that the last ticket sales was at 4pm and you can hang around in the Palace until 5pm! haha...but anyways, need to rush cos the War Crimes Museum will close soon.

 

outside the War Crimes Museum, there were replicas (i don't think they are the original ones..?) of the US fighter jets and tanks.

 

inside was lined up with exhibitions - photos and framed up explanations. it was very interesting to read about it and understand more about the war.

 

what struck me the most was the after-effects of the war, mainly about the effects of Agent Orange used during the war.

 

seeing photos of people being disabled and children having birth defects was heart-wrenching.

we stayed at the museum until the security guard stood by the entrace to make sure everyone left.

after that we wanted to go get tickets for a Water Puppet show but later we saw this pasted outside the ticketing booth.

 

:(

so we walked on to see the Notre Dame Catherdral. i was expecting something similar to the one in Paris...grand architecture and with gargoyles sticking out from the walls. but what it was was this...

 

haha, i must admit that it's a bit old looking. but it does stand out from the other buildings in HCMC and definitely looks foreign.

opposite the Notre Dame Catheral was the Saigon Central Post Office. it's like seeing the inside of Fullerton Hotel because it was our then-central post office. but the exception is that, it is still running as a post office in HCMC.

 

Mr Ho Chi Minh framed up in the centre...

of course, after walking for so long, we are hungry right? dinner was at Bon Mua Four Seasons restaurant. it's about 2 streets away from the Saigon Central Mosque and Halal@Saigon.

yes, we ordered Vietnamese spring rolls, but im not gonna post any more pics of it!

this is Vietnamese style fish soup. it's has a slight sour taste (supposed to be like that, not that it's stale)...delicious and spicy! refreshing too!

 

my sis ordered Vietnamese style fried noodles.

 

and i ordered the beef pho. ya, again...i think the Halal@Saigon one tastes a bit better. this one was more salty.

 

after makan we went to shop at the night market outside Ben Thanh Market. went to this particular stall and we were entertained by a young girl. entertained cos i kept laughing at her...she's just so cute and funny! she kept telling me, "kakak, sit down!". and i obligingly sat down while browing the t-shirts she was selling. my sister did the haggling for a better price thing. i just cannot be bothered. if it's cheap enough, just buy it! people still need to earn money to eat.

anyway after we paid her she kept pestering for a Malaysian Ringgit to keep as a souvenir. i told her i don't have any Ringgit cos im Singaporean. she was totally shocked that Singaporeans wore tudung also, and insisted there was no such thing. haha! she very cute la...so i told her there is! so she asked for an SGD note to keep as souvenir.

we rummaged our wallets and could not find any small notes to give to her. no way was i going to give her a $10 note! so we asked for her card stating her shop name and number in Ben Thanh Market and promised to pass it to her tomorrow before we flew off.

vietnam 2009 (day 4)

day 4 saw us going to Mekong Delta. it took about 2-3 hours bus journey there. this tour was booked through our Guesthouse and was organised by Delta Adventure. hmm, service was ok, except that they didn't give us complementary bottle of mineral water, unlike Sinh Cafe, hehe.

there were many others who booked the bus and the coach was almost full. mostly were ang mohs from different parts of the world - Australia, USA, Netherlands, etc. not that we talked to them...my sister and i are quite anti-social actually. we eavesdropped on their conversations, haha!

 

we hopped onto the boat, run by motor, and passed through the floating market. there was not much business going on as it was almost noon already. but you can see the boats being loaded with different kinds of goods.

 

later our guide, Huyen (pronounced as hoo-wen) took us to one of the villages and showed us how they made things like coconut candy, rice-pop (similar to popcorn, except that it's made with rice, not corn) and rice paper for spring rolls.

 

the home-based industry is mainly run on manual labour. this is done to create employment for the villagers and also to reduce costs so that they are able to sell their products at a lower price.

 

after that, we headed for lunch at another destination which was about 40 minutes by boat. the boat took us to a smaller river stream where we later transferred onto another sampan. they passed around the conical Vietnamese hats for us to wear. the hats were big enough to shield you from the sun's glare and of course, prevent sunburn!

 

posing is a must when engaging in new activities. the guy rowing the sampan must have had very good sense of balance and strenght to row the sampan. some of the rowers look like aunties and they must be fit!

 

we requested for vegetarian lunch and so they excluded the fried pork meat from the dish and replaced it with fried tofu.

 

they also gave us vegetable soup...with some pieces of marcaroni in it! surprisingly, the marcaroni was white in colour, unlike the yellow ones we always have back home. the soup was refreshing!

 

they had this special dish called the elephant's ear fish. well, it's a kind of fish which is huge. the Vietnamese eat it with rice paper stuffed with the fish meat, Vietnamese noodles and other stuff. my sister and i were quite interested to try it, but since they had served us rice, we figured that our stomachs would not have enough space for the rice paper stuffed with noodles and fish! so we decided to order grilled shrimp instead.

and this was the shrimp that came!

 

this is one helluva huge-ass shrimp! it's like the size of tiger prawns...the shrimp was grilled plainly and you eat it with salt and squeezed lime juice. the salt made it taste yummy! the shrimp came in a big plate and both of us ate about 4 of them each. wow, i can feel my cholesterol levels rocketing! but i guess it's ok since we did, and will be doing, lots of walking in HCMC.

after lunch, we were free to take the bicycles out and explore the village. since my sister couldn't cycle very well, (or issist she couldn't cycle at all...? i can't remember) we decided to take a walk.

 

i couldn't resist posing the "im bored and lost in the middle of nowhere" look!

later we went back to HCMC and had dinner at Lion City Restaurant. it was a short 5-10 mins walk from our Guesthouse. they serve Singaporean food there and it's halal! we ditched the Singaporean food and went for the Vietnamese fare instead.

again, we blew our money on dinner. oh ya, and we had a hard time trying to split the bill and pay for our share...the currency had too many zeros and numbers that we got confused!

vietnam 2009 (day 2-3)

early morning, we walked to Sinh Cafe (www.sinhcafevn.com), our tour operator, for our trip to Mui Ne Resort (pronounced mwee-nay). signed up with Sinh Cafe cos others gave good reviews about their service.

Mui Ne is a 5+ hours drive from HCMC. it's famous for it's sand dunes. they have the white sand dunes and the yellow sand dunes.

stretching my legs halfway through the journey. the journey would have been shorter but because there is no highway in Vietnam, so the bus has to travel through the different villages. along the way, at first i saw 2 men peeing by the roadside. probably they really needed to relieve themselves. but it thought that they could have at least hid in a bush. oh well, different culture have different values. after seeing 2 men peeing by the roadside, i was quite disturbed, haha! and later, i saw a whole bunch of them peeing together! i was even more disturbed! lucky i didn't get sore eyes after all those incidences.

we finally reached our resort and had vegetarian lunch there. veggies are not my thing, but because i was starving, even the veggies tasted good!

after lunch we hung around for a bit before waiting for our guide to take us to the sand dunes. went to the back of the resort and saw the beach. wow! beachfront resort...but the beach is not very clean. just like East Coast Beach. haha!

first stop was to one of the fishing villages in Mui Ne. there was a seafood restaurant at where the guide stopped us.

later we walked out to the beach. it was low tide. the sand was clean, the sky blue and many sea activities going on. we were intrigued by the round shaped sampans used for fishing. it's quite big actually. according to our guide, it can fit 4 people in it.

 

it takes a lot of skill to row this thing. if you're a newbie, you will likely end up rowing it round and round instead of rowing it out to sea. our guide told us that we can even pay the fisherman some money and he will take us out to sea. no way we were going to do that without a life jacket! and out into the open South China Sea! i'll fall into a fit of panic...!

 

later off we went to the white sand dunes. our van could not travel directly to the sand dunes, so there was a designated dro-off point. we had to walk all the way from there to the sand dunes. it was something like from Tampines Central to my house. hehe, no that far lah.

 

the sand dunes awed me...amazed by God's creation. it also reminded me of secondary school Geography lessons! the shapes of the sand dunes made me think about the wind directions and all of that.

 

the local kids made some income by charging 20,000 dong (approx $2 sgd) for us to slide down the sandy slopes using flexible carboard-like thingy they had. it was a fun experience. your body has to remain flat on the slope, otherwise you can't slide down smoothly. it's a bit like Tobbogan-ing in Austalia, except that this was less slippery. going down the slope is an easy feat, but climbing back up is tough! our guide had to pull us up cos we lost energy halfway up the slope.

 

our sweaty faces trapped the sand as it blew past. there was sand in my mouth! and the crunchy feeling in my mouth is nagging me...i could spit it away cos the wind would blow my spit back to my chin. no need to eat dinner already like that.

we were exhausted by the heat, the fun, the excitement. we were supposed to go to the yellow sand dunes, but i think the guide decided against it seeing how everyone else was snoring away in the van.

dinner was vegetarian again, but this time there was grilled squid! so, not considered 100% vegetarian lah.

 

i love Vietnamese spring rolls...the fried ones. the unfried ones are too...raw. the sweet sauce is very nice!

we retreated back to our guesthouse and had a really good scrub and shower, washing away all the sand we collected from the sand dunes.

the next day, we were due to go back to HCMC at 1pm. since the morning was free and easy, we slept in and had late breakfast. after breakfast, we went to walk around the neighbourhood. we were sick of vegetarian meals, so decided to cook our own maggie plus canned curry chicken bought in Singapore! the mini electric cooker sure came in handy.

 

upon reaching HCMC, we went to have dinner at a restaurant near the Saigon Central Mosque. it's called Halal@Saigon. i had the beef pho...slurps! it's something like the beef soup noodles from Siam Kitchen, but this one, the broth is lighter and tastes less rich. nice and refreshing! we ordered a lot of food...well, Singaporeans like to eat. and we even tapau fried squid for supper. haha! im sure the staff must be thinking that we haven't eaten for days. well, this is why we spent most of our money on meals!

vietnam 2009 (day 1)

xin chao!
that's hello in Vietnamese.

we reached the airport, took a cab down to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). one tip is to get the taxi voucher from on of the travel agents located in the airport. it costs about $5-9 USD (if im not wrong) for a trip to the city centre.

while in the cab, we noticed something interesting. the motorists, especially the women on motorcycles, we wearing masks. not only that, they also wore a cardigan over their tops amidst the sweltering heat. well, sometimes i do wear that, but that's for religious purposes. some of them wear gloves; gloves that cover their fingers and extend all the way to their arms.

i guess the pollution is so bad that you have to protect yourselves from it. they wear masks on a daily basis, no wonder the H1N1 infection rates are low! despite their masks being cloth ones, not N95 masks. haha!

the cab driver dropped us off at our guesthouse. we booked via hostelbookers and it costs only $9 USD per night per person!

Luan Vu Guesthouse is one of the highest rated ones in hostelbookers site. when we stepped into it, the house smelled of detergent. smells clean too. and the staff was friendly and helpful.

later we decided to find the Halal eating places after doing our research on zabihah.com. the halal eatery listed near our guesthouse we no longer there. we found a bakery and bought some bread to fill our stomachs while we wait for dinner. we walked on to the famous Ben Thanh Market.

in Vietnam, crossing the road is like doing a death-defying stunt. the vehicles are everywhere! and most zebra crossings don't have a traffice light for both vehicles and pedestrians. you just have to trust your instincts and cross! don't worry, the motorcyclists will also do your part at avoiding you. horning is common as the Vietnamese do that to ward each other.

we decided to go to Parkson Shopping Centre as the foodcourt there has a Halal stall. when we reached the foodcourt, we thought that the stall no longer exists...we scanned the row of stalls but could not find it. finally we turned around and saw it located together with the drinks and desserts stall!

we had the normal Malay dishes there. the young chap tending to the stall was kind enough to give us a list of Halal eateries in HCMC and also mark it out on the map for us.

after dinner, we went to find the Saigon Central Mosque which was only a few streets aaway from Parkson. Opposite the mosque, we found 2 more Halal eateries. exhausted, we walked back to our Guesthouse and had an early night in preparation for tomorrow's trip to Mui Ne Resort which was about 5+ hours away from HCMC.