Ho Chi Minh City

Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
After a 12 hour or so flight and a couple of hours in Singapore airport where we had $15 glasses of beer, we arrived in Saigon at 9pm. To step out into 90% humidity at that time of night is something I have never experienced, in fact the whole city chaos was an exciting event. The motorbikes weave in and out seemingly at random, 100's of them, and being a Sunday night lots of men were driving girlfriends around town. Its quite a social event, people hold conversations and smoke cigarettes as they drive side by side in the throng of traffic. I saw two huge trucks which wouldn't have been out of place in a mining site towering over the rest of the traffic, perhaps left over from the American war. The taxi we were in changed lanes incessantly as did most other cars. The bikes of course have their own rules, like turningor in front of a car going the same way, or riding against the traffic flow. Despite what I say the traffic flows very smoothly and there are no raised voices or road rage of any kind that I saw. I watched the Vietnamese crossing the roads and adopted their method of fixing my eyes on the approaching hordes and holing up my open hand.
When we arrived at the hotel and were dropped off I realised that the taxi driver hadn't left my laptop and I went down to the concierge and he rang the taxi company to have it delivered . The taxi driver was apologetic but made us ring the taxi company to ensure that they knew it was my mistake and not his as he had charged me 100,000 dong to bring it back. Thats $5. A small bottle or can of beer is 25,000 D or $1.50. When I got to my room and had a shower I realised I didnt have the keys to my case, this was the last straw. Marley came to the rescue and broke the zipper tab which I had padlocked. So much for Belita's case. Don't worry Bel , I'll buy another. During the night the AC broke down and I spent the sweatiest night of my life, sleeping very fitfully, the next day the concierge sent up the maintemance man who pointed the remote at it and of course it broke into life, although later in the day I came home and there was a man dissembling the AC unit. Its working fine now so good on them for responding.
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Comments

Diane Farr Golling
2011-09-14

This is great - loving the blog, and you will be so glad you did this! Nothing like a travel diary to bring it all back to you.

So far the only thing giving you away as an inexperienced traveler is the locking-the-luggage bit. LOL ... as you discovered, locks wouldn't stop a thief for five seconds, but they are very good at keeping their owners out!

2025-02-10

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