A long night

Sunday, March 16, 2014
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Today we began our trip to Ho Chi Minh City. Flying Jetstar from Perth, our flight left at 12.10am. I have given my fellow travelers strict instructions - Sleep! I am traveling with my girlfriends; Clare, Judy and Linda. The plane left a little early and Clare found herself sitting all alone so Linda scooted over the aisle and we had two rows between the 4 of us. Time to snuggle into those luxurious seats on Jetstar economy all the way to Singapore. I did get some sleep, the others not so much.
We arrived in Singapore at 5am and stretched our legs, had some breakfast and lined up again for the flight to Ho Chi Minh City. A short 90 minute flight, a short nap and we were there. In the arrivals hall there were large groups of people milling about and no one lining up at the customs desks. We found they were all waiting around for their visas to be processed. As we had already sorted ours we were straight through in 5 minutes.
After finding our suitcases we went searching for our transport, which I had pre-booked. It felt a bit like we were walking out on the red carpet with all these eyes trying to make contact to see if we were the ones they were waiting for. Unfortunately our driver wasn't there, which ruined the feeling a bit. He finally arrived. As he was putting our suitcases into the car we noticed a red liquid oozing from the bottom of my suitcase onto the pavement. The red cordial I had packed was leaving a suspicious stain. We jumped into the car before we were asked to uncover the body we had hidden in there. I assumed that all my clothes were covered in it.
On a Sunday afternoon the traffic wasn't too bad as we made our way through the city, amazed by the families out on their scooters (the whole family on one scooter) and the packed parks. We saw a lot of weddings being photographed.
We are staying at the Sherwood Residences and Hotel in District 3. It is always a little bit worrying when you arrive at a hotel you have booked online. Will it measure up to the photos on the website? We walked into the foyer and it was lovely, the staff are friendly and helped to deal with the mess of my suitcase. We were there at 9am and couldn't get into our room until 12 so I sorted the mess, which wasn't too bad and bundled up some clothes to send off to the laundry. I'm not sure what they will do with the white pants which are now a lovely shade of cerise, but I can always go shopping!
We were given a tour of the amenities. A lovely pool area, gym (I don't think so), sauna and steam room. It all looks great. There are a lot of kids and families by the pool. On Sundays there are free afternoon tea treats.
We jumped onto the shuttle bus and asked our driver where we should go for a couple of hours. He dropped us on a not too busy street in District 1. He wasn't sure what we should be doing here, but would be back on the hour, so that was ok. We had a little wander, but the lack of sleep and water was starting to hit so we went into a restaurant for an early lunch. We had eaten breakfas about 5 hours ago and it was 12noon in Perth, so maybe not so early.
A highlight of this trip will hopefully be the food. And not just eating it, but watching Clare's face when she eats something unfamiliar. Always an entertaining sight. The rest of us ordered a fairly safe chicken pho dish which was delicious and Clare ordered a clay hot pot. It did have some odd looking pieces of meat and tofu, and it wasn't all she thought it would be. She's not actually sure what it was. We had also asked for 3 fresh spring rolls, as Clare is allergic to seafood and opted out. They brought out 3 plates of 3 enormous rolls. They were lovely and fresh, but way too much. The meal cost about 14AUD each, with gorgeous fresh juices,
The shuttle came back right on time and we headed to the hotel and were escorted up to our apartment. We have booked a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom. It is lovely and spacious, with a balcony overlooking some of the city. We discovered a storage room, and a 3rd, smaller bathroom and another empty room off the kitchen. If we had staff with us, we could house them here to be on our beck and call. As we don't have staff we will enjoy the benefits of 3 bathrooms.
We popped to the supermarket behind the hotel and bought some supplies for our room. The shop had everything from clothes to every sort of meat, fish and offal you could ask for ( or not ask for). There were some very ugly fish, some very unappetising fish paste in a big tub, chicken legs (looking a lot like our lunch) tongues and other things that we were unsure of. But handy to know if we feel like cooking up a storm in our kitchen.
We decided that the pool was the place to be before we all fell asleep. It was very busy with lots of little kids running around and having fun. There was popcorn, ice cream, assorted pastries and cakes and iced jasmine tea for everyone. We were chatting to a man who is living here with his family for 6 months. They are from Sydney and he and his little girl showed us a few places to head for shopping and eating on the map.
The children left and we went for a swim and ordered a cocktail. We don't have free internet in the apartment, but it is free in the public areas so emails and facebook were checked. It is probably best we don't pay for it in our room, there was a little too much facebooking going on there.
Back to our room, we taught Jude and Linda how to play Perudo, a dice game, and had a few laughs as we watched the sun set over Saigon.
We thought we would find somewhere near the hotel to eat. There isn't a lot of choice. We went into one food hall type of restaurant. It looked popular, but the menu had very little English and there were a lot of words like "intestine" and "gizzard" in the bits we did understand. Probably a bit too much for our first night, so we ran away. We found a Japanese place near the supermarket and had a really nice meal for about 6AUD each. The lack of sleep was finally catching up with us so home, bed and sleep.

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