Hopping to Ho Chi Minh City

For the next adventure I was fortunate enough to have a travel buddy from our office, Wincee. We only had a month to plan for our backpacking. It was nerve wrecking because we had to look for acceptable hotels, cheap flights and plan for activities for the 3 cities that we had to visit namely: Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia.

The photo below showed us with each of our backpacks for the one week travel. This was taken from Suvarnabhumi Airport. We then hopped on a free shuttle that runs between this new airport and to Bangkok's old airport: Don Meuang Airport to board Airaisa flight FD 654 to Ho Chi Minh City.

taken from Wincee's facebook account

I'd like to note that before we were to board the plane, Airaisa's ground personnel almost did not allow us to go. She asked us to show our return flight via the same city which we did not have because we plan to depart from Siem Reap back to Bangkok. She mentioned a lot of tourists have been asked to go back to Bangkok or not allowed to step into Vietnam because of the lack of return flights. Whoa! She was strict than the immigration officers who asked us no questions! We were honest, we don't plan to work nor go TNT in Vietnam. In case Vietnam immigration officers won't allow us to enter their country, then fine. (But I still prayed they would allow us).

We arrived in Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCMC after an hour and a half flight. The immigration officer did not ask us for any questions. Filipino citizens are allowed 21 days in the country and so we were finally in! Taking a shameless twofie after our arrival.

We asked our hotel prior to our arrival to arrange for a taxi to pick us up. We were very happy to see this man.

The airport was about 30 mins away from where we stayed. While on the way, Wincee noted that  HCMC's vibe feels like being in Cebu City. True enough, I felt it too (or I guess we just missed Cebu). The buildings and cars felt like being in Cebu's street except for the gazillions of motorcyles on the road.

I am not exaggerating. There were a lot of motorcycles around. We learned that HCMC's population was around 11 million people and 7 million of them have motorcycles. (Ok, so not gazillion, only million).

The hotel we chose to stay was called Hong Han Hotel. This is situated in Bui Vien street which is part of District 1, the popular tourist area. The receptionist, Ms Hue, greeted us warmly and checking in was a breeze.

She was thoughtful as to what activities we planned to do but since we already planned to purchase tour tickets from a tour company near the hotel, we politely refused. She still helped us with a couple of things, though. We booked our bus ride to Phnom Penh, Cambodia through her and she helped us change our US Dollars to Vietnam Dong. I felt like a millionaire there for a minute. 1 US Dollar is 22,000 Vietnam Dong. If you have 100 US Dollars for pocket money it would be 2,200,000 Vietnam Dong. Ms Hue also warned us to mind our bags as there are snatchers riding on motorcycles lurking in the city.

We were very happy that our room is the first room on the second floor. We did not have to struggle with our bags through a long flight of stairs. The room was big and clean and just like how it was photographed on the review websites.

Next blog will be about the things we did in Ho Chi Minh City :) Thank you for your time.