First Impressions of Vietnam

We walked out to board our plane from Siem Reap, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and were surprised to find it had propellers!  Thankfully it was a quick flight and all went well.

Approaching our prop plane to Vietnam

We made it through customs and caught a cab to our accommodations, where we met Liem, our host. We rented his entire place for just our family and it's set up with 4 individual rooms that share 2 bathrooms laid out on 4 floors.  The bathrooms each have a 'bum gun' as well as a hand held shower head, but there is nothing to separate a shower area from the toilet or sink - so when someone showers, the entire bathroom gets drenched, and the bath towels are not large enough to wrap around a leg!  Each bed is a foot off of the floor and is a thin HARD mattress on several wooden crates. The kitchen is sparse and doesn't have 6 plates or utensils, and the table and 2 chairs are for real use, but identical to the kids set you can buy at Ikea!  The idea of a living room is a set of wooden pallets set on the floor with no cushions.  This is considered a very nice accommodation and we are grateful to have the place to ourselves and it should work great for us, aside from lacking a few comforts we are used to, it's probably not a place we are going to be spending a lot of down time at...

We got situated and headed out to get some cash, SIM cards, and lunch.  However, after having failed to get cash at the airport and not finding another machine that worked, we started to wonder what was going on.  As we were leaving Siem Reap, the person before us had his card eaten by the ATM and was freaking out, so this possibility was fresh in our minds...  Without cash, we couldn't get a SIM card or find food (as most lower-end food options don't take credit cards here). This was the first time we've faced such an issue. We found a French bakery and Dad was able to log into their WIFI and Skype the 1800 number for our bank to figure out what was going on (clever huh?).  It turns out that we had withdrawn our limit in a 24 hour period (the previous night we got cash because Cambodian ATMs spit out US Dollars and again that morning at the airport) - so while the day had changed on our watch, in the US it was almost midnight and considered the same day.  Interesting to learn this for the future!  We were able to have an exception made and had a successful visit to the ATM to get some Dong (exchange rate is 22,351 dong: $1 US dollar).

During all of this, we were astounded by the absolute chaos of the traffic.  Just crossing the street was taking our lives into our own hands!  There are no traffic lights and seemingly no traffic rules - we figured out that the scooters will avoid people cross the street, but vehicles will not, and that the scooters drive on the sidewalk as well as the street.  We've since learned that some tourists recommend you just close your eyes, step out, and go. Saigon had 10 million people and 8 million scooters we have learned.

We also were followed and touched by children trying to practice the few English phrases they knew. There is far less english here than in Cambodia and many just shout "HELLO" with big smiles as we walk by. All in all, we got the feeling that we were definitely entering a place that was more the "Asia" that we had expected but not come in contact with to this point in our travels.  It was a bit overwhelming and a few of us might have been glad that there is a flight out of Vietnam in 10 days for our family. But figuring out how to operate in a completely new and strange environment is exhilarating.

Kids on the street chasing after us.

After obtaining the "necessities" we went for a traditional 'hot pot'.  We had no idea what we'd ordered or how to eat it when it arrived but it was delicious.  The servers at the restaurant demonstrated that we were to squeeze lime juice into the broth that was in a small fondue pot, then we were to add the raw beaf and vegetables.  We were to scoop noodles into our bowls and then spoon the hot broth and meat over the noodles and season with vegetables and condiments as we desired.  It was delicious!  Then we headed back to our place and packed up for our 3 day/2 night adventure that we would be picked up for early the next morning.

Beef hot pot & noodles

Beef and veggies added. Can see flame underneath