My Little Terrors

Day 1 - 11 March 2009 (Wednesday)

Guys, I know it is very trendy to save some money by booking free flights months in advance but please, if you do so, don’t get your wife pregnant from the time of booking till you actually fly!!!

So it is, at 6 months pregnant and armed with a letter from the Dr clearing me for flight, the whole family ventured to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for the first time. Daddykhong booked us “almost free” tickets on MAS a couple of months before *wink wink* to some place he’d never been before - for fun apparently. Throw in; no Vietnamese language skills, no tour guide, 2 travel books and Wikitravel warning us that the traffic there will literally “kill you”, and 2 screaming kids….it’s a recipe for disaster.

There were already a couple of hints starting at the check-in counter at KLIA all the way till we boarded the place. At each checkpoint, the officers would give me a suspicious eye scan from top to bottom, with their gaze lingering on my bulging belly longer than I liked, then asking me if I had the necessary papers for flight. Oh well, I get my 10 seconds of fame.

Daddykhong does not like to board planes too early as he does not like joining the mad rush and the elbowing in the aisles as everyone tries to get to their seats. We decided to wait till we were last to board. Final call time - Braedyn decided that he wanted to poo and no amount of coaxing would get him to agree to poo on the plane. So we made the whole plane wait for a couple of minutes!

The flight was pretty uneventful and since we haven’t flown MAS for a while, we were in for a shock at all their cost-cutting since Idris Jala stepped in. Food trays replaced by a food box. Food quality down the drain. In the old days, we had proper menus with proper differentiation between the 2 choices; chicken with noodles or fish with rice. Now we have - chicken with pasta or fish with pasta. Pasta looked and tasted more like chinese noodles to me. The printed menu no longer exists and their children’s party packs also seem to have disappeared since nobody offered them to us. Our Boeing 737 was so old in comparison to Air Asia’s new planes.

Braedyn keeping himself busy on the flight with his colouring books while Shayanne sang songs

Upon arrival at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport, we are greeted with a rather tattered and bumpy runway with lots of weeds in the airport compound. Oh dear….can’t wait to see the terminal building. Fortunately, the international terminal was spanking brand new with toilets so darn clean, I am sure they are cleaner than those in our house!

Immigration was not an issue and the first thing that our travel guides told us was to watch out for ruthless taxi drivers who won’t use the meter (then again, I suppose the guides haven’t experienced our cabbies). Get a taxi from the main airport taxi operator and you won’t go wrong - so it says.

We get into a taxi with a toothy-smile driver (someone you wouldn’t go near with a 10-foot pole), leave the airport and within minutes, we hit the 4pm pre-peak Saigon traffic.

Words cannot describe the sheer madness of Vietnamese traffic. We’ve seen KL traffic, we’ve seen Shanghai traffic but nothing can prepare you for what we experienced with our own eyes. Motorbikes EVERYWHERE, flying towards you from ALL DIRECTIONS, traffic lights that are NOT FOLLOWED, cars trying to CUT IN FRONT of other cars, motorbikes trying the very same cutting stunt, bicycles SQUEEZING into the remaining gaps, pedestrians walking around without a care in the world. All this with the accompanying soundtrack of a THOUSAND HORNS beeping, blaring, hooting, honking.

I thought to myself…..daddykhong is surely going to get it from me this time IF we get to the hotel!

Oh ya, one of the guide books says “The trick to crossing the road in Vietnam is to walk slowly but confidently and to let the traffic navigate around you”. Yeah right. I’ll be dead in less than 2 steps from the kerb if I did just that.

The savings on the airfare (it was only RM2k to fly the 4 of us from KL to Saigon (old name for HCMC) and back) did not translate to having more to splurge on the hotel. Cheapskate daddykhong decided to maximise his savings by booking us into a no-star “hotel” smack in the centre of the backpacker zone of District 1. The guidebook has this to say about our hotel, “Some of the smaller rooms come without windows which is a GOOD thing because it means less noise and a cooler room!!!”

Yet again, I thought to myself during the hell ride to the hotel…..curse my damn luck should we end up with that world-famous small, windowless room.

After a 30-minute taxi ride, with the taxi driver going on and on about how far the hotel is from the airport (he hasn’t been to KLIA obviously) and how many cars and bikes there are on the road, (obviously hoping for us to take pity on him and give him a bigger fare in USD) we arrive at An An 2 Hotel and check into……………yes, you guessed right………a small windowless room on Level 1!!! (daddykhong: Hey! It does have a window with nice pale yellow curtains that opens onto the common corridor) Mr Toothy-Smile wanted USD10 (VND170,000) even though the meter states VND88,000. Daddykhong gave him VND100,000 and left it at that.

A perfect introduction to what is going to be a very long trip.

Our room came with 2 single beds and an attached bathroom with shower. Small but very clean. There is a bar fridge, room safe, small LCD TV with satellite channels, and telephone. What we did not expect is WIFI throughout the building and 3 internet terminals on the ground floor for guests to use. The guide book was correct about the windowless room. Our room was cooler and much quieter than the bigger superior rooms that take up the front and back portions of each floor. Another interesting find was that the manager of the hotel is a Malaysian lady married to a Vietnamese and she has a cute 5-year old girl that keeps the guests entertained.

Since it was already getting late, we decided to walk to a highly-recommended restaurant Quan An Ngon to eat. The walk took nearly 30 minutes as we were unsure of the direction and our maps were not detailed enough. The children both refused to walk as well and had to be carried all the way there. Walking does give you a fascinating insight into the street life of the Vietnamese and is very good practice in how to cross a Vietnamese road without being run over! Daddykhong mastered the art of road-crossing that very night.

There was this other interesting concept we saw during our walk - hair beauty salons where beautiful women dressed in very alluring short satin dresses with a PLUNGING neckline (complete with a very ample bosum) all wait at the reception to share their beauty tips with their customers. It’s too bad that I didn’t get any photos of them (daddykhong: Don’t worry, I have all the mental images I’d ever need!) to share. If your partner goes on a business trip to Vietnam and comes back with a new hair nicely trimmed and nails all done up, you now know why!

At Quan An Ngon, we ordered pho (Vietnamese rice noodle in beef broth) and various other local delicacies (since they offer everything from various parts of Vietnam). Daddykhong had the first of his many Vietnamese bia (beers) and I had the first of my many ca phe sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee with milk - pronounced “cafe soda”). Food pricing is cheaper than Malaysia and their beers are almost as cheap as their mineral water. Tiger and Heineken are the popular foreign beers in Saigon but daddykhong exclusively went for the local brands.

One thing about Vietnamese cooking, they use tonnes of MSG. We are both very sensitive to MSG in food and our parched throats at the end of the first day confirms the liberal doses of MSG used in the cooking. It progressively got worse until we took a break and had Italian food on the 2nd day.

Day 2 - 12 March 2009 (Thursday)

The idea was to explore the various corners of Saigon and to give long-distance excursions a miss. Cu Chi tunnels were also passed over since I wouldn’t be able to squeeze into them. Had a quick lunch at Pho 24 (a pho fast food chain) where daddykhong had more pho and I had com (rice) with pork chop.

Braedyn and Shayanne giving daddy a hard time. Braedyn always insists of doing what the sister is doing

Feeding session in Pho 24

After lunch, we decided to visit Chinatown in District 5 and the Binh Tay market which was highly recommended by all our travel guides. One thing about travel guides, they are all written by Westerners and what is fascinating to them may be ordinary to Asians. Binh Tay market, to us, is just a big market in an old temple-like building selling everything you can find in a Chinatown. There are some photo opportunities here and there but we did not venture into all the narrow walkways as daddykhong was carrying Shayanne and his backpack kept getting in the way of traders. We did enjoy a Sinh To (Vietnamese fruit shake) at the stalls located at the back of Binh Tay after a lot of finger-pointing and dictionary-referencing.

Binh Tay market

After an hour or so, we left and took a cab to Ben Thanh market which is the biggest and most famous market in Saigon. Again, lots of tourists being ripped off by the stalls and nothing much to see (for Asians). At the back of the market is the live food section and Braedyn had a fright of his life when one of the live prawns in the prawn basket he was viewing jumped out and landed right in front of him. His eyes widened, his body stiffened and he started jumping up and down and screaming! A hilarious sight.

We started being smart with the cabs, choosing only those from reputable providers to avoid all the hassle of no-meter usage and we are happy to report that after Mr Toothy-Smile, all the other cab drivers were courteous and used their meters. There are many types of cabs in Saigon but we usually end up in a Toyota Innova operated by Vinasun.

Side view of Ben Thanh market and the massive roundabout opposite

Since we’ve covered what daddykhong planned for the day, we walked back to the hotel and decided to give our parched MSG throats a rest by having some pizza at another recommended pizzeria located in one of the back lanes near the hotel. The numbering system in Saigon is unique. Back lanes do not have any names. Instead, they take on the number of the immediate main road and the shop along the lane would take on a number corresponding to its sequence from the main road. E.g. if Margherita’s was the 5th shop from Duong Bu Vien (Bu Vien Road) in the lane immediately after No. 183 on Duong Bu Vien, it would be addressed as 184/5 Duong Bu Vien so the lane itself would be No. 184 sandwiched between lots 183 and 185 which are physical shops. Brilliant concept!

Margherita’s and 2 very tired kids

Both Braedyn and Shayanne fell asleep immediately once we sat down. I ordered a pasta and daddykhong ordered a pizza with another bia. Both were delicious, cheap and MSG-free!

To be continued - other parts of Saigon and the Mekong River delta

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