Day 5 – Travel Tales
I went to Vietnam six years ago. It was the second place
that I visited on my Round the World Trip that I took in the Winter/Spring of
2013 – doing that instead of going to college for an 8th semester.
But I went in name only, or more accurately in statistic only, going there long
enough in my mid to count it as a country that I’ve visited.
To be fair, I did some degree of tourism there, mostly a couple
days in Da Lat, a hillside town growing in touristic value. But I did not see
Ho Chi Minh City at all, sitting supine in my bed, catatonic and trying to avoid
moving; so thoroughly damaged by a terrible case of food poisoning that I
caught on my flight from Johannesburg to Bangkok.
Ever since, I knew I needed to go back to Vietnam at some
point. This was that point. That longing belief to go back, to experience what
I missed (and judging from the recounting of trips by both y parents and
friends, I’ve missed a lot). The fact I could combine it with Taiwan – and also
replace Central Vietnam (Hoi An, Hue, etc.) for Laos was all done after deciding
this was the time to go back to Ho Chi Minh.
Anyway, with that long ass prelude over, let’s get to the
actual transit over to Ho Chi Minh City, and my first night in the place.
I awoke in Taipei, still not really ready to leave. Again, I
am fully aware that it was my purposeful doing that led me to have such a short
time in Taipei, but I so thoroughly enjoyed it. I was excited however to start
the ‘real’ trip in Vietnam, and also to add a new airline – EVA Air – to my growing
list of airlines (yes, I track these things). The flight was three hours, with
fairly good service and food (a nicely seasoned Chinese beef dish), with a cold
beer to accompany it. Nothing really to complain about EVA. If anything, it
wouild be to say that Taipei’s main airport is a bit less impressive (read:
More American) than the other main Asian airports, such as…. Bangkok.
I’ve now had to transit through Bangkok a lot – including that
ill-fated trip to Ho Chi Minh last time. This was the first time I had the
combination of a lengthy layover (made longer by EVA Air nicely extending my check-in
all the way through – oh the joys of Star Alliance) and status. Bangkok Airport
is a cavernous concrete mass with not much character aside from a randomly
thrown about pagoda every few hundred meters, but their Royal Silk lounge (of
which they have many) was quite good. They had nice thai food (massaman curry,
Tom Kha Khai, etc.), nice seating, showers, and all the rest. It was a great
way to waste four hours.
**sidebar: I’m transiting in Bangkok because I was supposed
to spend a night in Bangkok, having gotten another booking at Gaggan. Of
course, chef Gaggan Anand closed his restaurant early after a seemingly fairly
ugly falling out with his partners so that 86ed that plan. By then, it was too
late / too costly to change, but I did move the flight up from Bangkok to Ho
Chi Minh**
After four hours, I was boarding Thai Airways’s beautiful
looking Boeing 787-8. A few notes on this – (a) this would be my first time on
a 787-8, and would allow me to complete flying on all three variants of the Dreamliner
(787-9 with LATAM, 787-10 with Singapore few days prior) and (b) I just love
the fact that Asian airlines will so often run widebodies on domestic flights.
This flight was a good 60 minutes, where I mostly slept
through pretending to watch Game Night (quite good), but even in that one hour,
Thai gave out a meal box (noodles with beef) and a drink service. Before I knew
it, we were landing in Ho Chi Minh. I had no idea the airport is so close to
downtown, as when we in the final approach, we cleanly passed right through
downtown Ho Chi Minh, which also included a beautiful view of the new Financial
Tower they have built, a gleaming, beautiful structure that signifies the
overall growth of HCMC (as I’m going to call it a lot). The drive to my AirBNB,
placed in the ‘Rivergate Residences’, was short. The homestay was seemingly
filled with 75% AirBNB guests or expats as everyone seemed to most certainly
not be from HCMC. Either way, it is a well located spot, if a bit tough to
reach.
I didn’t have too many plans for my first night in HCMC,
mainly because I didn’t know what time I would reach. I did make a booking for
dinner at Anan, a fairly trendy restaurant (and rooftop bar) which is strangely
located down a fairly dingy market street. The restaurant though is clean, and
the food was excellent. They have a tasting menu, but it really was just a
collection of their normal starter/tapas-sized fare, so I didn’t really see a
need to get it. Instead, consumed was four tapas-style starters, and they were
all great.
The most interesting was probably either the ‘pho’ roll, a
six-piece roll of large noodles, pho beef, sitting in a tiny layer of pho
broth. It was a deconstructed Pho, but a great one. What came with it was crab
and pomelo salad (pomelo being an excellent fruit to add to any meat), coming
inside a crab shell, with a giant cracker to eat it on. Third was probably the
weakest dish of the night, a very fresh fish taco with Vietnamese vegentables
and seasoning. Finally, the last dish was a grilled piece of beef wrapped in
betel leaves, a classic Vietnamese appetizer which was as good as ever. For my
first meal in Ho Chi Minh, this was great.
Since I had to get up fairly early the next morning for my
Mekong Delta tour, didn’t stay out as late as I probably will be the other
days. I wanted to go to one of Ho Chi Minh’s many craft breweries, but they
closed well before stated closing time (I’m learning this is commonplace in
HCMC). Instead, I went to one of their more reputed Cocktail Bars which was
excellent. In that, I walked past the Canalis Club, an upscale nightclub which
even from the outside, with its rows of decked out seemingly locals, was damn
intimidating. I’ll probably be focusing on the less reputed places…
For a first day in HCMC and Vietnam, this was a great start,
with a great meal, and a great after dinner drink, all within a city that is
far more clean, upscale and built than I mentally expected. It is only one
night, where it luckily wasn’t raining (it was still damn humid, however), but
it is off to a great start.
