After 11 days or so in Cambodia, we were ready to move on. We booked a bus ticket through our hotel that would take us to Vietnam. This seemed like a fairly straight forward process, but alas, nothing in Southeast Asia is straight forward. When the non-descript shuttle picked us up at our hotel to take us to the bus station, everything appeared kosher. However, as we pulled up and glanced over at the bus, we immediately noticed it was not the company we had booked with. I asked another passenger if this was the Mekong Express bus and she replied, “No, this is Sapaco”. Uh-oh, Sapaco.  How was it possible that we were picked up at our hotel by the wrong bus company? We frantically tried to explain the situation to the driver, while simultaneously calling the hotel. Our bus was leaving in a few minutes and god willing, I was not spending another night in Phnom Penh. After several phone calls, a Sapaco employee shuttled us into two seats on their bus and we departed with no further questions. We aren’t exactly sure what happened (the hotel owner’s theory of another white couple waiting for a bus but took the wrong shuttle seems unlikely); however, it didn’t matter to us as six hours later we made it to Ho Chi Minh city, through a surprisingly easy border crossing.

Ho Chi Minh City, formerly and in many ways still known as Saigon, is the largest city in southern Vietnam. As soon as we arrived, we were relieved to see clean and paved roads, children with shoes and pants on and no one going to the bathroom in the streets.  It felt like a breath of fresh air compared to our last week or so.  HCMC is made up of over a dozen “districts” or neighborhoods. Most backpackers, including ourselves, stayed in district 1 where there are many restaurants, a touristy market, War Remembrance Museum, Independence Plaza, a few malls, many parks and a main backpacker street pack full of various lodging options.  We spent two full days here and explored a lot of district 1, as well as ventured out into District 3 and District 10.  A few great things about the city: 1) There are many open parks with sidewalk tracks, badminton courts, and urban exercise equipment with city folk actually putting it to good use. There is nothing quite like seeing a Vietnamese woman in full pajama wear (standard outfit) working the elliptical in the park. Exercise has not been on the radar of the inhabitants of other Asian countries we’ve visited, so this was a welcome sight. 2) The markets in Saigon sell all the name brands (Banana Republic, Gap, North Face, Patagonia, Zara etc.) at very discounted prices.  The factories that produce these brands are located in Vietnam and they either make fake duplicates of the products or end up selling the “mistake” items which are unacceptable to be shipped overseas.  3) The food is also very inexpensive, but unfortunately we think we have had equal if not sometimes tastier Vietnamese food on Federal in Denver.  Strange. 4) The coffee culture here is very unique as about every 10 feet or so on the sidewalk there will be small children’s chairs and tables set up with a woman pouring coffee out of a thermos. These are the ubiquitous coffee stalls and there are literally thousands of them.  You can get Ca Phe Da (iced coffee with sugar) or Ca Phe Sua Da (iced coffee with condensed milk and sugar), or Tra Da (iced tea).  Throughout the day there are men and women who post up at these small tables and enjoy their coffee, which will surely be strong and sugary. Oh and don’t forget the infamous Weasel coffee. They poop out the beans! The price for a cup of weasel coffee is about 10 times more than a regular ca phe da.

On our second night here, we went on a night tour of Saigon on the back of motorbikes driven by local college girls. While this was an organized tour, you should know that that traffic in Saigon is borderline chaos. Motorbikes are the preferred mode of transportation and rule the road.  It is quite uncommon for families to own cars, while most children get their start on a motorbike in their early teens.  The streets are extremely crowded with bikes and the traffic is insanely busy.  We haven’t figured out how the flow of traffic works, as we don’t really see anyone stopping on reds or going on greens but for some reason the traffic flows very smoothly.  Crossing the street is a game in itself, there are crosswalks but the motorbikes do not stop at them. The rule of thumb for crossing the street is to step off the curb, move methodically and steadily across the street, never ever stop and pray that the traffic will veer around you. In almost every case, it does!  With that being said, getting on the back of a motorbike was crazy.  We sped throughout the city, in and out of different districts and markets as well as stops for dinner and dessert.  Not only was it great viewing the city from a bike, but we also were able to have candid conversations with college kids.  Both of our drivers were fluent in English and majoring in Tourism and Interpretation, and had a strong interest to visit the States.

After a few days of exploring HCMC, we ventured down through the Mekong Delta via an organized tour group.  Due to the vast size of the Mekong, visiting it almost always requires a tour group. The tour consisted of 3 days and 2 nights in the Mekong region.  The region begins about 100 kilometers south of HCMC and expands to the border of Cambodia.  The region thrives off of the Mekong River, which provides most of the cities with their income through farming, fishing and tourism. The Mekong has 14 provinces each with over 1 million people. While in the Mekong, we boated through a floating market, a fishing village, a bird sanctuary as well as many family villages that make coconut candies, vermicelli noodles as well as woven items. It was great to see how the people of the Mekong region live day to day; however, we are not the package tour group type and hope to spend the rest of our time in Vietnam venturing out on our own.

Tomorrow we head north to the mountain town of Dalat.

Hand Rowed Sampon in the Mekong

Python!

Floating Market

Scarf Weaving

Boats in the Mekong

Floating Houses

Bird Sanctuary (Mekong)

Parkcercise

Dinner With Our Tour Guides

HCMC Traffic

Night Tour

Floating Market

Rice Noodle Cooking

Coconut Tree

Pineapple Plant

Bird Sanctuary in the Mekong