Ho Chi Minh City! (aka Saigon)

We took a night bus to get to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam and arrived there at the lovely wee hour of 3:45am. We had no idea where the hell we were and all these drivers cornering us to take a moto or taxi ride with them for outrageous prices. It was pretty frustrating, especially after a long ass bus ride and little sleep. No one spoke English; it took us a bit to even figure out where we were in relation to the city center. They were all trying to rip us off, so Simon and I walked out of the bus station to find a more honest driver.

After haggling for 40 or so minutes, we found someone to take us to the backpacker district. Simon already had a place to stay since his friend, Martin, was in town, but I had to look for my own place. I wrote down the names of a few places I saw on hostelworld.com, and eventually checked into one at 5:30 in the morning.

When I finally started my day after a good 4 hours of sleep, I was so curious about this city. It was so much more developed than I thought it would be. I guess having been in Laos and Cambodia the past several weeks, where their capitols/major cities were not too big, Ho Chi Minh, was a nice change of scenery. There are motos EVERYWHERE; outnumbering the amount of cars for sure. Everyone seems to have one because they completely take over the road. And there aren't a lot of rules to driving, it seemed. Crossing an intersection as a pedestrian can be intimating, but it's fun at the same time. The trick is to not walk too fast and whatever you do, keep moving forward!



I met up with Simon and Martin at the Reunification Palace. The building itself was really nice. A good example of 1960s modern architecture. But the interior decorating was...pretty dated. There were some pieces I thought were fun and retro, like the furniture in the game room, but some stuff was just plain tacky.






The rest of the day was more tourist stuff. We managed to see a lot. We went to the War Remnants Museum (which, as an American, was very horrible to see because it the exhibits showcased what really happened on Vietnam soil), the Notre Dame Church, the post office (beautiful building), the Ho Chi Minh statue, and took a little boat ride on the Saigon River.


Notre Dame

Ho Chi Minh Statue

Boat Ride with Martin

At night, I met up with some of my cousin's friends, Norey, Jennie, and Jimmy. They were from the US too, but had been living in Saigon for a couple years now. We met them and a huge group for dinner and drinks. Had some really yummy food too. (I'll write another post later).We were supposed to go out with them after dinner but our taxi driver had no clue where he was going, so we just called it a night. It was ok by me since I wanted to sleep after a full day!


Norey and Jennie

The whole dinner gang

Kept in Kep

I heard a lot of good things about Kep from other travelers. Many had said it was better than Sihanoukville because it was quieter and less touristy. I was pretty excited to go, but when I got there, I felt a little disappointed. I assumed the beach would be nicer, but that wasn't the case. It was a much smaller town and I can see how it could be relaxing, but...the beach was not even close to Sihanoukville. People didn't even hang out there. But that made deciding how long to stay easy.....only one night. It didn't look like there was much to do anyways.

We rented a moto for the day, since Simon knew how to drive one. Much faster than riding a bike. Things were actually pretty far apart in this town. We took a tour all around the area on the main road. It was really pretty and scenic...rice fields with a giant mountian in the back drop...very picturesque. We went to the top of Kep National Park to catch the sunset as well. That ride was so bumpy though. There were a couple times when I thought I was going to just flip over the moto because I was bouncing around so much. After a tour of the rest of the area, we planned on going to the Caves and the Pepper Farm the next day.





Squirrel Association?!



Aside from pepper, Kep is pretty famous for it's crab too.



For dinner, I treated myself to a crab with fresh pepper dinner. It was SO good...well worth it! It was cooked with this curry that tasted a little bit sweet, and it came with plenty of fresh pepper, which I don't think I have had before. Very tasty. The crab meat was sweet too. It was a lot of work to get the meat out, but I guess compared to the time I had to de-shell 1lb of craw fish for dinner, this was a better deal. I pretty much licked the plate clean because the curry was so yummy. Mmmm...I want some now.


Garnish in the front?! I am not a good food photographer.

The next day, we cruised on over to a pepper farm. Can't say I have ever seen a pepper tree, but here's what it looks like:





Then we rode out of town to get to the caves, shot gunned it a little to far, but found our way to the right place. It was nice, but there were all these kids trying to guide us with flashlights through the caves to get a donation. I hate to feel this way, but whenever a kid comes up and asks me what's my name and where I am from, all I think is, no, I am not going to give you money. It's not how their supposed to make a living...they're kids! They should be in school, playing or doing kid things. That's probably one thing I didn't like about Cambodia...I felt like a walking dollar sign a lot of times.




Anyways, that was Kep. We felt like we did everything we could in that town.
Up next, Vietnam!!

Si-Si-Sihanoukville

Oh Sihanoukville, I wish I spent more time here. It's THE beach to go to in southern Cambodia. I should have spent less days in Phnom Penh and more here. Oh well. It was just nice to go to a beach, since I haven't been at one in SE Asia yet. The sand was nice and white and the water was a turquoise blue (and salty).

Simon (who met me in Phnom Penh) took the bus with me and the plan was to go to Sihanoukville so I could get my Vietnam visa, and then go to Kep, which was supposed to be a better place than Sihanoukville (more about Kep in the next entry).

We stayed at a hotel that was connected to a convenience market; just had to walk through the store to get to our room. It was right around the corner from the beach entrance, next to an awesome sandwich stand, and it was cheap...couldn't ask for a better place to stay. Oh yeah, right above the convenience mart was a great bakery/breakfast place. They were so cruel...they displayed all their baked goods in front, like carrot cake, banana cake, lemon meringue, brownies....I was in baked goods heaven! (Ever since Luang Prabang, Laos, I've been craving Western baked goods).



We just went to Ochheutel Beach (didn't make it to Otres, sadly. That one is supposed to be beautiful). And it was ok, but there was not a lot of sand to lay down on because the restuarants took over the area with their chairs and tables. Also, there was always someone trying to sell you something. It was so annoying. I missed sunset because some kids were in my way trying to sell me bracelets. (The streets kids were probably the worse in Cambodia so far. They should be in friggen school, not trying to hustle money.) We had to walk further down just to get to an area where we could sit without being hassled.

But the funniest thing we did was order a "happy" shake. Simon really wanted to get a pizza, but we decided to wait for our friend Rachel to share one. We went with a chocolate happy shake. I drank it with my meal and didn't think anything of it. Didn't taste obvious, didn't taste bad. Didn't noticing anything happening until maybe half an hour after I finished it. I started to get really paranoid and slow. And I noticed Simon was asking me all these questions, and I thought, he is affected too!


Happy Chocolate Shakes

After lunch, we went swimming on the beach, but the whole time, i kept watching our stuff to see if anyone was going to steal it. And I felt like swimming was so tiring....I didn't do a whole lot of it. After the swim, we sat at a restaurant to catch the sunset, but we both passed out in hour chairs. Pretty sure it was because of the shake. You know the feeling. It basically messed us up for the whole day. Simon said he stil felt it the next morning! Ha! It was fun. I would try it again if I had free day to do nothing.


Beach time



Oh, and surprise! We also got to reunite with some of the Spicy Laos gang over breakfast.


Kim, Preeti, and Simon

Simon, Boris, and Julia

And that was Sihanoukville.