Ho Chi Minh

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh at 6:00am. I had slept the entire train ride but Alyssa hadn't slept at all and was pretty miserable. Jessica had taken a sleeping pill and had gotten a few hours of rest which she seemed happy with. We disembarked from the train and headed out in front of the station to get a taxi. There was some unknown system to getting a taxi that we couldn't figure out. You had to get one of the cab company attendants to summon one for you but they wouldn't talk to us. People kept getting cabs all around us but they would never take us. We walked further and further down the side walk, hoping to find someone who would help us. Finally one of the cab attendants agreed to put us in a cab. We still have no clue what we were doing wrong but we were happy to be on our way. It was a bit of a drive to the hostel from the train station, mostly because of the traffic. We were at a dead stop for a while because there were just so many cars, motorbikes and pedestrians all trying to get through these tiny streets. When we finally made it to the address, we found our hostel down a narrow alley. This hostel didn't allow you to wear shoes inside of it, which annoyed me every time we came in or out because we had to leave our shoes outside. The hostel was pretty small, only housing maybe 25 people with no real common space, but it made sense since the city as a whole was pretty compact. We decided to head out immediately in search of breakfast. The restaurant the hostel recommended looked awful, so we ventured down a different side street where we found a little cafe where we could get yogurt, pancakes and soup. We even got real coffee with our own drip filters.

After breakfast, we decided to head to the West Ben Thanh market. It was a huge local market set up in what looked like a warehouse. You could get any good imaginable there. We shopped around for a few hours before Jessica and I purchased some awesome Vietnamese lanterns and Alyssa got a new purse. We are shrewd bargainers when we want to be and compared the same products at as many stalls as possible before settling on a price.

You can also get food and drinks in the market so we stopped at one of the juice stalls to get some fresh blended juice which was nice and refreshing. Alyssa loves orange/carrot juice while I prefer coconut/pineapple.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town, getting our bearings on where things were located. Ho Chi Minh is a huge city but it is pretty walkable if you're staying in the right area. We were able to walk to the palace and the post office (Jessica was very excited to see the post office which was a old colonial building that had been transformed into a post office) as well as check out a lot of the shopping districts. There were tons of great shops and restaurants and no end to the street vendors.

Alyssa and Jessica had developed a love for the Bahn Mi sandwiches and though I didn't love them, they were perfectly edible and definitely cheap. The ones that we got came with pâté as well as four other kinds of sliced meat, tons of fresh veggies and four different sauces, but I requested that my sandwhich only have ham and chicken since I was wary of the other meats.

We spent the rest of the day walking around the huge evening markets that were set up for the New Years Eve celebrations. They had tons of booths set up where you could sample different food and drink options. Jessica bought some instant coffee packs because she loves the Vietnamese coffee and we bought some pop up cards that were so adorable and unique. We headed to the large restaurant street near our hostel to peruse the restaurant options and shop for clothes. We ended up choosing an Indian restaurant that a had a little bit of a wait, but we took that to be a sign of good food. The food was delicious and we left very satisfied. We headed back to the osteoporosis afterwards to relax and get ready for our tour the following morning.

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