Vietnam

I was in Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of days. I never really enjoyed my trips there cos it’s such a cowboy town with bad traffic, not very nice food, no shopping, etc. I could go on.

The bulk of my meetings was going to be near the airport so I was deliberating if I should stay in the nicer city centre hotels or nearer the airport in the lousier hotel. I decided to help the company save money and also save the amount of time I spent in the horrible traffic with this hotel near the airport. Managed to get a good rate, upgrade to suite, two-way airport transfer, free internet, use of executive lounge, 1-hour use of meeting room (didn’t think I’d use it but I did eventually), discounts on food eaten at their restaurants. What a steal!

My impression of this cowboy town started even at their immigration when the visa of the angmo in front of me only started the next day (what a dumb angmo), and the immigration officer demanded money from him. It was that blatant. The angmo kept saying he had no money and the immigration officer just stared into blank space for a very long time. Held up the queue for a long time before the officer relented and threw the passport back at him.

My hotel room was pretty decent but like ive mentioned before, I don’t really like suites cos the distance between the bed and the table and the tv is too far that it’s tiring.







I saw this wedding couple standing at the lobby of the hotel underneath some arches that night. Apparently they are waiting for their guests and when the guests come, they can all pose under the arches and take a picture. This is repeated until it’s time to go in. That sounds tiring.



My client brought us to a place to eat in the middle of the city. It was a quaint black and white bungalow and very crowded and no air-con. I felt stupid to be wearing a suit in this place but the client was insistent that the food was very good. The food was indeed very good!





Check out the chendol making process.



Doesn’t my client’s assistant look like Chuck Bartowski from the tv series “Chuck”? Curly hair, side burns, white shirt, dorky face. All he needs is a nerd herd badge.



I also flew to Nha Trang to visit some places. My cowboy clients said they didn’t manage to book our return flight from Nha Trang to HCMC so they said we had to take a car ride back from Nha Trang to HCMC… a 10-hour car ride. I very nearly fainted when I heard that cos I had serious motion sickness. Man, 10 hours.. my longest in a car was 6 hours and I nearly died then. It made me pissy the entire night on this news. I therefore only packed my facial wash and stole a hotel face towel into my laptop bag in preparation for my flight the next day.

The next morning while waiting for the flight to Nha Trang, the client told me that they managed to secure tickets for us. I was elated, before I realised that I didn’t bring a change of clothes, nor my laptop. Means it’d be a night of naked cable tv. Beats a grimy 10-hour car ride.

It was my first time in Nha Trang so I was quite excited that I now can add one more location on my facebook “Where I’ve been” app. The client decided we should have breakfast first before starting work. In deference to us being guests, they opted for a cleaner establishment.



Otherwise, it would have been this roadside stall. *shudder*



This is the bed that I would spend a naked cable tv night.


This is the view from my Nha Trang hotel. Quite nice actually.



This is the city area.



We had lunch at this nice alfresco beach side restaurant, which served damn good fish. We ate three different kinds of fish.



All in all, I spent four nights in Vietnam. I couldn’t wait to get back after the first night.