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Published: June 17th 2017
Geo: 10.7592, 106.662
Today we need to be up really early as we were doing a tour, Lacquering tour, which started at 7am, so this meant we needed to be showered and fed by this time. A bit of confusion today with the time, as my clock was different to Clint's by 1 hour, so we weren't quite sure what time it was. My time was Vietnam time(an hour earlier ) and Clint's was showing the ships time which is what we needed to take note of. We still made it on time though, we had to meet to find our bus number then we were all taken to our bus after going through the check out station. We took off after making sure everyone was on board, then made our way into Ho Chi Minh City, which took about 1 1/2 hours. This bus trip I think we saw hundreds of thousands of motorcycles, some carrying 1,2,3 or even 4 passengers on a bike!! Whole families were on bikes, crazy, and also nobody had rules unless you were a truck or a bus, the bigger you are, the more power on the road!!! Our bus driver managed not to hit anyone,
thank God so we continued until we got to the Lacquer shop where we had a tour then the opportunity to buy something. Only bought something little here. Next we were headed to the post office where we could exchange money, or withdraw cash, we now have $1,500,000 feeling so rich (about $70.42US) the little shops next to here sucked you in with something to buy!!!. Thought we were going to miss the bus as the shop was so small and we couldn't get out of here from all the other tourist blocking the entry, but got to the bus just in time, only to be hassled to buy something from the street sellers, but we didn't !!! Our next stop was at the market, Ben Trung where there were so many sellers in this place all trying to get the best price out of you( eg..rip you off), crying poor, but still making money, so many T-shirts, handbags, shoes, make up, perfumes and jewellery and many more, this place scared me a bit, was overwhelmed by it all, so we went out of the market, and headed up some back streets and then we had the street sellers haunting
us!! Sunglasses, Scarfes, fans, souvenirs, they all just wanted it get their best price!! We went back for our bus pick up at 11am, then we were off to the Majestic Hotel where we were left to go and do some shopping and also get something to eat for ourselves, so we headed up street, in and out of shops and then found a restaurant to eat at and charge our phones. Food here was very nice, a sit down meal, Clint had Chicken with Almonds and rice and I had chicken with ginger and rice and we both had a cocktail and the whole amount came to 495,000 dong, which was about $23 US. We walked some more and went down many streets and found Burger King so we went in for a sundae!! It was so hot here, about 34 degrees with a very high humidity so we deserved it!! We walked across the new subway they are building to get to a different area, went into some more shops and came out and found we were in the tallest building, ground floor and we didn't even know it, we saw this building from a distance on the
way in on the bus, so we took photos from ground level. We found where we had to be for bus pick up, but we still had $700000 dong left so back into a souvenir shop, spent $360,000, then ran back for the bus, we were last on..... Whoops but at least we got to spend some of this money, and we hoped we could get rid of some more at the dock. We gave our driver and tour guide 100,000dong which is about $6.00AUD and bought 2 T-shirts and a jewellery container to use the rest of our money!!!
Back on the bus we got through the check in machine, then straight to the bar for a drink!! We came back to our room, just about collapsed on the bed but we thought we better go and eat... Don't know why, so we went the the Windjammer for dinner, very casual with loads of variety and pigged out again!!!!!!!! After dinner, we grabbed another wine, went back to our room and fell asleep across the bed, and it was only 8.30pm, how sad!!!
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Lyn
non-member comment
Would hate to cross that road. Shut you eyes and go!!!!