You Don't Know Man, You Weren't There!

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I don't really know the origin of the line in the title, I'm aware it's Vietnam War related, but I'm not exactly clear on the specific origin and it's not obvious from Google. Anyway, I'm mainly using it because that's how the Top Gear Vietnam episode ended.



My flight to Bangkok was with Jetstar Pacific, which is the third branch of Jetstar that I've flown on this trip having also done Jetstar Asia (Singapore based)) andtstar Australia. There is a fourth branch, Jetstar Japan. Jetstar Asia is the Vietnam branch or Jetstar and I had chosen Jetstar over AirAsia which was priced similarly because Jetstar flies to Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) rather than the main budget one of Don Muang (DMK) and that is much more convenient for getting to my aunt's house in Bangkok - a major factor given Bangkok's traffic and road works on the way to DMK - which is where I'll be staying for my 10 day stay here.



Anyway, my flight took off at about 1PM, which is a very convenient time (especially by the standards of a LCC) so I had a bit of a morning in Saigon. You may have noticed that I've stopped using the name Ho Chi Minh City because that name is far too long and wordy and HCMC is a clunky acronym (or, to be pedantic, an I initialism). The two names are completely interchangeable anyway, and it seems to be mostly just tourists who go with HCMC.



I tried to have a lie in to catch up on sleep since I didn't need to call a Grab until just after 9, but as I'm so used to getting up early, I was up at six anyway.



After breakfast and sitting around for a bit, I called a Grab for the airport. A car obviously, because those are available here and there's no way I was balancing on the back of a bike with all my stuff, despite the constant motorbike divers who harass you to do so as you walk along with all your stuff. A Grab to the airport was 86k which is probably half the taxi cost, especially if there's traffic, which is a ridiculous decrease in price. Although having said that, due to being a public holiday still, when it came to booking there was a shortage of drivers and I was rejected a few times until I had to take a slight surge price of 113k. Still cheaper than a taxi.



There was pretty torrential rain on the way to the airport and all the way until I departed in a thunderstorm. The roads in Saigon where quiet though. Weirdly, at the airport there were two Jetstar Pacific flights going on the same route from Saigon to Bangkok, one leaving an hour later than the other with the flight numbers BL663 and BL661. It seems weird that they'd be only an hour apart and the same airline on the same route. I suppose they don't operate any larger aircraft. There were several tour groups checking in, seemingly all Vietnamese tourists going to Bangkok and they were to sort of tour where everyone wears a particular coloured hat and then plays follow the leader with a big matching flag. There were three your groups, each way that a different colour, and I absolutely do not understand why anyone would ever want to go on on of those tours. It sounds like it would be a horrendously annoying experience, like a school trip but worse. And it's not like a group of children either, they're all adults! It's one of the strangest things I see in Asia and it's quite common.



There was loads of tourist tat in the airport. Well, obviously, but there seemed to beor than usual. However everything in the airport was priced in dollars! Why? Nowhere else in Vietnam was stuff priced in dollars. And of course they used the opportunity to rip you off. $3 for a chocolate bar, $4 for a coke. Really? That's about 100k, the standard price in general seems to be 15k. That's even more scammy than usual for an airport.



Because of all massive thunderstorm the runway was covered in water which makes it much more impressive to watch planes land and take off, especially take off with the massive plumes of water that the engines fire out.



As I did with Malaysia, I can work out exactly how much Vietnam cost (I could do that with Singapore too, but because I bought stuff on the visa card, I'd have to add that all up.



In Vietnam, my total spend for everything (not including flights, but absolutely everything else) was 9.1 million dong accurate to the nearest 100k. That's almost exactly £300 or US$389 or AU$540.



That's over 15 days which works out to about 600,000 dong per day or £20 per day (US$26 AU$36).



For a comparison, Malaysia was £1270 in 41 days = £31 per day. And if anything, Malaysia was roughing it more, although I did a few particularly expensive things in Malaysia, like spending 5 nights at Danum Valley.



So £300 for my short two week trip to Vietnam. That's obviously a significant amount of money, but it's hardly a fortune and £20 a day given that I stayed in decent rooms and took taxis when necessary seems like quite good value. The extra flight cost, in terms of how much more it cost to fly to Vietnam and then Bangkok rather than going from Singapore to Bangkok is probably just under £50. I certainly think this visit to Vietnam was a very good use indeed of £350! Certainly a very enjoyable, and very productive wildlife sighting wise, last minute addition to the trip.



Obviously I'm very pleased with how well I've done at the two locations visited. I saw the vast majority of my target species at Cat Tien and Dalat and I feel like I've done those two sites. However, there's certainly a lot more still to see in Vietnam, and another trip is certainly in order. There are a lot more endemic primates to see certainly! I'll have to come back before they're all extinct, which is a rather depressing thought.



The flight with Jetstar Pacific was good. It was clearly an older aircraft, but it was fine. I had pre-ordered a meal for the flight because I guessed I would be hungry by then. It cost just over 100k which at the time of booking I had no idea of how much that actually was. I got a noodles with vegetables and tofu meal with a bottle of water and you'd pay 60k at the very least for that on the ground, more like 70-80k, so that's better value that I would expect for a meal bought on a budget airline. They did unfortunately serve the meal just before a big lot of turbulence, it was a bit like eating on a horse tornado (which is a much better name than carousel), and it's a good thing that I'm not at all prone to flight sickness because it was almost too bumpy for me.



It's not a long flight from Saigon to Bangkok, less than two hours, which feels like no time. They also decided to give out the Thai landing cards to fill in right before landing, just as we were told to stow our tray tables for landing.



There was a really long queue at immigration and the first thing I did was go to buy a local SIM, as you do. The person I bought it from then set it up and seemingly it was the first time she had ever put a sim in a phone. She had to do it, not me. I just had to point out what she had to do.



Because I'm staying with in aunt in a fairly obscure area, I had to either get a taxi or a grab. There's some weird regulatory stuff in Thailand with the Grabs and there's oddness about them and airports, so I went to get a taxi. There's a system at the airport than involves getting a ticket and going to find a taxi. The first few taxis didn't know the place and didn't understand the address I had written down, so told me to go and get a new ticket. Then one did agree and decided that his meter was 'broken' and it would cost 400 baht. Rubbish. I did eventually find a taxi who was willing to use a meter and didn't know the way but was willing to have a go. This is why you should use Grab! I knew roughly the way though so it was fine and cost about 250 baht, much less than 400.



So I'm staying in Thailand until the 13th when I return to Warsaw. I don't have anything particularly adventurous planned, mostly just relaxing in Bangkok, but I might get a little bit of wildlife in. The last big lot of additions to the list will be the Vietnam stuff.



Oh, and a random thing. I've noticed that my trousers are starting to get a hole in them about mid-way up my thigh. I should now sell them to a young person for twice the price I paid. I believe that's what the youth think is fashionable.

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