Sunday Afternoon in HCMC

We went for lunch at apparently, the best local restaurant in HCMC. It is really a nice restaurant with good and very reasonably priced food. We had a very enjoyable spread with spring rolls, minced pork meatballs with fresh herbs and salad wrapped in rice paper, beef cubes with chips and a salad for under R100.



Food is prepared at work stations all around the restaurant

The restaurant is opposite the re-unification building in the center of HCMC

These parks are always filled with people. In the morning there are big groups of ladies doing some form of dance/aerobics, other people doing exercises on their own, wedding couples being photographed. And at night it is very cute how lovers sit and cuddle on their motorbikes "one next to the other".

Another trip to Vung Tao

Some more photo's of Vung Tao...

Mekong Delta Trip

We did a One-Day Mekong Delta Trip on Sunday. It was a 3 hour bus trip to Cai be where we started our motorised boat ride on the Mekong.

This is a floating market where they sell, buy, exchange goods from their boats. The hang what ever they are selling from the bamboo sticks, which is how they "advertise" what they sell e.g. watermelons, pumpkins etc. etc.

We stopped to see how they make rice crispies and other sweet products. The rice is basically "popped" like popcorn in this big bowl full of HOT sand. The sand then gets sieved back into the bowl.

The rice crispies then gets sieved and separated from the raw rice

The rice crispies then gets mixed into this bowl full of butter, sugar and flavoring e.g. banana, caramel etc. After that it gets flattened into a huge tray, cut up into cubes and put into plastic packets. The outcome...a delicious rice crispie treat!

This is how the dry rice paper

There are some really funny sights and scenes on the Mekong. To mention one (didn't manage to photograph :-( We saw a guy standing, steering his small boat with his legs while eating his lunch out of a bowl using chop sticks.

Passing this boat, all we saw were their hats sticking out.

All the boats have eyes painted on the bows.

We stopped for a Vietnamese lunch.

Well, the dog enjoyed our vietnamese lunch! Marc ate some of it but I decided to fill up on the fruit rather.

After lunch they entertained us with their "Now that's what I call music "Mekong Hits"...

Boat trip to Vinh Long

The Vinh Long Market. I don't think I'll be doing my grocery shopping there but interesting to see never the less...

Just some of the tropical fruit that they sell such as Dragon fruit, Rambutan, Longan, Duriun, Jackfruit etc.

Something else that we didn't photograph because we didn't want to incourage it was a half starved, crazed big brown bear in a cage. Not a nice thing to see and the smell was terrible. One has to almost "look the other way" when it comes to animals in most of Asia I suppose. Especially seeing that the humans don't live in much better conditions.

While waiting on the side of the pier we also watched a fishing boat catch fish by electicuting them. They used a car batery with some sort of steel net attached to a pole....top marks for ingenuity.

Dinner at The Sushi Bar

Marc found out that an old school friend of his Andrew (that he hasn't seen in 13 years) worked for PWC in HCMC and got in touch with him. Andrew and Ericka has an interesting story about how they decided to stay in Vietnam while backpacking through Asia, stayed for almost 5 years... Got married, had a baby and now moving on to their next expat assignment in Jakarta.

We had dinner at a great Sushi Bar before they left Vietnam on Saturday. Good Luck, guys!

Lorato, Ericka and Ronnie

Ronnie (UK), Ryan (SA), Marc, Adele(SA), Ericka, Andrew (SA), Clark (USA), Lorato (SA)

Dinner at a Local Restaurant

There are so many local restaurants like this in Ho Chi Minh City. Marc and I were very happy when Leah invited us with for dinner last week Saturday as I don't think we would have tried it on our own. What a great evening...Good food and just such a lovely vibe...we will definitely go back there!!


Curried Goat, anyone? Thes are just two of the menus on the wall...they also serve eel, scorpion and a lot of other dishes that I'll pass on, thank you.

We had a mini braai at our table. It's a bit like having a fondue but on hot coals, what a great idea!!

We had beef with garlic rice, curried fish with dill and rice noodles and salad...Yummy, It was delicious!!

Jenny, Leah and David inside a lovely little pub where a local band performed a variety of music from Louis Armstrong to Enrique Iglesias and even a couple of French songs.


Its nights like these when we really wish our friend and family were here to experience it with us.

Our new Apartment

We are no longer complaining about how far away, how uncomf..."well, what does it matter now” we've moved into another 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom serviced apartment on Monday, and it's great!! Check out the Saigon View link...

The neighborhood.

Our mini celebraty moments - how funny!

When people finally started arriving at the airport in Hai Phung we once again felt like celebrities (without having to look like one). It's actually happened a few times where the locals stare, touch and laugh at us and even take photograph's (I've heard about this happening and thought it was a joke). Well, who knows....maybe we're the joke!!!

In Hanoi a family were having there photo taken on the bridge at Hoan Kiem Lake by who looked like a professional photographer that ordered people to stop (not to get in their picture). I was waiting patiently waiting for them to finish when they waved me closer which I thought mean I could go past but instead they pulled me into the shot. Funny!!!!

The Vietnames girls in this picture would come sit next to us (check out what Marc was reading (or maybe they were smelling us) giggled and walk back to where they were sitting. A minute later two would come sit next to us again and they would indicate to the rest of their friends to come over. Moving closer and closer the one girl says "We u from"? I answer South Africa....she says "America", I say South Africa and they start laughing and run away again. Eventually the whole family (youngsters) were sitting next to me when the next question came "what your name"?...and so it goes. It is really quite funny and they were very excited when Marc wanted to take a picture.

Trip to Halong Bay

It was a 3 and a half hour trip in a mini bus (14 people in the group) to Halong Bay. The Bay is a World Heritage site and on of Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations. Ha Long Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin, includes some 1,600 islands and islets, forming a spectacular seascape of limestone pillars.

Upon arrival at the harbor our tour guide collected our tickets and we walked through crowds of people along the wharf where there were hundreds of Colorful Vietnamese Junks moored, some nicer than others...hoping our boat isn't a piece of "junk" (pardon the pun).

We had to walk along the edge of another boat to get to ours (Marc really concentrating not to bail into the water with our bag on his one shoulder) - As demonstrated by the guy in the picture

The inside of our junk where we had a lovely meals laid out (lunch, dinner, breakfast).

Our 10 m2 cabin with AC (thankfully) and a bathroom with a shower (well, if you can call it that)...more like a hand sprayer next to the toilet. All good though, it's part of the experience.

The deck of the junk. We couldn’t really spend much time up there during the day...to damn HOT!!!!

Luckily we didn't have to sit in the boat the whole day. In the afternoon on Saturday, we visited a cave and took a little climb up to a point with a spectacular view of the bay.

Inside the Sung Sot Cave (Amazing cave), which was truly amazing. Neither of us has ever seen anything like it before. It was spectacular. It almost looked fake to me, as it was so large. We thought they could probably shoot a movie, Star wars or something like that in there.

After our cave visits we had a swim off the boat and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.

We dosed dozed off on a lounger on the deck and woke up to a beautiful sunset.
We woke up early Sunday morning and admired the view from the deck.

After breakfast we kayaked around the bay, WOW!!!! We really enjoyed the kayaking bit. I don't think I did to badly for my fist time.

After the boat trip we went for lunch at a very nice lodge with ones again, an amazing view of the bay and Halong City in the background.

Instead of going back to Hanoi with the group we took a private car to Hai Phong to catch our flight back to Ho Chi Minh. Which we thought was a good idea as it was only about 90min drive and we couldn't take the chance of missing our flight had we flown from Hanoi. Anyway, when we got to the airport, if you can believe this...we were the only people there. The airport only opens at 16H00 and our flight was at 18H25. Needless to say, Marc and I sat in very uncomfortable chairs in which felt like a sauna for almost two hours before they turned on the air conditioners.