Octie Appetie: Vietnam Day 1: Xin Chào Ho Chi Minh

27 February 2017

Vietnam Day 1: Xin Chào Ho Chi Minh

Small alley to our hotel

Good afternoon Ho Chi Minh. In this trip, we tried to ignite our teenager passion, backpacking around Southeast Asia. To be more specific, we only cover Ho Chi Minh, Hue, and Hoi An in Vietnam then continue to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia and finally back to Bangkok. All together only took us 11 days and 10 nights journey. As our kid at home and our age that already pass the party-goers period, we can't go longer than this.

First stop is Ho Chi Minh. We stayed at Bich Duyen Hotel in Pham Ngu Lao, great great location and very fluent English speaking receptionist. However, the dummy part is we got the room on level 5 (all together 6 level) and there isn't any lift, only tiny narrow stairs that can take us to our room. Imagine after a long walk in the city and we still need to climb up the stairs by the end of the day, feel like endless. Luckily, the receptionist help us to carry up our luggages on our arrival. Probably he saw us still like a youngster, therefore he gave us the upper level room and keep the lower level for the elderly.

Not so big room, but for the amount that we paid is good enough

Very clean bathroom

Pickles 4,000VND

On lunch time, we headed straight to one of the best com tam (or broken rice) restaurant in town, near our hotel. Com Tam Thuan Kieu is selling the broken rice topped with the meat of your choice that they show on the food bar. There is no price for each single dish, but not too expensive. My dish consists of broken rice, grilled pork and sausage, costs 25,000VND. The pork was so so yummy and flavoursome, the sausage was also bring the sweet flavor to the dish and eating them with pickles was totally balanced up the whole dish together. And accompanied with lemon soda drink, it was simply refreshing.