20th May 2013 - First night in Vietnam and roadside beer

After 2 hour flights, I landed in Tan Son Nhat International Airport and that marked the start of my journey in Vietnam. First thing I must do then was to get a place to stay. Getting information beforehand that District 1 in HCMC is the heaven for backpackers, I know I should head to that place. In order to save the transport fee, I decided to share my cab fee with someone in the aiport. So, I randomly walked up to this Singpaporean couple who took the same flight with me and asked if I can join them. For sure they said yes! So they dropped me off in District 1 and refused to accept my money, how nice are they! And first thing I spotted is this magnificient church, the Notre Dame. It is just so pretty. :D

The Notre Dame

So, I started looking for the hostel that I want to stay in, the Vietnam Inn Saigon in 200 Le Lai, District 1 recommended by wew.hostelworld.com. With the small map that I have, after an hour of walking, losing direction, asking people around, finally I made my way to the hostel. It is quite a good hostel, USD$8 per night for a 8 mixed dorm, pretty clean, has a rootop restaurant, pool table, bars, and computers with internet access, basically meet all the needs for a regular backpackers. However, heard from some other backpackers, you can actually get a cheaper deal with only USD$5 for a night. :C 

My hostel in Saigon (HCMC)

After taking a quick shower, it's time to get something to eat. I met this two backpackers who stay in the same dorm as me, a Spanish, Rafael and an English, George. I self invited myself to join them for dinner because that's how you meet people; take initiative and talk to them, they are nice people and backpackers do take care of each other. So we had dinner, played pool and a must-thing-to-do, drinking alcohol. Beer here is freaking cheap, with only USD$0.60 for a bottle. And the drinking experience here is pretty different as well. You could go to pub, bars, restaurant and the most amazing one, along the road side. You just sit beside the road, order a few beers, and there you go, chit chat and enjoy the passing vehicles and motorbikes. Bad thing of this is you do inhale a lot of exhaust gases. tsk tsk tsk

Drinking alongside the road

So, after drinking 8 rounds in different places, I was pretty tipsy already and it's time to head back to our hostel. We reached at 1:30am and that summed up my first day in HCMC, Vietnam. So here I would like introduce my new friends to you guys, Rafael and George, say HI! :3



Rafael (left) was checking out the ladyboy in the other pub and George (right)