Sophia Hotel Ho Chi Minh City

Today we got up early to find outwhat timesthe buses left for Hoi-An, we arrived at the travel agency at 8:10am and discovered we had missed the morning bus by a measly 10 minutes, the next bus was 12 hours away! ****! We had to kill a whole day so we grabbed a bite to eat,dumped our bags and then laboured our way through the humidity of Ho Chi Minh City(HCMC) to the cathedral, a really nice beautiful building, with beautiful statues surrounding it. Unfortunately it seems lady-luck is ...

... girl squeal as he looked toward the cockpit. I followed his gaze and understood why: bonus! bonus! the pilot is a young American! We feel a bit safer already, ya never know if the local pilots are recycled bus drivers or not.<br><br>The flight was delayed for half an hour because they had to look for a missing passenger. If it were up to me, I would've left him behind to enjoy his scorpion rice wine in the peaceful hills of Dalat. When we finally ...

... reminds me allot of Bangkok with a few big differences. Primarily things are allot more expensive here on the surface. But it turns out you could haggle for damn near anything here except food, we got knocked down price hotel rooms, gifts, transport, books, everything. Its really weird haggling when your British but great fun if you get good at it (which I'm still not).<br>The second major difference here is that there are no pedestrian only roads, nor in ...

... food imaginable, from French soup mixes to Japanese candy. After drooling over displays of M&amp;Ms and Pepperidge Farm cookies, we settled on some Kettle chips and a bottle of Chilean wine, then hoofed it back to the room for the night.<br><br>Sept 9: Second day: The following morning we braved the street traffic and did some sightseeing. Although we weren't really within walking distance to a couple of our planned sights, we walked anyway. Some of the things we ...

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... As such, he had some places he wanted to revisit, so we really had to cram everything in to get it all done in the little less than three weeks they had. They were flying into Ho Chi Minh City, so Konrad and I planned to fly down and meet them there a few days after we finished work at Apollo.<br><br>We had been up late on Tuesday night, enjoying one last evening with friends at the pub quiz (which I ran that night - the theme was colors, for those of you who ...

... 7863;t phòng M&#361;i Né, dat phong Mui Ne, khách s&#7841;n Nha Trang, khach san Nha Trang, dat phong Nha Trang, &#273;&#7863;t phòng Nha Trang, khách s&#7841;n Sài Gòn, khach san Sai Gon, dat phong Sai Gon, &#273;&#7863;t phòng Sài Gòn

... t translate well so I could go with &#8220;Just Wadz&#8221;. It also helps when making introductions. When people ask my name and I say Wadzanai they get that glazed kind of &#8220;oh sherbet&#8221; look in their eyes. The language thing! How do you manipulate yourself around Wadzanai if your phonetics are different JAH (I&#8217;m working with two Germans). Anyway once I see the glazed look and I say call me Wadzi suddenly the eyes ...

... the children born with birth defects after the use of Agent Orange. In common with similar exhibits across the country, it&#8217;s strongly biased towards the Vietnamese, but an old black and white photograph showing a US fighter pilot in tears proved that the victims of war come in all shapes and sizes.<br><br>Speaking of which, the next day I took a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. These are 200km of underground passageways the Viet ...

... very grand and very Socialist. Didn't know a great deal about the Vietnam War and North and South Vietnam before reunification. So I got a little self-education. Pretty cheap to visit as well which is nice coming from Cambodia where they bled me dry. Decided to treat myself to a beer at the Saigon Sheraton as one does. $250 for a room per night. Very swanky. Great views from the rooftop bar across HCMC. Served a ...