Arrival in Ho Chi Minh City
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2008
1
52
68
Trip End
Ongoing
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Friday, November 7, 2008
Today we leave Hoi An and travel to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly named Saigon. We had three options:
Bus: US$24 21 hours
Train US$48 21 hours
Plane: US$54 1 hour
It took as long to read that as it took us to make our minds up. The bus was a lot cheaper, but after our previous experiences we were keen to avoid any more long distance bus journeys. The trains are good, and we hadn't even entertained the idea of flying but the travel agent suggested it, and it really isn't much more expensive than the train.
The airport is about 30km out of Hoi An. We arrived in good time, too good really, as there was exactly nothing to do there. We were expecting something like a mule-powered biplane to be running the short journey but were surprised to find it was a big plane, like a 737, and it was full.
Other than a very fast, hard landing at HCMC Airport the flight was good. We arrived at 7pm, and tried to seek a bus to take us the 7km into town. This clearly wasn't happening, so we started to look at cabs. Whilst we were stuck in the minibus on the roundabout in Hanoi last week (before we ended up walking through the floods) we had chatted to the American couple who lived there. They said that all taxis should have meters enclosed in sealed perspex boxes. If the meter is not in a box, it's been tampered with, and don't get in. This was really useful information, and every one of us on that bus felt they had been conned by an exorbitant meter in a Vietnamese cab; now it was clear how, and how to avoid it.
We found one easily enough, and drove through the crazy HCMC streets, narrowly avoiding the masses of scooters that flung themselves out in front of the cab. We were dropped off in the "back packer district", Pham Ngu Lao. Luckily I had written that down, as I didn't fancy my chances of pronouncing it intelligibly to the cabbie.
The hotels I'd listed were full, but we found a fancy looking one that, after bargaining for some time, dropped its rate from US$40 to US$20 per double. Probably the nicest place we've stayed at so far.
