Part 13 : Ho Chi Minh City

The trip from Darwin to Ho Chi Minh was a simple 4 1/2 hours. Not too bad. At the airport we met Jules who funnily enough had the same backpack as me. But it wasn't until we had to wait in line for the Visa on arrival that we actually started chatting. Visa on arrival FYI sucks balls and makes you end up waiting at the airport for an extra hour of your time. I also forgot my passport photos and had to pay for new ones.

Me Greg and Jules ended up sharing a cab into the cities backpacker district. Pham Ngu Lao. We walked around checking out a for a backpackers dorm or share room where we can all get drunk meet new people and have a jolly good time. We didn't find it there, so we just ended up booking a 3 bedroom for about $10US a night each. not too bad considering the other hotels were around $15 a night each.

We then headed out into the town. Beer at the crazy bull face pub and its rival across the road meant a lot of backpackers, locals, prostitutes and drug dealer pimps on bikes swarmed to the place. We tried multiple shops selling Pho and many beers. The second day was a bit more interesting visiting the Previously named memorial for american war atrocities now named just the War Memorial and then headed out to get hammered on the town at a few nightclubs wed found online. The best way to explain the night would be messy. We started at dinner with 5 beers for 135.000 dong, which was a great price for the city, and then moved on to different clubs and cocktails. At some point we dropped greg off and went out to another dingy night club in-between there and the hotel spent about 2.000.000 dong and lost my iphone. :( boo hum bug.

It was clear that Ho Chi Minh was just like any other big city. just in asia with Pho. Not really the backpackers experience I was searching for but I knew it wasn't too far off. And cycle drivers and haggling with them over the price of a ride is a lot of fun.