Day 2. Vietnam Diary – Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon

Monsoon rain, fart flurry, Biscoff incident

Day 2. Sunday 19 May 2024

20:43. I’m feeling surprisingly fine considering I spent approximately 23 hours travelling, door-to-door, to get here yesterday. I had wanted to free myself of social media and messaging/general chatty communications – I would say “digital detox” were I not using Google Maps and, to a lesser extent, Grab (Asian equivalent of Uber) and Google. So it would seem that I’m only using apps that begin with a G.

I’m also not wearing a watch and have left my Fitbit and Whoop at home in the UK. It’s great not having anything on my wrists, but I’d quite like to see my health and step-count stats. But not enough to wish I had the two devices with me.

Interruption from tuneful washing machine. There’s no drying rack but I’ve set up coat hangers. Let me go and hang my previously sweat-covered clothes. I was going to hang a few things over a chair on my terrace but it started raining. It’s now chucking it down. I’m used to a lot of rain in Scotland, but monsoon rain is in a league of its own. [I do wonder about myself that I must have thought that was interesting enough to write about]

This evening, before it was fully dark, I had a bath on my balcony. There are plants and a screen but it’s still outdoors. Lying in a cool-warm bath in the humidity of a Saigon night (that sounds ever so exotic and exciting to me) was a memorable experience. I thought there’d be mosquitoes and insects, but seemingly none.

Need. Yet. More. Water. To. Drink.

My AirBnB is more expensive than necessary for HCMC but it’s well worth it, for the bath, comfort, location, relaxing environment and that it has a washing machine and a Bluetooth speaker, which I’m using with a random Spotify selection. I feel relaxed right now, the kind of feeling you’d hope for on a holiday.

I came to Vietnam because I wanted to be abroad for my birthday (tomorrow, 20 May), I wanted an Asia fix, I wanted to be anonymous in a city (I live in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, though I also spend a bit of time in Lewisham, a busy area of SE London), I wanted to use some Avios (I got the flights, times that suited me, with Qatar Airways and only paid half) and I wanted a living experience as opposed to a conventional tourist experience. I also needed a break from editing my novel but wanted to write something else instead. In the years before the Covid pandemic, I travelled quite a lot, for work and pleasure. I wrote a blog for travel, largely practical information, partly diary and partly travelog. I have a notebook and pen for this writing, no laptop or screen. Today, not the plan, I largely touristed. And loved it.

I haven’t slept much since I left home. I watched films for most of the six-and-a-half hour flight from London Gatwick (LGW) to Doha (DOH). I then had three hours at DOH (23:30-02:30), which I mainly spent listening to/watching a DJ for the airport’s ten-year anniversary. Great entertainment and it was so loud and lively that it helped me stay alert for the transfer time.

The next seven-ish-hour flight, thanks to my seat being what would be Premium (no Premium on Qatar Airways), I not only had ample leg room, but my middle-of-four seat worked out well as no one else sat in the middle and, as only the middle two seats have an arm rest you can lift up, I had two seats to lie on. I rarely sleep on planes but with two seats, an eye mask and earplugs, I did manage a few short chunks of sleep. To my embarrassment, I woke myself up at least three times with loud farts. I honestly don’t think there was a smell but even with earplugs, it was apparent they sounded like rapid machine gun fire. It’s the air pressure, right?!

I arrived at immigration around – erm, it’s a blur. I think around 13:30. I decided to buy a Viettel one-month SIM card for 370,000 vnd (£11.50 at approximately 32,000 vnd to £1 – oh yes, those zeros are a head ****) before queueing for passport control (a long queue, maybe 45 minutes). It was all very straightforward except that I had tried too hard to disconnect from my mobile phone dependency by buying a new-used mobile phone from CEX a few days earlier. Set-up, for various unforeseeable reasons, had not been straightforward or without some choice language from me. Once I’d bought the phone and finally got it set up, I felt committed to the phone despite all the problems (a Samsung S22, B grade from CEX, £330). It had the dual-SIM capacity that I had particularly wanted, a significant reason to stick with it. One of the issues was that it kept turning off, then taking AGES to turn on and stay on. The helpful SIM-insertion man (and me) couldn’t turn the bloody phone on to register the new SIM. I’d been trying to turn the stupid phone on since we’d landed. I was possibly too tired to get as annoyed as I’m capable of getting with a frustrating situation like that. It really is exhausting being angry when you’re already knackered from being awake for most of two days and having just got off the second of two flights. I ended up just taking the SIM without testing the phone. I joined the still-long immigration queue. So. Slow. After about twenty minutes in the queue, constantly trying to get the phone on, it finally turned on and stayed on. Rejoice. The SIM worked fine. Hurrah.

As I got closer to passport control, I noticed a lot of people handing over printed forms. I had checked the UK Foreign Office visa guidelines and knew I needed nothing for fewer than 45 days. But I started to worry. The man who’d sat next to me on the plane, and with whom I felt an affinity (unreciprocated) – I’m allowing myself this tangent – because after he saw me looking longingly at the Lotus Biscoff biscuit he was given with the second tea I had refused, he gave me his biscuit. I had had my headphones on but realised I laughed very loudly when the flight attendant saw what he’d done and gave me a biscuit. I then gave him back his biscuit. The flight attendant then gave him a second biscuit. I laughed loudly again. They both looked at me, mildly alarmed. She gave me another biscuit, probably to calm me down. Lotus Biscoff biscuits appear to have an ingredient list that I wouldn’t expect in a recipe book for fairly simple biscuits. They taste good though. Sort of. Anyway, it wasn’t particularly funny and didn’t warrant the maniacal laughs from me. I seem to lose perspective for social interaction with noise cancelling headphones on. So that was a digression from my mounting paranoia about not being let into Vietnam and being sent back to the UK – I couldn’t face another two flights and more indeterminable plane meals.

Anyway, my German biscuit-friend was sent to the other end of the counters by an immigration officer. I was by this point fairly confident that I too had failed in some way. Turns out I hadn’t. All was fine. But you do need to show your boarding passes with your passport. Fortunately (1) I retrieved mine from the seat pocket just before I vacated my seat because, and only for this reason (2) I didn’t want to leave any rubbish. But I might have been able to get it by returning to the plane just after walking off the sky walk because (3) staff check everyone’s boarding pass as soon as you walk off the jetway. At least I didn’t chuck it when the flight attendants collected rubbish throughout the flight because (4) I suspect that would have been a big problem and I was far too tired to deal with a big problem with grace and patience.

I know airline food is a bit shit, but I was especially upset that my LGW to DOH dinner was beef with something green and – was it rice? I can’t remember; it wasn’t a good meal. Or some creamy chicken thing with mash. Or something I couldn’t make out. I had the beef. On the DOH to SAI (Saigon) flight, it was the same beef and chicken dishes, which came round arguably for breakfast, but I suppose they served it as lunch. I opted for the third choice – how weird is this: blueberry bread and butter pudding. It was seemingly two slices of white bread soaked in something, lots of blueberries baked into it, and a sea of custard. My German biscuit man actually recoiled when he saw it presented in front of him. It was kind of edible. The tea, however, tasted of coffee. Not in a good way. And that was why I turned down the second tea, which was accompanied by a Biscoff.

I was told by my AirBnB host that I should use Grab (I’d set up the app and payment, but by the time I’d got to baggage claim the stupid phone had turned off again) or green or white taxis, and that my district 1 apartment was a 30 to 40-minute drive from the airport and should cost between 140,000 vnd and 170,000 vnd and that tourists were often charged $25. I made it to an official-looking white taxi. I was impressed with myself for fending off a lot of taxi touts to get to the official – or so I thought – line of taxis. Unfortunately, I didn’t establish the price with the driver of the taxi (with a meter, which was discreetly not activated, and not one of the companies my AirBnB host had told me to use). I was so, so annoyed with myself.

Shortly before leaving the airport, the driver asked if I had a small note for the airport tax/toll (I’m not sure how much it was at SAI but it was 9,000 at HAN on the way back and was added to my Grab fare). Having used an ATM at the airport (which gave me 500,000 vnd notes – totally useless as that is a lot of money in Vietnam, £15.50) and also having changed some USD (the currency exchange counters give smaller denominations but I still didn’t have anything less than, I think, 20,000 vnd and the driver told me no change would be given – I have no idea if that is accurate but I wouldn’t believe anything he said), he said he’d pay the money (he did take money out of his wallet) and add it to my bill, taking it up to 470,000 vnd (extortion and, yes, roughly $25 – I was furious. Such a bad start to arriving in a new country, being taken advantage of). I was angry and did exclaim that that was too expensive, but I didn’t argue the price and he didn’t lower it. I had made an error by not agreeing a price before setting off, being naïve for expecting the meter to be turned on and trusting a taxi driver at an airport. I kind of made myself feel better about it because I know that about £15 from my UK perspective is reasonable. But it was a lot more expensive than it should have been.

It was hot and sunny at 15:30 when I arrived at my accommodation. The traffic was full-on and I realised in the car that I was tired and confused. I sat in front with the driver, who needed sat nav to get to my apartment and Google Translate to enhance some of our conversation. Seriously, I should have let him just concentrate on the road and traffic, not that we had any incidents. I asked him what three things I should eat in Saigon. He said phở (which I had that first night), bánh mì (which I had this evening, my second night) and cơm tấm. Cơm tấm, his Google search told me, is broken rice, which is indeed broken rice, with pork and pickles. He also gave special mention to bánh xèo, crepes (today’s lunch).

[Towards the end of my stay in Vietnam, I finally realised how much easier it would have been choosing food, particularly from street food places serving variations on one dish, if I had learned some words. Bánh in this context means cake, as in pancake, and xèo (say-oh) means sizzle. Bánh mì (bun-me) pretty much means sandwich. Cơm means cooked rice and tấm means broken rice, and it is indeed damaged grains of rice. The dish comes with a lot of pork, but I go on about that dish later in a different context. Tôm is prawn, mực ống/mực is squid, cá is fish, bò is beef, gà is chicken, bún (boon) is rice noodle and chả giò (“cha zao”) is spring roll, and you need to remember that because fried Vietnamese spring rolls, probably just “spring rolls” in Vietnam, are astonishingly good. So if you now look at the menu I posted with Day 1’s post, you should be able to order something you might enjoy without having to use Google Translate – well, I say that but you’re screwed if you’re vegetarian or if the other words/ingredients/cooking styles turn out not to be to your liking]

I loved all that I ate yesterday and today. My first food here was an extraordinary avocado and coconut ice cream, which came with a cup of coconut water and was served in a fresh coconut shell, so I ate the soft coconut flesh of the bowl as well. Oh my. I eat fresh coconut so rarely, it’s always a surprise to be reminded how amazing it is. The green ice cream was wonderful. I had three scoops for 64k vnd (£2) from Codonut-Kem Dừa Dâu Côn Đảo (I am not even going to try to add all the accents to any of the Vietnamese words I write, but no excuses for not adding them to the typed version). It wasn’t too sweet and the texture was creamy and dense. This was perfect. I’d gone into that small ice café to escape a torrential downpour.

In the rain, I was wearing thick, high, Crocs-like sandals. Being elevated helped not having to submerge my feet in rain water – seriously, the water level rose and rose; torrential monsoon rain is in a league of its own, way above even Scottish torrential rain. Do not underestimate how heavy monsoon rain is. I had a brolly, which helped more than I thought it would, though my very lightweight trousers and lower arms (long-sleeved top) were drenched.

I also bought a new Samsung A05S mobile with dual SIM. The camera is slow but decent and the phone works and stays on. The phone and a charger cost just over £100. I know, I know, it seems rather an irony to spend so much money on a phone when I could have just taken my usual mobile and/or gone properly no-digital. I would feel OK safety-wise not having a mobile (everyone else has one and I have a notebook with important numbers and AirBnB contact info etc written in it), but I’m on my own and I would rather have a phone. I did used to travel without Google Maps, obviously, but I do love having a digital map with GPS.

[On returning to the UK, I eventually succeeded in turning the CEX Samsung on to delete all my apps and reset the phone – it took about an hour and a half to do that as, of course, it kept turning on and off. It wasn’t as straightforward to return as I expected and I thought for a while they were going to buy it back off me rather than refund the cost. I had to return to the CEX shop half an hour later to give them a chance to test it. Fortunately, I did get a full £330 refund. Buying a brand new mobile in Vietnam was a much better idea, though converting photos from HEIC to JPG was a veritable pain in the whatsit.]

Today, I used Grab for the first time, and took a scooter taxi to a coffee shop. That was quite the adventure.

I’m going to abruptly end because the scooter taxi was too exciting to think about when I realise I should be trying to sleep. It’s gone 22:15. I want, and probably need, to sleep. I’d like to get up fairly early to walk out for coffee and breakfast tomorrow. How am I already so behind writing this? I suppose because it’s all so new and exciting that everything feels worthy of writing down. I have noticed I am a lot more all over the place with handwriting than typing.