Vietnam Historical Trip. Day 1-2: Ho Chi Minh City

Hey, everyone!! It's time for us to share our moment while travelling to Vietnam.

We've been alternating in visiting between East Asia and other part of the World for the past years. It's all started when I was travel alone to Egypt for company business trip, in 2008. Since then, I was contemplating to plan for holiday circulating the continents each year.

Best part we had covered this French-colonized country from the south to the north of visiting its three cities, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang and Hanoi.

It was midday we outbound to Ho Chi Minh City, our Vietnam Airlines's flight arrived at Tan Son Nhat International Airport almost 2 hours later. After settling down with the necessities at the airport, VietnamDrive took us to the Sanouva hotel in District 1. Its located at the downtown and in the middle of shopping paradise to the local and tourists. It only 5 minutes walk to the infamous Ben Tanh market.

The hotel checked-in was breezed, and we don't' took long time to immerse into the crowds just in front of our stay. One thing that we noticed, bunch of Malaysian shops scattered in that area, being textile shops as well as restaurants. More interesting is that most of the shops, even the Ben Tanh market, accepted Malaysian Ringgit for the transaction! We don't have to scratch our head on the rate conversion, a Ringgit equals to Dong 5 thousands something.... errr, am I getting old?

Started to explore the shopping district

Kita putar Halim...!!!

The atmosphere in the Ben Tanh market

On the following days, VietnamDrive arranged a river cruise along the Mekong river. Throughout our week stayed in Vietnam were taken care by their excellent service. The drive to the Mekong River took more than two hours, before we stopped at Cù Lao Tân Phong in the Cai Lậy district.

Then, we were taken into a boat to visit one of the local villages situated along the river. We've seen the making process of the rice crackers and sticky rice by the locals. There were also other delicacies should be try out, bánh bèo, bánh chưng among others. Rice in Vietnamese is bánh.

The Mekong: River of Life to the local people

We learned the rice crackers making process

The slices were left dried after steamed

The rice cracker with sesame seeds

Communication barriers left us with the fruits puzzled

A popcorn-like of another kind rice cracker making process. Its a sticky type.

Then, it mixed melted sugar..

before being flatten and cut into pieces.

A typical scene along the river while we set sailed to the next stop.

A quick detour to the Vietnamese coffee shop

Let's take a brief rest guys!

Kính chào quý khách means welcome!

Cruised in the water ways of murky river

There were varieties of sampan boats we've seen here

We stopped for lunch at one of the authentic Vietnamese local food. Spring roll was wrapped with fresh cold vegetables served with fried freshwater fish. The Vietnamese lunch was absolutely delicious!