Layover Life: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

May 13, 2017

Layover Life: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

                      xin chào Việt Nam!

Hello Vietnam! This was my first time to Vietnam, I've had the flight rostered to me before but I swapped it with another colleague so they could go home so when I got this flight I was very excited, I've heard so many good things about Vietnam and seen so many amazing food photos I was dying to go. The flight from Dubai isn't long at all, around 6 and a half hrs. We arrived in the evening and some crew wanted to go out for dinner and drinks but whenever I have plans to explore the next day I prefer to sleep early so I don't feel like death the next day. I did go find a Pho restaurant for dinner though because how can you go to Vietnam and not have Pho. That just would not make any sense.

A group of us decided to do the Mekong Delta tour the next morning, we organized it as soon as we arrived so we would know what time to wake up and all that jazz.

I slept like a baby after dinner and when my alarm went off I really just wanted to turn it off and roll over but if I did that I would be racked with guilt over being in a new country and going out to do anything so I pulled my lazy arse out of bed and went down to meet the girls.

5 out of 6 showed up which for crew is a great turnout.

We hopped into a mini van and got on the road. The first stop was like a rest stop with toilets and restaurants and more importantly coffee. After a small break we got to the river where we then got on a motorboat and headed to a bee farm across the river on Unicorn Island. Sadly there are no unicorns living there. I looked high and low for the magical creatures and no luck.

We were treated to some nice warm tea sweetened with fresh homemade honey and I even got to hold one of the bee hives or bee home things (I don't know the actual word).

One of the girls wasn't that lucky though because as soon as she got near the bees one of them stung her lip so for the rest of the trip she looked like she had botched fillers and we teased her about it the whole time. She was a trooper though, didn't even bat an eye when it happened.

Our next stop was a coconut candy factory and a small break with fresh fruit and more tea where I also got to hold a snake around my neck (the poor thing though, I'm not a fan of nor do I love snakes but they are still animals and deserve to live free lives)

After the fruit snack we took a horse drawn carriage (again animal cruelty) down to the river where we got back on the boat and headed to a nice seafood lunch with fish caught straight from the river.

I normally hate doing anything touristy because there is always an animal or a few animals involved that are there just for tourists and that's animal cruelty. I felt so bad after the whole day because of that, I loved seeing everything and having a look around but I don't like nor do I approve of anything that requires animals to overwork or be treated unkindly.

A few of the girls don't like seafood so lunch for them wasn't all that great. By the end of the tour we were all complete sweaty messes and dying to get back to our rooms for a nice cold shower and long nap.

Overall the day was really good, it cost us 700,000 Vietnamese dong each for the tour and that covered food and transport. Pretty much everything.

Next trip I think I'll explore the city a bit because that's something I want to see and I'll have a list of food to try as well.

Before the flight back to Dubai I had a cup of ice Vietnamese coffee and boy oh boy that stuff is pure jet fuel. It's similar to Thai ice coffee sweetened with condensed milk so you get all the caffeine and all the sugar loaded together. Totes diet friendly haha.