after a long and not very comfortable journey, we arrived finally in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday evening. The term "not so comfortable" is accurate as we were not really lucky on our first stage from Zurich to Doha: seated in the first row of three after a line with four seats - that means that our screen wasn't in front of us. However, as we figured out later, this didn't matter at all as our screens weren't working anyway (the only row in the whole airplane)! so definitely not a good start...
However, even travelling "oldschool" without any entertainment system, you make it at to your destinatio at the end... and so did we: after stop overs in Doha and Bangkok we finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City - welcome to Vietnam!
The first impressions of Ho Chi Minh (HCM) were pretty intense as this city is really a big anthill! With 10 million people living in the city and around 5 million motorcycles on the street, this city is really what you call "chaos"! And when crossing the street for the first time in all this traffic, it really felt like committing suicide. Nevertheless, yet on our second day, we rented some motorcycles by our own and drove through the city - definitely a big excitment! And not only that it is pretty adventurous, it is furthermore also pretty unhealthy as the polution is really bad. But I guess when staying only a couple of days here it should be ok...
But we did not only stay in HCM as we made a two day trip to the mekong delta to see a different face of Vietnam with its countryside. in this region, you also see poorer people and way more "green" of course than in HCM. We spend some time cruising around on a boat on smaller and bigger rivers, visisting a coconut factory, a fruit farm, tried some local tea and visiting floating and other local markets. A special highlight was our accommondation as we stayed in a "homestay". It was therefore very special as our hosts picked us up on motorcycles and we were split up pretty soon. And as we had no idea were we are driving to and how long it will take as well as were our third guy is, it felt honestly a bit strange. However, everything turned out to be great as we had a nice accommondation and excellent food.
But as you fuys know us, we couldn't leave HCM without checking out the local night life. And so we ended up on a nice sky bar downtown HCM and after that we were drinking with locals on the street what turned out to be pretty funny as it was great. And to give you some proof that we also took this stage seriously, I have to say that I was the only one who was able to leave the hotel room the next day to at least see some museums :)
So this was HCM and Vietnam. Next stop: Bangkok! So the pure awesomeness will pretty sure continue... and there we go!
