Sunday 12 March 2017

Saigon 2017 : 3D2N retreat at Ho Chi Minh City

Day 1 :

Finally kick start my travel journey for 2017! Was so busy at work that I have no choice to start my holiday late! By nevertheless, holiday starts now! 
Heading off to Ho Chi Minh City ( HCMC ) for a 3 day 2 night trip! I went there once in 2012 and I'm excited to go back again for all the cheap and nice food and massage!

Now Jetstar wants everyone to use the self check in machine like Singapore Airline, so checked in and ready to pass the custom for some breakfast before our flight!

Had breakfast at the Killiney.

Waiting to board the plane and this is all I brought for the short trip! No longer big luggage as I don't intend to go there to buy a lot of things! ( I'm only there to bring coffee back ) My intention is eat lots of food and do lots of massage! Haha! Body aching so badly... ( old already )

Before take off, welfie first! ( Jingpei beside me, Katherine beside her and Ting Xuan at the last )

After 2 hours of flying, here we are at Tan Son Nhat International airport! ( I seriously think the window needs to be clean! )

My luggage look so petite compare to theirs! Haha! I think they are going to buy the whole HCMC back!

Once we are out the immigration, straight we went to get our SIM card. There is one inside before you get your immigration stamp, DO NOT BUY there! It is more expensive ( double price ) compared to the counter outside. It says 4G but to be honest you wouldn't have much 4G connection in the country which means 3G ( 95% of the area in HCMC ) is good enough to survive in the country. Read the review of the SIM card counter and apparently the first counter, vinaphone is better. So we went to that counter too and it's the most popular one with long queue too.

The price for the sim card.


Done with the purchase of SIM card and off we head off to our apartment! Recommends taxi here in HCMC is this Mailinh ( green ) and ( white ). They charge by meter.



They will issue you a card with the car plate number just in case anything happen I guess?


Here we reach our big apartment at Haong Ahn river view, with 4 rooms, 3 bathroom, big kitchen and a river view balcony! There is pool at the ground level too! This is the first time we book a apartment and each of us can have a room by ourselves! Normally this type of multi room apartment cost a bomb which you have no choice but to share, but this apartment is so affordable!

Check the host out at https://www.airbnb.com.sg/rooms/7750890?wl_source=list&wl_id=182814639&role=wishlist_owner&adults=1&children=0&infants=0

If you are wondering if you will have any communication problem with the host, not to worry! This Brighten education ( English language school ) is actaully own by our apartment host, Lan! So totally no problem with communicating in English!

Supermart just downstarts.


The living room,

The kitchen and dinning area,

Room 1,

Bathroom in room 1,

View from room 1,

Room 2,

Room 3,

Bathroom 2 at outside,

Room 4,

the bathroom inside room 4,

Lastly, the river view balcony!
Settled down and ready to go hunt for our late lunch!


Five Oyster is highly recommended by Katherine as she went once previously.
This time round we actually try Uber and to our surprise the Uber is so cheap! ( as compare to
Singapore of course )

Address : 234 Bùi Viện, Phạm Ngũ Lão, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 9am to 11pm

My favourite Vietnamese ice milk coffee!

Crab and corn soup.

Five oyster spring roll.

Stuffed tofu.

How can you not eat the famous Vietnamese spring roll when you are in Vietnam right?

Yummy Pho! I love Pho!

Fried rice vermicelli.

Stewed pork with egg.

Purple yam soup! Something new that I have not seen before.

Mango salad! Another favourite food of mine!
You must thinking that we ordered the food like we have been starving for days! NO that we did not starved for days and YES we admit we ordered a lot! Haha! Nobody in the restaurant eats like us to be honest! Anyway the food there is really good and at a very affordable pricing!



After a very full lunch, we decided to walk over to Ben Tinh market which is about 25mins walk away from Five Oyster.

Street food stall everywhere!


Walking on the road of HCMC is challenging, minimal traffic lights, many cars, and free dust!

Here we are at Ben Tinh Market!
 
Many things can be found here.

From fabric,


 
To souvenir,

to their famous coffee powder,

to dried fruits,


to fruits,

and fruits juice stalls!

Take note, they might charge you higher because you are a tourist so be careful, compare price first before you decide. ( don't get cheated at this type of touristy place! )

After Ben Tinh market, we call Uber again to Vincom Center ( shopping mall ) to see if there is any sales going on there.


Nope there is no sales going on for all the brands so we decided to have some tea and coffee session!

Went down to basement for Paris Baguette to have our "high tea".

Oh wait! What did I see here? Singapore restaurant! Haha! I wonder is the Singapore food nice here?


Anyway... rest a bit with our drinks and cake.

After tea, it's supermarket time!




Didn't buy a lot because we are going massage later so didn't want to carry all the heavy stuff there.

Ok, Uber again to our next destination and it's massage time! We told ourselves we have to do massage every single day because it is really cheap here ( and of course compare to Singapore (and Malaysia too) again.. )!
Went to google about the massage in HCMC and found a few recommended places. We decided to go to Beautiful Saigon, one of the recommend and it's near Five Oyster so back to the street again.
Price is reasonable too!

Address : 72 Bùi Viện, Phạm Ngũ Lão, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 10am to 11.59pm

Love their wall graffiti!
The ladies have decided to do the 90 mins foot treatment ( 450000 VND = SG$28.10 ) and the only man wanted a full body massage ( 400000 VND = SG$25 ).

First, we soak our feet in warm ginger water! My first time seeing spa actually use ginger water to let us soak our feet in!

Next, scrub off all the dead skin...

Massage time!

And lastly, putting mask on for our feet!

This is how the mask on the feet. Ok I know this look kinda gross...

Wrap the feet for about 10mins. ( 3 ladies pempering their feet while the only guy can only wait... )

Removed the wrapping and now our feet feel so smooth after the pampered treatment! I wish Singapore have all this at a reasonable price ( but too bad not )!



After a good massage and it's time for late dinner! We decided to go to Namsan BBQ which is just walking distance from our apartment for some Korean BBQ since we already had local food in the afternoon.

Address : 11 Xuân Thủy, Thảo Điền, Quận 2, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam


Just for four person, we ordered jajangmyeong,

Fried chicken,

Doppokki,

A pork set for BBQ!

 Two long table for us and we still think the table is not big enough for all our food!

The restaurant are so empty that the staff is helping us to BBQ the meat while we are busy eating the rest of the food.
They do delivery like how they does in Korea too!
Anyway conclusion of the food there is everything is nice except the doppokki. Price is also reasonable ( so much cheaper then Singapore!!!).

Back to our apartment and this is our first night view of HCMC from our balcony!
Good night!



Day 2 :

Good morning Saigon!
Today gonna be a cafe hopping day! 
For your information, there is so many cafe here in HCMC that you can hop around the cafe like there is no tomorrow! But of course that's if your stomach allows you to keep putting food and drinks in!
First stop is the new found place that some of the locals don't even know, The Cafe Apartment! The name says it all! It's a apartment with many cafe, restaurant and even small fashion boutiques in each level! 
What?! We need to pay to use the lift?! Ok well, so we paid 3000VND ( = SG$0.20 ) for using the lift. Total of 9 level so using the lift is a wiser choice! 

Interesting building! There is even place for manicure!

The directory for the building done by the manicure shop.




Hong Kong cafe can be found here too!


Just outside the lift, you can roughly know what's on that floor.






Think we are still early so we went to Buihaus for some morning coffee first while waiting for the restaurant to open.



Small cafe but nice interior.



Look at their different shaped table! Haha!




Continue to explore where to eat for lunch.









So.... we decided to go 8ielts cafe for our brunch.
Love this graffiti art!







Another graffiti art!
 They sells local and western food here.




The food there is quite decent. Price is good too.


After lunch, time for some high tea!
Walk over to Partea which is just at the corner of the same level as 8ielts.




This place is so nice and cozy for a small group of friend to enjoy their tea time and chit chat all the way!

Our own cosy corner.


Ok, time to choose our tea leaves!

After tea leaves, we get to choose our tea cups too! So many choice to choose from!

My choice of tea cup!

And that's our choice of tea cup.

Here comes our tea!

Saw other table sharing a pot of tea together but we just have our own because we wanted to try different type of tea.




Not forgetting to get some dessert to go along with our tea!




The tea cups and pot are actually for sale, you can just ask the staff for a new set. Katherine did and bought a set of tea cup.
These is some of the unique tea pot!







After tea, walk to the Satramart at Lucky Plaza, which is behind the cafe apartment to see what can we grab there.

Address : 38 Nguyễn Huệ, 69 Đồng Khởi, Bến Nghé, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 9am to 10pm



Many instant Pho to choose from!

Spoilt for choice for their coffee powder!

And tea too!

Not a big supermarket but have quite a wide range of things to choose from.


So what's next? Massage of course! Cat Moc is also another recommended massage place.

Address : 63 Trần Đình Xu, Cầu Kho, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 9am to 10pm

Their price is even more reasonable! And this time round I'm going for the hot stone massage!


After a good massage, time for a good dinner! We decided to have Japanese food for dinner today, so we went to The Sushi Bar at Zen Plaza which is the near to our massage place.

Address : Zen Plaza q. 1, 54 Nguyễn Trãi, Bến Thành, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 10am to 10pm

We ordered rice bento,



Maki,

Tempura,

Fried oyster,



And steamboat! Haha! We eat like there is no tomorrow again ( basically for every meal! )!

The total bill for such a spread of Japanese food is only 1015300VND ( = SG$63.50 )! If we gonna eat like that in Singapore I think it will cost us a bomb!


On our way back, we saw the Big C supermarket which is near our apartment is still open, so we decided to go in to see if we can grab something in 30 mins!
Of course we can! Still manage to get some coffee powder and instant Pho to bring back!

Address : 12 Quốc Hương, Thảo Điền, Quận 2, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 8am to 10pm

Back home, instant cheese topokki for supper and chit chat till mid night again!
Time to sleep and good night!



Day 3 :




Selling vegetable outside the house?

We actually called the cafe downstair for some coffee delivery but they couldn't understand what we are saying so we end up walking to the Daphy Cafe which is just outside our apartment. This cafe is one of the recommended cafe by Lan, so we decided to have a try there.


Small and cosy cafe.


Coffee is nice too.
After a nice coffee, walk back to our apartment to check out and put our luggage with Lan, and head out for our lunch!

Katherine wanted to buy another tea set so we decided to head back to the cafe apartment for lunch.

Stall food! I love this crispy waffle!

Katherine got her tea set and it's lunch time!

Let's go for a Vietnamese food for the last time!



Wall decoration using the olden straw woven trays!

Did you realise the table is actually made using the old window?


 This is how the cripsy waffle looks like!

Time to eat! This tomato crab meat noodle is sooooo good!

Fried tofu is nice too!




I love this basket! Bascially all the food we ordered is nice!


Wanted to have some tea at Orien Tea after lunch but the seats there are too small so we give it a skip.

OMG! We all are running out of cash already! Haha! Lucky there is a money changer nearby.


Actually wanted to go Coco Spa for our last massage but it's fully book until 5pm and we do not have enough time to wait. Seems like this is a really good spa place! Gonna try next time!
Remember to book in advance if you wanna try!

Address : 148/9 Bùi Viện, Phạm Ngũ Lão, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam, Phạm Ngũ Lão, Ho Chi Minh City, 700000, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Tuesday - Sunday, 10am to 11pm
Close on Monday

 So we ended up walk back to Beautiful Saigon which is just about 10 mins walk away.

Ginger water to soak our feet again and I'm ready for my hot stone massage!


After massage it's tea time again! We wanted to try their local brand cafe, so we walk over to Phuc Long Coffee and Tea House, which is just another 10 mins walk away from Beautiful Saigon.

Address : 157-159 Nguyễn Thái Học, Phạm Ngũ Lão, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 8am to 10pm


Coffee is not bad.


They have nice fruit tea with real fruits inside!
And I bought some of the tea back!

Sun is setting soon and back to our apartment to get our luggage.



Oh wait! We actually drop by Banh Mi 362 to get our Banh Mi, which is the local subway look a like sandwich for our dinner! Again recommended by Lan! She said this is one of the Banh Mi she and her family always eat.

Address : 33 Thảo Điền, Quận 2, Hồ Chí Minh, Việt Nam
Operating Hours : Monday - Sunday, 6am to 10pm

The menu.


Yummy! I actually paid to add quail egg but it's not inside my sandwich! Sad but still yummy.

Off we go!

Checked in and we are ready to go home!

Bye HCMC!

Back to Singapore! Time to plan my next trip! Hm... where shall I go?