February 21, 2017

We were up way too early and at the ferry terminal at 7:30 well over an hour before we needed to be there. Fortunately, the crew were awake and we loaded the bikes and panniers on to the boat, before other passengers had arrived. We went back to the café where we could have had a cooked breakfast, at a reasonable price, but we had already had our nutella and banana sandwich for breakfast! We did have a good cup of coffee while we waited.

Ralf got a better picture of Tran Quoc Tuan, on our way to the ferry port this morning.  I am sure this is the same guy we took photos of in Hanoi.  He really shouldn\’t point, it is not good manners.

We were on the boat and away by 9:05 with the other eight passengers. It was a fairly smooth trip, as we were getting closer to Ho Chi Minh Ralf went out on the back deck and took some photos.

This beautiful wooden boat is used for dinner cruises along the river.  We were tempted but at $50.00 per person it was a little too expensive for us.  The evening package included: a show at the Water Puppet Theatre, one hours hand and foot massage and the dinner cruise.  I still cannot understand why you would add the hand and foot massage into the package!

We found our hotel fairly quickly and were horrified to learn that we could not keep our bikes at the hotel. They wanted us to leave them at the bike parking area around the corner. I tried to explain to the receptionist how expensive our bicycles were and that this was our only means of transportation. She said the motorbike parking was safe and they would give us a ticket. If the bikes were stolen they would pay to replace them. I told her that would be $7,000.00 and did she think they would pay that.  I don\’t think she believed me that the bicycles would cost that much.

She would not relent. We took our bikes around the corner and saw that it was parking on the sidewalk with a security guy in a booth. No way was I leaving Mrs SweetCheeks in an open parking lot. We took the bikes back to the hotel and parked them in front, locked and covered with the Arkel cover.

The manager arrived, I asked him, if we could park the bikes in the hotel at the back. After a lot of discussion, he said we could bring them in at night between 8:00 pm and 10:00 a.m. Better than nothing, however, when we bought them inside at 8:00, the night man told us we would have to take them out at 6:00 a.m. I will not be a happy person if I get woken up at 6:00 in the morning on my rest day.

Eventually we went up to the room, it is a small room that has waterstains on the bathroom ceiling and cobwebs everywhere. We asked about laundry – 60,000 VND per kilo. The most we have paid per kilo is 20,000! However, she did tell us where we could find a laundry – even that was expensive at 40,000 per kilo! I am not impressed with HCM.

We eventually showered and headed out to the streets. It is busy, and noisy, but the streets and sidewalks are wider than the ones in Hanoi. We got a little misplaced and found the co-op, so we picked up some beer and water.

Who knew there were so many varieties of rice?  There are thirty in this picture, we were told that the Thai rice is better than Vietnamese rice.

We stopped at a corner bar and watched the world go by for about an hour.  We saw numerous cars use this intersection as if there was a roundabout there.  One car went around two times before he decided to reverse up the one-way street.

We watched a fella saunter across the street, we gave him the thumbs up as he was so relaxed about the traffic. He asked if we knew anywhere that was quieter to stay than this area. He had just arrived and he wasn’t impressed with HCM either.

Ralf has been trying to capture the families on a bike.  This one has four – Mark referred to this as the Vietnamese Sandwich.  At least these little kiddies have helmets on, often we see them without helmets and standing in the front of the scooter.

Tomorrow we are going to explore the city a little bit further. I think we made a mistake by staying here for three nights. But we will see what tomorrow brings.  We hope to go up the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh.  It looks as though it has a big fat lip sticking out, or a diving board.  It is supposed to represent a lotus flower.