Loving Vietnam Already

And it’s only been a few hours!!

In that time, despite it being 34 degrees while we’re stuck in trousers (quite literally… stuck… eww) and us being totally knackered from a 12 hour flight which landed at what felt like midnight to us, we have mastered the art of crossing the street and also learned that the friendly reputation Vietnamese people have is well deserved.

Just little things, like we spent this morning sat in the park taking it all in, and someone came over with maps and info and didn’t actually expect anything in return. A girl walked past, smiled and said hello (as several people have since). Some uni students asked us to fill in a survey and gave us the pens afterwards.

So although the bike taxi drivers can be imposing and persistent, it is far outweighed by the friendliness of every day people.

Not to mention how cheap everything is. Before coming into this coffee shop, we had bought our two bus tickets into the city and a bottle of water, and hadn’t even spent 60p. All of those were literally 15p each. Crazy! I love it.

The flight itself was pretty good. I’d never heard of Vietnam Airlines before but it was the cheapest flight I found to Hong Kong, hence the layover in Saigon. The service was excellent, we kept getting plied with free alcohol and the dinner smelled absolutely delicious. It was a choice of chicken or fish and of course by the time it got to us, there was only fish left… which I didn’t really like. Then we had tea, pretzels, loads of juice, a breakfast meal… it definitely didn’t scrimp!!

They had a really good choice of films too but they played continuously so you had to wait for them to start again instead of being on demand… but my favourite thing on the entertainment system was the camera showing the ground below as you fly over!! Plus we got blankets, headphones that weren’t terrible, and there were toothbrushes and razors in packs in the toilets?! But no individual air con, which was weird.

Anyway… I am knackered. And rambling. I’m not quite sure how we’ll feel by the time we get to Hong Kong tonight!!