Friday, October 30, 2015

Vietnam diaries- Part 1 !!



For a long time Vietnam was a part of the list of places to see & thankfully I got opportunity soon. Planned a 3 week trip in Vietnam, idea being to cover the length & breadth of this beautiful country. Scrapped the initial idea of clubbing it with another country & in the hindsight it would have been an injustice to spend lesser number of days in Vietnam.

Day-1 I had booked an Air-Asia flight till Bangkok & then I was planning to take a VietJet flight till Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC). While taking the flight from Kolkata, I was told that I would need a Thai visa in order to take my next flight. Even though a call center executive had confirmed that I wont need a visa while changing flight in Bangkok, I knew that I would have to take a visa at least on the onwards journey to HCMC. But I was shocked to find out that even for the return flight, which was an Air-Asia flight Via Bangkok, I had to take a visa as Air Asia does not have a transit facility. This took away the cost advantage which made me select this particular option, but I was also sure to get whatever returns possible for the visa fee. During my onwards journey there was a gap of 5 hours before my next flight to HCMC, I decided to utilize this time to go travel to the town & have a nice breakfast.

So after a lot of deliberation, I decided to put my luggage at the cloak room & headed to Chatuchak Park area. I was helped in the decision making by the people managing the tourism kiosk. At this point I do need to mention that Thailand tourism is pretty classy. First they went out of their way to help me with the places I can go to given the time constraint, then they also offered to give me a free sim with talk-time to talk to people back home, then they also guide me to the bus stop (which they pointed out would be much cheaper that cab) & they also told me what I should try for breakfast. I was happy as this was a nice start & I was expecting better things ahead. 
Chatuchak park's jogging track

Language is a major problem in Bangkok, as not many people are proficient in spoken English. But this does not stop the communication & people can share a lot without even a common language. I was sitting next to a lady who was into business of Shoe-export & we shared a lot throughout the 40 minute journey, all through sign language. After reaching the place I took a walk, as it seemed to be a nice place & it was full of joggers. After having walked for a bit, I decided to get started on the breakfast plan. After looking around for a bit, I found a small eatery which was serving Omelets & Pancakes. After asking the lady for the specials, again using the sign language, I ordered for a Banana Pancake with honey which BTW was tasty.
Random cafe @ chatuchak


After buying some dried fruits from the local market, I took a bus for the airport to collect my luggage & catch my next flight. On the way for some reason I looked at the ticket & to my horror I realized that my next flight was from a different airport altogether. The thought never crossed my mind that there can be two different airport in the same city & hence the entire thing started to look tricky. I had to first go to the Suvarnabhumi airport to collect my luggage & then head to Dom Mueang airport to catch my next flight. After collecting my luggage, I took a cab which made me realize how good was the advice given by the tourism people. Cab did turn out to be expensive & I was later informed by a local that I got fleeced as well, but at least I made it to 'correct' airport. It was all pretty uneventful from that point onwards & I reached HCMC without any issues.

I decided to take a Cab again to the hotel, as like always I came without any prior research. Heck I barely knew where I need to go as the hotel was also booked by 'Paul from London' (P). I reached quite easily & again had to pay a hefty amount (higher than the room rent for a day) for the cab. Later P told me that I got fleeced again by the cab, twice in a day was a record for me. We decided to go out for food & that too to a local place which P found out from 'Lonely planet' guide. Language again was an issue & we could never find that highly recommended place, instead we settled for another place full of local people. Now I knew finding vegetarian food would be a challenge, but this trip led me to a record number of non-vegetarian food sampling & all of them by mistake/miscommunication/misunderstanding. The series started first day itself when I was served fish sauce, the yuckiest tasting thing, along with my veg main course. The food which P had ordered looked extremely funny, as tofu looked like 'balls' of some animal. I was making fun of his food & while doing that I tasted the fish sauce hence P had the last laugh. But overall the food was a good experience for me too as I liked the bean-curd dish which I had ordered along with a tomato based rice with pickled chillies. Also I had a drink called 'hot lemon' which was nothing but pickled lemon, preserved in salt & sugar, served with hot water. It was excellent & both of us had second serving of the same. 

On the way to hotel we realized how good the infrastructure was in Vietnam. The local park was huge & it had everything that one needs to remain fit. Right from machine to exercise to tennis courts & courts for other sports, it had tracks for cycling & skateboarding. And many locals were there with family or friends, to get in good shape while having a good social time.
 
Vietnam is well connected with Wi-Fi across all places & by the time we returned there were messages in out Inbox about our safety. Basically there was a public announcement of 'Haiyan' & this also ensured that Shrek & Sumana who were also visiting Vietnam for a week, to change their plans as their flight from HCMC was cancelled without further notice. They came at the same hotel & reached pretty late. We all went out again & just beside our hotel was a night market. It was a nice starting point, after a bit of catching up we decided to go for a beer. Strangely two people who were going to drink, used to be teetotalers at the campus. But both Shrek & I have graduated from "lime cordial" to bigger things in life by now. We went to most random looking bars, namely 162 cyclo bar & Alley boo bar. Also we ordered 1 beer each at both the places & took a long walk back to the hotel. It was pretty late & we quickly decided that given the latest weather development we can travel together for couple of days in Mekong delta. All of us had to modify our plans for this, but in the end it was a good decision as next two days proved to be fun. 
<To be continued>