I told myself this year that I'd start blogging again on a regular basis. What a better blog topic to blog about than my fun december holidays!
After all the (read: three) new year celebrations that I've had in Hong Kong for the last three years, I wanted this year to be something different. Have a new experience, visit a new place, try a new cuisine, anything! And so it's not a surprise that weeks before I'm supposed to be leaving for my holiday, I find myself packing for two climates, because my friend's figured out a plan for a group of us to be in Vietnam for a short trip! :)
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| Waiting for the long queue at the boarding gate for Vietnam Airlines |
The flight to HCMC is as expected, but the visa process isn't! :/ The rule for entering the country is that you are granted a visa-on-arrival provided you have a stamped letter from some registered websites. While we had that letter, we assumed that the next procedure would be to simply walk up to the counter, hand over the photographs and the cash and exit with a visa stamp. Surprise surprise, it's a chaos. Unlike the simplicity and the efficiency at Cambodia, the visa process in HCMC is a mess. You have to find some similarly dressed folks who're loitering around at the counter, take a form from them, fill it up and then queue up to submit the form along with your photographs and passport. It took us about 20-30 mins to submit all our stuff. Then you basically just wait till the next woman calls out your name when the visa is done. There's no token number, there's no clue as to how long you'll have to wait, and what's worse is that there's no order. Someone before you might get the call, and you might just have to keep waiting. The people behind the counter look so slow and inefficient, you're reminded of the babus in the govt. offices. Anyway, after about another 30-45 mins we get our call and then we're off. Thankfully they have separate queues for the 'ASEAN' countries and once we got our visas stamped it was relatively quicker to exit the airport.
Then comes the currency exchange! Hilarious and insane. Do you know the
exchange rate? The biggest note that they had was for 500,000VND and the smallest for 1,000VND and obviously there were no coins! It's just mad. I couldn't stop feeling confused for the entire duration of the trip with the insane numbers. People would just drop off the last three "000" because they're just redundant. We bought some local coconuts off the street and when that man showed us three fingers, we assumed it was 3,000VND and then he gave us this look that was all kinds of incredulous, and then we realized that he meant 30,000VND!
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| Our "neon" group of friends! |
So that's us in HCMC at our hotel for the first night while we waited for the rest of the gang to turn up in the city. :) It's amazing to have a diverse group of friends who are all in the holiday spirit and colors! :) Yup! There was a neon overload in the trip and it wasn't just us girls!
The first night we pretty went out roaming around the city, walked to the Ben Than market which is a touristy yet fun marketplace, bought a nice trolley bag for around 2400INR, some gorgeous unique pop-out greeting cards, neon socks, silk thread hammock, tiny lighters that actually lit up like a matchstick and some other such knick-knacks. We attempted to eat street sweet corn, only to realize that after all the buttering and steaming, they add a spoonful of dried shrimp to the entire pan which made it taste quite awful. Then we sat at one of the joints in the market and ate some yummy cutlets, fried fish (which wasn't exactly what we were expecting given that it looked full of spices but turned out to be very bland), interestingly made sticky-fried rice and fresh cold coconut water. Walking around the city at night was so casual and the city was lit up, right from streets lined with rice lights, to window decors at the big stores that were so beautiful that people were lining up to click pictures against them, to just the general mood in the air. We decided to end the night at one of the most famous cafe's in the country, kind of like their version of Starbucks / Cafe Coffee Day, Trung Nguyen Coffee where we had the weasel coffee (a delicacy if you haven't heard of it), nothing earth shatteringly different about it honestly, but maybe because I'm not really a coffee person I just couldn't point the uniqueness. :/
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| The War Remnants Museum in HCMC. Must visit! |
The next day, while we wait for our stuff to be checked into our villa, we decided to have a look at the War Remnants Museum. They also have another one in Hanoi, but this one in HCMC is bigger. It is an extremely humbling experience, and quite disturbing. There's just so much that has happened, and that so blatantly it makes you question the foundations of humanity. More importantly, it makes you wonder about whether the right people are questioning the actions of those in command. It's horrific and there are graphical images, text, and accounts in the museum from the victims, some of whom are as recent as 2003!
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| The only city outside of India where two-wheelers outnumber the cars and how! |
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| The best place that we could've stayed at! 5 mins from everything and extremely relaxing! |
We then checked into the 'Nguyen Du Park Villas'. Best decision ever! We literally booked the duplex 3BHK villa with a terrace attached 2 days before our arrival in the city and were just super super lucky. This was the best place we could've possibly stayed at. 7 of us, spread across this huge apartment, complete with a furnished kitchen, dining hall, living room, bedrooms, terraces... sigh... I want to go back already!
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| My first ever "Skybar" :) |
Being in HCMC meant that we had to experience the marvel at Chill Skybar, situated at the top of the city, quite literally. The place is fantastic! With a gorgeous view, they've built up a brand of an exclusive and exciting place. They serve only the best drinks, and have impeccable service. You're made to feel special and that's how things should be. :) Make sure you get your reservations well in advance, and oh yeah, dress up! We were probably one of the very few who weren't half as well dressed up as the others!
The next few days in the city were just spent lazying around, eating at some amazing restaurants, sampling a lot of the casualness and warmth that is Vietnam. We watched "Good Morning Vietnam" while we were there, and the movie ended a bit too abruptly for me. I was expecting the movie to be much bigger and have more purpose, but that was not what it was in reality. It's very Robin Williams anyway. A good watch!
Back in HK, there were tons of new experiences lined up! Right from hanging out at the new hotspots in town, to meeting a great gang of new friends, to actually eating local chinese food thanks to the hong kongers who took us there! That was a fun fun night. Imagine going to a chinese place that has these lovely round tables with tiny bone china crockery. Learning about the small customs that make up the experience like rinsing your bowls and spoons in the boiling water that they place on your table before the meal, eating with the chop sticks, eating on yummy fried rice with dried meat, and then some pork soup, and mouth-watering garlic clams...
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| Bringing in 2014 with a huge group of awesome friends at Cheung Sha beach in Hong Kong! :) |
Each New Year for the last three years I've been in HK has been a mad rush of people, and a constant shuffling from place to place because of the crowd. This year to avoid the madness and also because everyone was in town, we rented out a beach shack (the one behind us to the right) at Cheung Sha beach and had a blast on 31st night. Great barbeque, with lots of chips and dips to go around, roasted corn, and topped off with biryani, there was more than enough food to last us until breakfast the next day! Dancing till the wee hours of morning, laughing and having conversations through the entire time, it was blissful, real, warm and so much more fun than the normal madness that is new years!
So here's wishing you new adventures, happiness and love in 2014!
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