làm kinh ngạc việt nam - day 1

which means 'the amazing Vietnam'.

(p/s: this post is up rather late, as usual, but better late than never anyway.)


Kuala Lumpur - Ho Chi Minh City


after months of waiting prior to booking our air tickets, 9th January finally arrived, and off we were to HCMC (better known as Saigon).

we met up in KL Sentral at 10 am, and i was slightly late as usual.

Jimmy was there too.

before you proceed reading about my exciting trip, let me tell you a story about my dear friend Jimmy.

you see, before we booked our air tickets to Vietnam, we discussed about the number of days we were going to be there, of cos. i insisted 10 days or more, the others agreed, except Jimmy.

he claimed 10 days was too long. 8 days was long enough, what more 10. in the end, because of him, we all settled for 8 days.

ok.

but guess what?

our friend fong fei kei in the end. he din go with us. his air ticket was wasted. haiz.

so i am very angry. or else we would have gone longer.

but he belanja me makan d. so i am not angry d.



anyway, back to day 1.


we took the 11am airport coach to KLIA. or was it 10.30? i cant remember.

Jimmy was there to say goodbye~



my beloved travel buddies: Jason and Hui Teing.



since all documents were with me, i checked in for us.



dont know how this happened, but everyone ended up at the counter, and me behind.
i think they were more excited than me but they pretended not to be.keh keh people.



i proudly present to you our tickets to SAIGON.


after checking in, we walked around KLIA and took some photos knowing that we would be too tired if we were to take them when we arrive back to KL instead.



thats a hell lot of things for prohibited stuff.

my guess is, some of the items are allowed provided you check them in, as long as you do not carry it with you in your hand luggage.



what a show off~ and i do not know what kinda pose that is.



probably one of our very few group photos.

in case you dont recognise the other 2 people in striped shirts, they are Eva and Joseph.

there is a joke when we took this photo.

we randomly asked a korean guy to help us take this photo because no one else wanted to help us wtf.
anyway, when we were ready, eva said "say cheese".
so the korean guy said to us, "chee---se".
it was really funny coz it sounded like 'go die' (chu shi) in mandarin.


we then proceeded to the departure hall where we lingered around for a bit.



Fern, and Jason at the back.



me. can see the excitement on my face or not?



thats our ride right there.



the boarding time finally came, and we excitedly walk to our plane. i made sure we capture every moment of excitement as we know they dont last forever.



see see... boarding the plane also have to take so many photos.


so we took malaysia airlines. i cant tell you how pleased i am with their outstanding service. traveling 5 star with the best cabin crew in the world with the cheapest airfare. you seriously have no idea how much i paid for my air ticket.
it was absolutely 'pang! leng! jeng!' (cheap! good! splendid! in cantonese).



this wet tissue is the first thing they gave us before the plane even took off.



Hui Teing somewhat fascinated with the beautiful clouds.



there was another joke to the cloud thing too.
it was something to do about us talking about how heaven looks like and Hui Teing looked like she was looking hard at the clouds like she was looking for something, and i being so silly, i asked her a silly question, "you looking for your god ar?".
she laughed and asked me if i was trying to look for Jesus coz she is a free thinker.
not funny i know. but it was funny when we said it ok.

about half an hour after taking off, we smelt something real good. since we were flying economy class, we were seated at the back. they passed by us with food we knew were so damn good because of the smell.

we all drooled in envy.

little did we know, our ticket includes a meal too.

the moment the stewardass came to our seats, she said "i am sure you must be waiting for your food".

and you know what? she was absolutely right.
we were so happy because we only had breakfast at 10, and the time was already 3pm.


we had 2 choices to choose from.

Hui Teing took the pasta with some sausage thing.



i took the fried rice with some chicken thingy.

it doesnt end there. it also comes with a fruit cake, a bun, butter, jam, water and zip chocolate. apart from orange juice, you can also opt for red or white wine, and liquor i think.



after eating, we could see Vietnam from above d.

we arrived in Tan Son Nhat airport, and my cousin got the driver to pick us up.



this is him. and thats my name on the paper~
i cant really remember his name though.
so difficult to talk to him coz he doesnt speak English at ALL!


the moment we came out of the airport, i was shocked.



the amount of motorbikes on the road.

plus, the traffic was simply amazing.
it was beyond my worst imagination, and completely unbelievable.



out of no where, this fella was selling baloons beside the roundabout at the main road.

how are the motorists supposed to stop and buy?

oh btw, there are no rules for motorcyclist it seems, according to the locals.

and something i just found out. the motorbike licence is forever once you get it. FOREVER??? so funny right? i laughed when i heard it. i dont know if its the same for driving licence tho.

Villa Riviera, where we stayed at.



this is my cousin's house in Villa Riviera.

its a 3 storey bungalow in a gated area just beside the Saigon river.

the car on the right was our ride back to her house.



this is the room where us gals slept in. of course i slept on the bed lar.

go figure who slept on the floor.


after putting our stuff down, we went straight to town to book our tours as we prepared the itinerary before hand.


before that, we went to excange for some local currency.



with USD100, i became an instant millionaire.
nothing beats the feeling of becoming an instant millionaire, i tell you.



we booked our tours with Sinh Cafe, probably the most famous tour agency in Vietnam as they have several brances accross the country.

by 7.30 pm, we got everything settled and paid for, and went to catch the water puppet show.

we obviously lost our way. i think we walked something like 3kms and finally found the theatre, which was about 1kms away from where we started. how smart.



if you've not seen it or heard of it before, this is how it looks like.
the puppets dance on the water to the storyline, thats why its called water puppet duh.



these are the people who operate the water puppets.



the voices behind the water puppets.



and this is one of the audience.



the puppet, so huge, freaks people out. dont you agree?

so the show ended, and we backtracked to the town where we had KFC for dinner because we didnt know what to eat.

i do not have a photo of the meal i ate coz its just the normal snack plate, but i can tell you a little something about it compared to Malaysia's KFC.

1. its wayyyyyyy cheaper.


2. their 'hot and spicy chicken' is only 'hot chicken'' compared to ours. not spicy.


3. their chili sauce is orange in color, but its not too bad. i have a photo of it, but i will post it another time.

The End

stay tuned for day 2.


missing vietnam dearly,
j.e.n.z