Ho Chi Minh, Day 4

Ah finally, I have reached the last day (and probably most exciting day) of my Ho Chi Minh Trip! :D

We started the day at.... BEN THANH MARKET. Yes! We are back to conquer it!
And conquer it we did.

We devised a strategy to avoid paying astronomical prices that the stall vendors were always trying to sell us. So, good things must share. Let me tell you what it is.

The magic strategy is this. Walk the OUTER PERIMETER of shops.
Most of them have signs that say fixed priced, which would allow you little to no bargaining. In addition, their staff are mostly wearing uniforms, so they are pretty easy to identify.

For those who hate bargaining and hate feeling ripped off... THIS IS THE BEST PLACE FOR YOU. Get all your souvenirs here at a reasonable price.

I heard the reason it is fixed is because the shops are owned/regulated by the government. Hence, they cannot quote you very high prices, but that also means you will have no luck trying to shave off a few thousand VND off your purchases.

But if anything, this is the first place you should walk in order to know what is a REASONABLE price to pay for something similar you would buy later.

I tried this out and compared identical items. The price of a pen holder along this stretch of shops cost 47,000 VND. A shopowner inside the market itself quoted me 200,000 VND. HELLO EXCUSE ME. But you see... if you had not known, you would think that "oh... SGD 12 for a pen holder, aiya not bad lah."

So take it from me. This was really a good strategy.

Another strategy is to visit this place on the LAST DAY, after you have understood the prices in HCM and have perhaps encountered the same item for lesser.

I bought quite a number of paper quilling earrings


Image Source: Here

Now. I was quoted a price of 125,000 VND at a shop, 150,000 VND at another.
A smart person might think.... I should bargain to half price! :)
So the seller argues with you a bit... and perhaps sells you at 75,000 VND.

But did you know, you can purchase these for 25,000 VND? Or less?! I found these at Saigon Square as well, where there was no bargaining for that particular shop. This gave me great confidence to demand 25,000 VND from a particular shop, and the shopkeeper finally relented and sold 5 pairs to me at that stated price! I bought 5 pairs for the price of the original quote!

Shopkeepers are smart too. They know that you know how to bargain. So they inflate the price even further, such that even if you bargain, you will be the one offering them a higher price. Clever right?

So, be smarter! And don't be afraid of not purchasing the item. If they are really keen to deal with you, they will call you to come back. But just walk off anyway after giving your lowest price.

Er but have a good memory k. It is easy to get lost in the market, and even easier to forget where a particular shop is located after you have left.

Oh btw, there are some of these machines hiding in the outer perimeter :D

Yes so we finally bought more stuff (I even bought yarn LOL) and went back to our hotel happy with much more purchases. We bought absolutely nothing the first time we went there aiyo...

After that, we decided to explore the road of Dong Khoi. The only thing of interest turns out to be the souvenir shops.... how disappointing :(

Btw, always walk to the shops furthest away from the notre dame cathedral. Like the very first shop I went to, a pouch cost 25,000 VND. As I walked further and further, the same pouch reduced to 20,000 VND, then 15,000 VND, then 12,000 VND!!! WHUT. 

We had our lunch at the Hoang Yen Group, near Grand Royal Hotel (which houses dunkin donuts, Popeyes and Burger King!). This restaurant serves vietnamese food and is located at 7-9 Ngo Duc Ke Q1.

We made the error of ordering small portions for all dishes, and it turns out that IT WAS TOO LITTLE TO EAT LA aiyo :( Oh well. So order medium/large portions okay guys? Food was not bad too.

Finally, we spotted this place called Taka Plaza while on the way back to our hotel and we came back hoping to find stuff to buy. We did get some shawls but that's about it. Not a bad place, coz there is less people here and you may have an easier time bargaining/looking for clothes.

This place is located at 102 Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa, Bến Nghé 1.

And then since we are kiasu singaporeans, we left for the airport 3 hours before our flight, because it was too near the peak hour traffic and we wanted to avoid it entirely.

We entered the departure terminal and did minimal shopping. We did have a good time eating at level 2, where there was this food court place, burger king, a pho shop, sushi and some other stuff.

See the first shop? It sells very good Pho. That gave me severe food poisoning. #ih8u

With all the sincerity in my heart, this bowl of pho really tasted good. But the reason I am able to pinpoint it as the cause of my food poisoning is due to the the recent timing and also by the severity of my symptoms. My parents also suffered food poisoning, but much later, possibly because they ate lesser than me. 

Meh. I tried so hard to stay away from street food and all cause I feared this would happen. To think that it would be the food at the airport that gives me food poisoning. Bleh. Meh.

So yes, my trip ended on a bad note. But I am thankful that at least I was back in Singapore, and able to see a doctor and recuperate in the comfort of my own home. Though I'm still annoyed that I had to puke throughout the night and endure 26 hours without sleep and another 24 hours without food. Bleh -_- 

Do bring your charcoal pills and whatever when you go there. And buy insurance! Very important.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my Vietnam trip :D

Ho Chi Minh, Day 3

Alrighty, let's continue on with Day 3 :D

But before we begin, can I just say how AWESOME vietnam yogurt is?! Like.... why the yogurt I eat in Singapore like all really liquidy. This one was available at my hotel and had a texture of pudding rather than yogurt. It was super nice please. I ate one everyday!!

For today, we actually wanted to visit a Hello Kitty Cafe, but realised it was too far :( So we had to leave that out of our agenda.

We headed to Nowzone Fashion Mall in the late morning. I saw mixed reviews about it in the internet, and wanted to see if there was anything worth.
It is located at No. 235 Nguyen Van Cu Street, District 1.

Here is the inside of the mall. 4 stories of shopping. To be honest there is quite a lot of fashion shops here but mostly for ladies. My dad was pretty bored here and there was nothing much to see for him.
Prices of clothes here ranged from reasonable (SGD 12/ 200,000 VND) to very expensive (SGD 200). So my mum and I shopped a bit and just got some clothes for ourselves.

I bought a shirt from this shop called bambo. Quality of the shirt is not bad and the designs are cute!

I must say though, this trip would not have been worth it if we had not visited the FOOD COURT.
Located at the top floor, it operates by a card system. But don't worry, you pay nothing for using the card. And you will get back whatever leftover in the card. That's great!

This was my 5 ingredient broken rice meal with pork chop. Super nice yum yum.

Then this is the hotpot my daddy bought. MSG galore~!

Their milk tea tasted really good too. Nicer than Koi/Gongcha in Singapore to be honest :/

After that we went on a crazy adventure.... to find a street called Bui Vien, where there are supposedly a lot of art and painting shops. Wa. The walk there. 2.4km sia. My family a bit siao haha but we did it with the help of google maps. See! Important to have a data plan!!

We spotted this while walking there. Interesting... Hats that I've seen in Malaysia and Singapore are all available here too. Not that I wear caps anymore. So no reason to buy.

Yes we finally reached the area and there weren't... THAT many shops la haha. I really don't know about the copyright issues with such paintings... coz I see the same kinds of picture everywhere I go. Hmm..

After this we headed to Diamond Plaza for shopping again. And... that place was so boring omigosh why did I even bother going there lucky it was not so far from the Notre Dame Cathedral which we ended up visiting instead. There was really... nothing affordable to buy there. :/

So es we did some sightseeing instead. You can see the green building at the back of the cathedral, that's Diamond Plaza. 

There were quite a few people selling street food. I notice one of them quoting 20,000 VND for a tourist while only charging 10,000 VND for a local. Hmm~

Anyway since we finished walking the entire Diamond Plaza (4 stories of boring shopping) within an hour, we wanted to go back to Temple Leaf Spa and Sauna but they were having a full house :(

We roamed around and found a lot of other smaller massage places, so we settled for this one instead. 

I.... will not come back again. Any massage places with common room concepts, NEVER AGAIN WALAO. I thought it was just a simple foot massage. End up I was even asked to change my attire in a common changing room where both men and women were changing -_- Even the men inside got a shock when the lady brought us in and asked us to change (albeit within the curtain sections whatever it is). Yikes.

Worse still, the closed room that my mum and I ended up with had a man already doing his massage. And we all knew later there would be a shoulder massage portion where ..... ARGH NVM

Long story short. I managed to skip my shoulder massage potion lol. But I am really not interested to go for these kinda common room concepts ever again -_-
Please be mentally prepared, and ask clearly whether you would be sharing a room with the opposite gender first if it matters to you...

For dinner, we went back to Thai Van Lung, where Temple Leaf is located because that road is said to be a french road with french establishments and restaurants.

We ended up having our meal at Le Jardin.

I think my favourite dish was the oysters :] (go figure)

Truth to be told, I have eaten better. But for the price and for Vietnam, it's pretty decent too.

At night the whole road near our hotel was closed and people could walk freely. Kinda like our Orchard Road closing every first weekend of the month

And that's all for day 3!
The most fun day of all, day 4, is coming :]

Ho Chi Minh 2015, Day 2

Alrighty!

Today we tackled the infamous Ben Thanh Market... and were extremely discouraged by the inflated pricing and haphazard organisation of the place. It was also too hot man.. T.T But if you know my family, we don't know what it means to give up, SO WE WENT TO CHALLENGE IT AGAIN ON OUR LAST DAY. Read more about it in my later post! I'll be sharing very important tips to make your trip there much more worth while. Pictures will be in my day 4 post too.

We headed to Saigon Square for aircon, which was much appreciated.

We had a bit more luck at Saigon Square in terms of buying stuff, and we managed to bargain quite a bit since we knew some of the prices at Ben Thanh Market. With that said... some of the prices for the clothing there was ridiculously expensive. Like... a top and bottom for ladies would cost SGD 60?! Why?! Made in China some more leh! Aiyo nvm -_-

We left Saigon Square with a small bag of purchases, and chanced upon this Japanese BBQ place just next to Saigon Square. We decided to eat here since it was time for lunch. The prices of the meat was really reasonable and the meat itself was delicious!

Only problem was... horrible service. Unbelievably bad. Language problem also la. Ask for the bill, bill comes ages later. The wait for our change was so damn long that we gave up too. Why waste my previous time in Saigon for that small amount right? Though I honestly don't think that kind of lousy service deserves any tips -_-

This place is called URAETEI II

Address is 67-69-71 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia, P.Ben Thanh, Q.1

We got here by just exiting Saigon Square, turning right and walking down the road called Nam Ky Khoi Nghia. 

By now, we were disappointed with the shopping and very tired. We decided to walk a little to a massage place called 137 recommended by my dad's colleague. To my horror.... the massages were all done in common rooms, shared by both men and women! O.O And that includes revealing your back if you want to do shoulder and back massage. Wah cannot like that la.

This massage place was toward the south of Saigon Square, along Ham Nghi Road.

So we headed back to our hotel and chanced upon a Trung Nguyen Coffee which we decided to try. Pity they got my order wrong and we had to wait for them to redo my order. Meh. Coffee here tastes really good though. I'm not sure why it tastes much better than the coffee we have here in Singapore :/ I tried the drip drip coffee :D

Anyway if it helps, the lower the number, the stronger the taste (and of course, more bitter too)

We headed back to Vincom Centre for dinner and decided to eat at Wrap and Roll.
That egg wrap thing. That was the best. Ever. OMG

We then decided to try out My Spa, located at 154C4 Thi Sach Street. We did a 60 minute foot massage and.... I must say it wasn't worth the money. If you have tried the foot massages at Thailand before, you'll be in for a big disappointment. This foot massage felt more like I was getting marinated for a BBQ. And there was the use of hot stones again which I didn't mind, but it was not comfortable either. Also, the ambiance of the place wasn't to my liking also. Too quiet, no back ground music... Hmm idk just didn't enjoy it much.

And it was too late and too dark so I didn't bother to take a picture of the place. You can easily find it on trip advisor.

And yup that is the end of our day 2. A really disappointing day to be honest :/