Days 1 & 2 - Ho Chi Minh City

After three flights, a long queue through immigration/getting our visas, and a 25 min. cab ride...we finally arrived into Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). A few notes on the journey there-

• I am 0 for 2 when it comes to puking on long flights. Anytime I'm sleep deprived and there is any amount of turbulence = pukefest. Thankfully, there is no one who is more poised and covert when tossing her cookies than me- I use my blanket as a protective shield, and I try not to fight the waves of nausea as the food comes up (i.e.- just roll with it). It's quiet enough that most people have no idea what you're doing under that blanket. Other than looking like a spooky flannel blue ghost...I'm incognito. 
• On the other end of the spectrum, Ryan slept 6 hours on our second long flight (the first was 9 hours), then still went to bed a few hours later and crashed another 7-8 hours that night. Someone is a time-zone changing boss...and it's clearly not me. :-)
• Korean Airlines has been our go-to airline in Asia since '97, and they continue to step up their game for kids. Ryan gets a toy per flight, and on the way over- three customized children's meals (that we pre-selected online). The trays come heaping full with every imaginable child-friendly food/drink/fruit item you could imagine. Even infants were served multiple adorable trays filled with milk and three jars of baby food! It was beyond adorable. I have, and always will, continue to fly with them if I can.

Okay, on to HCMC. Since we were all operating on just a few hours of sleep the night prior (yes, with the exception of Power Sleeper Ryan M), we took our first day in the city easy. We cabbed it  over to the Jade Emperor Pagoda (side note: a 20 min. A/C cab ride there is about $8...that amount is called 'flag fall' in most western countries). The temple itself, lauded as very Vietnamese (vs Chinese) influenced and in the heart of the (not so) Old Quarter...to me, was an 'eh' experience. It's not very large and quite dirty (pigeon poop covered). However, I will give the intricate interior wood carvings a definite A+.

From there, we briefly attempted to walk through the old quarter over to Cho Ben Tanh (marketplace), before succumbing to the heat/humidity. So as quickly became our habit in Vietnam, we hopped a cab for the 10 min drive over there ($3-4).

Would you like a turtle or a frog for supper? For a few dollars, you can have both!

Despite the 200-300% mark up on most things for visitors (the vendors are not fools), everything was incredibly inexpensive. I'm going to say that it's quite likely the cheapest country I've ever been to in my entire life. It was hard not to behave like a hoarder (just because we could afford to). But because we only travel with only two backpacks and have long avoided decorative souvenirs (which quickly become garage sale kitsch), we did pretty good.

From there, we headed back to one of Vietnam's first malls (the concept is still VERY new over there). Case in point- I only saw ONE McDonald's our entire trip over there. :-D However, since we don't have a single mall in Kona...we islanders embrace large, multi-storied buildings with air conditioning (and filled with things you can buy and fun things for your child to do).

These silly mall rides normally cost me $5 for 5 minutes in America...over there it was about $1 for 10 minutes. SOLD!

Rich and my parents had an all you can eat, make your own kaiten (conveyor belt) shabu shabu for about $8 per person.

While they dined...I took Ryan to a children's play center that cost an incredible $5 for the two of us for two hours.

 

Crazy, right? I definitely didn't get my money's worth. ;-) We spent three nights at a new condo located in District 7 (the old quarter hub is District 1). Though it cost an extra $3-4 cab ride to get into the city each day, it was SO worth it. We were in a high rise that was connected to a series of other buildings/businesses via a sky walkway called Sky Garden. So instead of having to dart 439 million exhaust spewing motorcycles each day, we could walk/shop/dine on the pedestrian-friendly walkway each day.

You quickly learn how to 'safely' dart your way across the street each day with no less than 43,394 scooters bearing down at you...each holding 1-4 passengers (often infants and toddlers).

I think our comfortable, modern, A/C (it's all about the A/C over there) condo cost somewhere in the neighborhood of about $65 a night. And my mom and I went nuts in this handmade soap shop in the Sky Garden walkway just a quarter mile from our building... I think the fragrant soap bars were $2-3 each, a steal compared to the $5-8 we'd pay here.

That night I stayed up quite late attempting to book a trip out of the city for the next day. Though I was unsuccessful in finding anything of the budget variety, I was able to rent a private car for us (the equivalent of a Toyota 4-Runner with third row seating) so that we could go to...