Pictures from this trip are here!
It is a very short flight from Kuala Lumpur to Ho Chi Minh City – just over an hour, and so we arrived in the airport a little after lunchtime. I had prepared and paid for my online visa for Vietnam (not required for Japanese but definitely for Americans) and despite printing out the form the immigration officer ignored it and stamped my passport without comment.
I changed some of my Japanese yen into Vietnamese dong and became an instant millionaire. There are a lot more zeroes in Vietnamese money, and pretty much no coins. Since we usually eat street food cash is handy, though.
After getting our suitcases we once again used Grab and caught a ride into town with a very friendly Japanese-speaking driver. He seemed eager to practice his Japanese so that let me have a chance to relax and let Kuniko handle the conversation. One thing we did hear about from the driver was that there were no fireworks for the New Year’s countdown, so that was a minor bummer.
It had been a long time since I had been in Vietnam but it seemed similar – especially all the scooters. We drove along the streets surrounded by scooters weaving around us, with everyone honking their horns almost constantly. Eventually we arrived at the shopping center that housed our hotel – it was strange that a hotel was inside a shopping mall, but the hotel was quite upscale and once we figured out the location we could check right in.
As we were checking in some other residents, a group of young Australian (?) men and women were trying to organize gym passes, supermarket locations and most importantly a source of hard liquor together with a slightly overwhelmed desk clerk. Part of the fun of travel for us is trying to figure all that out ourselves, but these guys wanted to have the hotel staff do the legwork for them – it shows you that there are all kinds of different ways to travel.
Our room in the hotel was really nice – a big room with windows looking over the city on the 23rd floor. The minibar was completely free (including beer!) and the big king-size bed was nice to spread out on. They even had a cool Bluetooth speaker we could use to play music from our devices – a very stylish touch. Once we settled in we went out to look for some food.
The hotel’s location was prime – we just had to cross the street to get to a big indoor market with plenty of food stalls. The staff were sometimes physically pulling us to their stands, and although the prices were a little higher than elsewhere, it was still much cheaper than anywhere we had been so far on this trip.
After eating some fried spring rolls and noodle soup we walked around town to see what it was like – it had been a few years since Kuniko had been here with a school trip. She said that there were quite a few changes, so COVID must have had some serious effects. Here in Vietnam masking was much less common, except for the scooter riders who wore them to keep their mouth and throat clean from pollution. We spent most of our time in Vietnam maskless.
One thing we had to re-learn was how to cross the streets in Vietnam with confidence. Signals were sometimes available on big streets but they are really just suggestions and it is much better to keep your eyes open and slowly and consistently walk across while making eye contact with oncoming scooters. It took a few hours but soon we were crossing like locals.
We spent the next few days enjoying food all over the city – bahn mi, grilled meat bun cha, and some dishes we’d never seen before like “com tam” meat and rice dish, but the rice is only made up of the broken grains that aren’t suitable for regular rice packaging. Noodles were great – we had pho bo hue once but we concentrated on other noodle dishes (mainly dry noodles) and also we particularly liked bahn bot loc la – a banana leaf wrapped around clear tapioca wrapped around grilled salty shrimp. Wow! At that shop the staff introduced her Japanese friend who was trying to start a business selling coffee. He wanted to give us free samples but we turned him down because we were so full of hot food. Strangely his coffee beans were from Africa and South America – we came to Vietnam to drink Vietnamese coffee!
We certainly drank our fill of coffee – it is quite intense in Vietnam and sometimes dripped over condensed milk to balance the flavor. It was great to have access to so much good coffee both hot and iced. Alcohol was cheap and plentiful here, too.
Soon enough it was New Year’s Eve, and since there were no fireworks we decided to avoid the crowds and have a mini-party in our room. The day before there were big music events down on the streets on temporary stages, and it seemed like it was going to be a crowded, rowdy night. The hotel room party idea was particularly fitting since we were already inside a shopping center, and in the basement there was a big gourmet grocery store that accepted credit cards. We stocked up on cheese, wine, bubbles, cut fruits, and enjoyed some music in our room as we awaited midnight.
At midnight we toasted the new year while looking out over the city and were surprised to see fireworks off in the distance. Then we heard some even closer, and it turned out that they were firing them off after all. So much for our taxi driver’s local information! We watched them from a distance, and then called it a night soon after.
The next day it was back to the airport, and after bowls of pho and some fruit juices outside on plastic tables we had another brief meal and some cocktails at the airport bar (which was much nicer than we expected). The flight back to Kuala Lumpur was just an hour. The immigration line was a bit longer this time. Some guys in front of us were having trouble with their passports – they seemed nervous and let us go ahead of them. Hopefully everything worked out for them.
Our Grab driver needed to refuel on the way back to the city and we caught a little traffic so by the time we arrived at our last hotel of the trip it was late. We had cocktails at a sweets bar near the lobby, but the restaurants were closed. We gave up and went up the elevator but pushed the wrong button for our floor, causing a delay for the (thankfully) understanding couple sharing the ride. In the end we ordered room service – noodles and satay – in our very comfortable room. The hotel was older but very nice and again we had a big room with a nice view of Central KL.
The last day or two was just crossing off the last things we wanted to eat, and do shopping for souvenirs for students and coworkers. We made the journey to Mansion Tea Stall to eat roti canai (worth the wait!), we tried to get mango susu from a place we tried last time but the day seemed to be some kind of holiday and the restaurants were re-set to a sort of family-style buffet system. We walked all over the Central KL area, burning calories in preparation for our next meal and using the subway system when the distance seemed too far.
We spent time in a shopping center that brought back memories from our previous trip – this time we tried new things. One was a spicy noodle dish with lamb and cumin that was tasty – a guy sitting next to us introduced us to the shop and seemed like he was a big fan. Another new thing was an ornate shaved ice with coconut milk, black jelly, peanuts and corn(!). Kuniko rejected corn as a topping for iced confections, and I’ll admit it was a little weird. The supermarket there was called “Cold Storage” and they had lots of interesting stuff. As we checked out a strange old lady put her stuff next to ours on the checkout counter – we had to explain that we didn’t know who she was. A lonely bunch of broccoli even made an appearance next to the waiting line in a cooler – what was the story there?
It was nice to revisit some of the places we liked last time, and the hotel location was perfect for shopping for our return home. Each morning we had breakfast at the impressive hotel buffet, full of western and local foods. Once we figured out the coffee system we were set. We spent time at the hotel pool swimming and sipping cocktails that took more than 30 minutes to arrive – but it was nice to just relax poolside in the warm weather.
On our final day we walked around the park under the Petronas Towers. We ate and drank at a cafe nearby – salted egg yolk fried chicken, cocktails and some decadent desserts really filled out the calorie load for the day.
We left early for the airport and it was a lucky thing as there were sudden thunderstorms and huge traffic jams due to a football match later that evening. It was good we weren’t cutting it too close for our flight. After one last round of salted egg lava buns at Din Tai Fung we took our overnight flight back to Osaka, and we both managed to sleep a bit on the way back.
There was a new system in place at Kansai Airport for entering Japan. The old MySOS system was eliminated soon after the PCR testing requirement was abolished, but now they had some strange new system that wasn’t explained very well. At 5 am the hallway was lined with staff who tried to explain how to register our emails on the new system and it seemed like a colossal waste of time and money. Plus we were tired and grouchy from just waking up – I hope this system is also eliminated soon.
It was great to get out there and travel some more, and we’re looking forward to visiting some new places in the future. This year will have us going to the USA to visit my parents in July, and hopefully some other travels in summer, autumn and/or winter. For now we’re getting back into the swing of things at work… back to the salt mines!
