The last boat trip of our journey here in Vietnam. We had to get up very early for it, at 5:30 to be precise, but it was nice to get up at the same time many Vietnamese people get up and start their day. Plus, it is nice and cool so that was great. The last week we have been travelling from the ‘normal’ North to the warmer middle of Vietnam, and now we are in the hot South. Thankfully it is not super hot as it is winter, but to me it still is pretty sweaty and warm…

Anyway, we were in the boat on our way to this floating market. However, it is not like the one in Bangkok, Thailand, which is like an infestation of all these little boats with people on it buying and selling stuff. This was bigger, meaning it was more business to business. Big boats full of watermelons, pineapples and lots of other things were moving slowly through the water. Other boats came next to them, they discussed something and after paying money the throwing around with watermelons began, hi hi.

The merchants had a very clever way of letting others know what they were selling, as they would have a long stick on their boat with the product attached to it. So if some boat came your way that had a stick with a mango on it, you would know what he was selling right, definitely not pineapples! 😉

The boats were really nice to watch and photograph, especially when we stopped at a fruit farmer who had all these beautiful fruit trees and animals walking around. There was a ‘monkey bridge’ as I think it is called, which means it is just a pole of wood to stand on, and then a pole of wood to hold onto. That’s it! Those bridges are a lot of fun, and they are so easy to use that I wonder why we do not have them everywhere. (okay, maybe because it cannot handle bicycles and cars..) The big bridge at the fruit farm was a bit more complicated than just two wooden sticks by the way 😉 But they also had the simpler ones.

Fruitwise it was interesting too. We have seen dragon fruit, coconut, mangos, pumpkins, bananas; all these lovely tropical things that you can get everywhere here but that are very expensive in the Netherlands, hi hi. Thinking about how many litres of fresh tropical fruit juice I have processes in the past 1,5 week; it is a lot!

So time for a Grasshopper (cocktail) at a mediocre kind of place in Ho Chi Minh city called Allezboo, where we arrived after a bus ride of a few hours. We stopped there because we were simply very hungry and we were on our way to a skate shop, which they do not have a lot of in Vietnam. Weirdly my DC Shoes are actually made in Vietnam. There is only one official DC Store in Vietnam and that was in Hanoi and we missed that! Aw..

Anyway. The boyfriend did buy some shirts at this skate shop, but we could not really find much else unfortunately. It was okay though, as we had a very nice stroll through the city, which is a lot more modern than Hanoi (as expected). In the evening we wanted to eat at this very popular place (according to TripAdvisor) but unfortunately it was fully booked. Thankfully our taxi ride was not useless, as we ate something at a restaurant very close to 3ps (or was it 4ps, I am not sure anymore now haha). The restaurant we ended up at is called Hoi An Vietnamese Restaurant, and it was gorgeous from the inside.

It was a bit pricy and a bit posh, as next to us a few Japanese people all dressed up were eating lobster, while we were more comfortably dressed as we were headed to the cinema. So, at this fine dining restaurant we had to act like we were at Burger King. We lost some time due to waiting for confirmation of getting no table at the pizza place, so we only had 45 minutes to order, eat and pay. Thankfully the restaurant was not just great in design, but also in staff. They were very professional and they promised our food would be on time, which it actually was.

And the taste was amazing, I had this excellent chicken in orange sauce and we started off with these lovely cold spring rolls with duck. It was a very nice experience and we were a bit bummed out that we were there for such a short time. We were especially annoyed as the movie we went to see was super bad! We went to see The 5th Wave with Chloe Moretz, which I have written about a few weeks ago (guess why ?! 😉 ). We ran to see the movie, my mom even fell down on the street as she did not see this cable laying in front of the cinema (the last 5 metres, after walking for 20 minutes!), that was a bit sad, but thankfully she is okay, just a bit bruised and a wounded knee.

It was just too bad the movie sucked so badly, but at least we got to experience the Vietnamese cinema now. First of all, the movie tickets were only 4 euros each instead of the 10 euros we’d pay in the Netherlands. And there were still some nice trailers at the start, for example of the Japanese/American horror flick The Forest. There was even a Japanese looking schoolgirl dressed up with blood standing next to the cardboard movie poster to freak people out, but that was outside the theatre. I did not have any popcorn, but it smelled a bit like American popcorn. The theatre was nice and big, the sound was very loud as it was also coming from one side.

After the cinema we had a drink at this bar next to our hotel (we are staying at the Lan Lan Hotel 2, which is not fantastic, but it is pretty okay), and although we felt a bit sad for all the kids that were begging and selling things, it was still a nice atmosphere with good music and great drinks. It is hard to be here sometimes, with all the people begging, selling things.. You feel even more rich, but you cannot help anybody, but still you feel your priviliged-ness and that stings a bit. It is just hard to find out who really needs your help and will put your money to good use.

Anyway, we had a nice evening, and tomorrow is another day in Ho Chi Minh!