Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Min City

Wednesday 25 September

And today’s award for the most scenic view from a hotel balcony goes to ....Patrice .... surprisingly she didn’t mention getting better reception in her room than we did!

Room with a view

After a leisurely start to the day, we head to the airport around 11.30 am to check-in for our 2.25 pm flight to Vietnam.  Akun (=Thank you) Cambodia for an interesting few days.

Xin Chao (=Hello welcome) Vietnam.    The flight to Vietnam took slightly less than the time we spent in the processing queue for our visas and passports but overall the process was fairly straight forward.    First impressions of Ho Chi Min City is that it is just as busy as Phnom Penh but quite a bit cleaner.  No tuk tuks but certainly a sea of motorbikes and scooters on all the main roads.  It’s amazing how people do accommodate each other on the roads but some of the traffic planning in Phnom Penh just seems a bit bizarre e.g. the four lane freeway that travels in both directions outside the International Airport meant the traffic going into it to drop off passengers had to cross four lanes of oncoming traffic without any clear sense of traffic lights (our driver just pushed his way across).  You would have thought that an underpass or over bridge would have been a great solution.

We met our tour guide this evening and she seems like she will be very helpful and a lot of fun!  Had a group meeting to outline all the tour details, met the other group members (minus two who were coming in on a late flight) and went out for a lovely Vietnamese dinner at a local restaurant.  Most of the group are Kiwis (and two Australians) but not sure about the two still to arrive.

Tomorrow morning we are off to the Mekong Delta with an overnight stay at a local guesthouse (which has basic facilities from what we can gather) so not taking the laptop as suspect that Wifi will be non-existent . Next update will be a couple of days away.