A Visit to HCMC

On 30 August I decided, the the last minute, to go to HCMC with Arceli and Rebecka from my school. Josie left on the Friday before. It was a long, hung-over bus ride, but fairly comfortable. It takes between four and five hours to get from Long Xuyen to HCMC on the bus, depending on how long you have to wait for the ferry.

Bec and I had a great afternoon at the Ben Thanh market, looking at all the clothes, jewelry and sparkly hair accessories. If you’re into cheap bling, this is the country for you!

After the market, we met up with Josie for dinner and drinks on Bui Vien Street, which was a lot of fun. I had a “burrito”, but you need to be flexible about ordering non-Vietnamese food sometimes. I will say that it was definitely beef mince wrapped in a tortilla. Close enough!

We decided to go for cocktails, and found a place that had a “Buy two, get one free” offer. Perfect! This was followed by some beers at one of the streetside bars, more cocktails, a crazy downpour, a fire breather, some laughing gas, and general good times.

After a few hours, we thought a change of location was in order, so we went around the corner to Lily’s Cafe on De Tham Street (next to Josie’s hotel). We were having a great time, they let us choose some music, and there was a lot of dancing and laughing. It is important to know that when you are drinking on the streetside at these bars, you pay as you go with drinks. You place your order, they serve it, you pay. Simple!

Unfortunately, when we tried to leave, they claimed that we hadn’t paid for our drinks. Obviously we denied this, explained that we had paid and pointed out the lady we gave our money to. Apparently this was not good enough for the Lily’s staff, who literally tried to drag us back to the cafe. At this point, we tried to walk away, but they started chasing us down the street. We tried giving them more money, which they took, but they still would not leave us alone. One of them grabbed Josie, so I told them to stop touching us (knowing how quickly this could escalate), but then they started hitting and scratching us. Bec got knocked down, which made me and Josie really angry, so I started shouting for the police. They left us alone very son after that! When we calmed down a little, we went back out onto the main street, but they were still yelling at us from across the road! A security guard tried to calm them down, and talked to Bec about what happened, but they were getting aggravated at him as well. This all put quite a dampener on the evening, and I was particularly upset to find that they had snatched my necklace and stolen it.

After all this, we decided to have a beer at a much more touristy bar, hoping that a few beers would relax everyone a bit. We got talking to the guys sitting at the next table (Luke and Billy), who had noticed us all crying after the fight. They asked us to join them, bought us a few more beers and shared their shisha. It made a huge difference to how our night ended, but I was still pretty upset when I went back to my hotel.

On the Sunday I decided (again at the last minute) to join Josie at a resort, around 15km from the city. I went swimming in a dress and a pair of shorts, being woefully unprepared for this turn of events! Ordering food was an interesting experience, they kept saying that they didn’t have what we ordered, then bringing it out. So confusing! We had a foot massage, that wasn’t exactly relaxing (I’ve never been fond of being punched, even for therapeutic reasons), followed by an argument with the staff because they expected us to tip but didn’t tell us until we tried to leave!

Needless to say, I was very keen to get home to the familiar (and friendly) types of crazy that I know and live in Long Xuyen!