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Hong Kong To Ho Chi Minh (2009-12-13)

Nov 22, flew to Ho Chi Minh on Cathay Pacific.

Checking out of Novotel and headed straight to the airport to check in and then look for breakfast.  We christened the first meal of our vacation with congee, steamed rice rolls and fried cruller (all my favorite breakfast food) from King's Palace.  It was a taste so familiar and so welcomed that I gobbled the lot.  I was full boarding the plane but still managed to clean my meal tray, no wonder I'm fat!

Vietnam gave me the impression of sloppiness when it comes to bureaucracy and procedures.  After we claimed our bags and ready to exit the airport, there's yet another x-ray machine to check bags!  But that's not the crazy part.  The crazy part was the officer manning the machine was half asleep and didn't care if everybody load their luggage on to the belt!  I simply walked past KL with my purse and bag and that officer just gave me an "I could care less" glance.  And when we left the country to go to Hong Kong, our arrival cards which every foreigner has to fill out weren't even collected!  Well, whatever floats their boat I guess.

I didn't pay much attention to the airport in Ho Chi Minh (HCM).  All we were concerned of was how to get to the domestic airport from there which turns out to be a breeze.  It was just a short walk--may be three or four minutes--from the arrival area outside the building to the domestic building.

HCM Domestic Airport is pretty old and bare as expected.  There's pretty much nothing on offer for passengers before the security check point.  Past the security, there're a few run-down shops and a restaurant (more like a clean hawker place with tables) where we ate our first Vietnam meal-- Pho Bo (Beef noodle soup).  The few shards of beef was tough but the soup was excellent, deeply aromatic and complex.  We did not have a cent of Vietnam Dong on us but fortunately they accepted credit card however small the amount.


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