Our stay in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) had marked the lowest point on our trip. HCMC has more than 10 million inhabitants and has been referred as the world’s capital of scooters and motorbikes for some very valid reasons (and Hanoi is apparently not much better). We overstayed our visit in HCMC by two nights. Thankfully, a mere one hour flight brought us to the island of Phu Quoc – a much quieter (even serene) place than HCMC. From our early experience in Vietnam, we believed that for foreign independent travelers to enjoy Vietnam to its fullest, they must be willing to rent scooters or dish out a lot of money to hire local guides/drivers at every opportunity. Obviously our views were not shared by all as there were many travelers who had fallen head over heels for this country. It was also noteworthy to mention that this segment was particularly annoying on Jenny as she had to remove her shoes and walk on the floor on two different occasions.

2023.03.06 – Ho Chi Minh City – Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)

As we ran out of sightseeing ideas after only a day and half in HCMC, we turned to an expat’s website for some fresh ideas that were not in our travel guide. The first one that caught our attention was taking a ride on the WaterBus along the Saigon River. After breakfast, we got some assistance from our hotel manager who helped us purchase tickets on-line for the WaterBus. His help was invaluable to navigate the Vietnamese only website. He further paid for our tickets as the website only accepted payment from a local bank. We learned the WaterBus’s schedule was quite limited – with only a handful of departures a day – we opted to take the 10:40am departure and return on the 12:00pm boat. By the time we finally got a Grab car to pick us up, we struggled to get the driver to go a bit faster as we were afraid of missing our WaterBus departure. Jenny was completely stressed out with the driver as he appeared to be slowing down the more we tried to get him to go faster. Thankfully when we arrived at the dock, there was a queue of folks waiting to board the WaterBus. We just made it on board. The scenery along the river was rather dreary but we kept on reminding ourselves that the one hour boat ride was only costing us $1cdn each. At the end of the line terminal, we stepped out of the boat and waited for 20 mins before boarding the same WaterBus back to our starting point. We took a Grab back to our hotel and rested for the remainder of the afternoon. We had dinner at a rather expensive Cantonese restaurant.

2023.03.07 – Ho Chi Minh City – Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)

After breakfast, we decided to try out a free sightseeing suggestion from yesterday’s expat website, namely a walk in Saigon quiet alleyways. We were sold on his preamble for this activity as such:

“Saigon is a fascinating, vibrant and youthful city, but it’s not one that’s full of must-see tourist sights. To experience the best of Saigon, focus on its minutiae; the little details of this big city. There’s no better place to do this than in the tangled network of narrow alleyways that fill in the gaps between the city’s major roads. Saigon’s thousands of alleyways – sometimes no more than a few feet wide – are where the majority of Vietnamese live, and it’s here that you’ll find the ‘real’ Saigon. What’s more, the alleyways offer far more charm and interest than the central area of District 1, where most travelers spend their time. Getting lost on foot in the web of alleyways brings you into contact with friendly local people, great street food, intriguing architecture, and, best of all, local life.”

Hence, we targeted two of the five neighborhoods the author had highlighted for our alleyway walks. We took a Grab from our hotel to the first neighborhood. I quickly felt the experience was quite refreshing as it was drastically quieter than the chaotic main streets flooded with scooters but Jenny quickly found it a boring activity. It was nice to see how friendly the locals were in these neighborhoods. Nonetheless, Jenny was adamant about returning to the hotel. After 90 minutes of walking the alleyways of two neighborhoods, we took a Grab back to our hotel. We rested for the remainder of the afternoon. We returned to our first evening’s restaurant for our dinner. We took one last evening strolls in District 1’s park, streets and alleyways.

2023.03.08 – Ho Chi Minh City – Phu Quoc (Vietnam)

After an early breakfast, we took a Grab to the HCMC airport for our 12:40pm flight to the Phu Quoc – Vietnam’s largest island. At the airport, as we made our way into the domestic departure area, we could not see our scheduled flight on the departure display. We started to review our tickets for any mistakes. We were relieved to find out that there was a 2nd domestic departure section in another area of the airport. Our check-in was uneventful but Jenny was upset for having to remove her shoes at the security screening area because the floor was pretty dirty. Our water bottles and other liquids were waived through without any concerns. In a similar way as when we arrived at the airport a few days ago from Siem Reap, we had to take a bus from the terminal to our plane parked on the tarmac. Our flight to Phu Quoc took only one hour. We were glad to be able to order a Grab ride from the airport to our hotel – some 15kms away. As we checked into our hotel, we were impressed by the resort’s buildings, pool and garden. It felt (our guess) like we had checked into an all-inclusive resort. Jenny received a small gift from the hotel for Women’s International Day. We could not resist soaking ourselves in the large infinity pool. We opted to have dinner at the hotel’s restaurant as we had not seen too many other options on the way to the hotel. We later walked to the nearest small grocery store for snacks and beer.

2023.03.09 – Phu Quoc – Phu Quoc (Vietnam)

During our breakfast, we saw guests emerging from the 17 or so building units spread out around the the pool and pond, as they made their way to the resort’s restaurant. After breakfast, we finalized a snorkeling reservation for tomorrow. Later we took advantage of our resort’s courtesy electric cart to get to the local beach – one km away. We were a bit leery about the beach cleanness as Jenny had read some discouraging reviews on-line. To our pleasure, we found the beach clean, namely in the areas where sun chairs were rented. Jenny was eager to try out the various Instagram props on the beach until she learned that the locals were charging a fee for the opportunity to take photos. We rented two chairs for less than $4 cdn while we were enjoying a mostly deserted beach to ourselves. We enjoyed cooling off into the water while thinking that we were only 250km away from our stay on the island of Koh Kood, Thailand. We splurged an extra $2.25 cdn to take a few more photos on the beach’s Instagram-ready props. On the walk back to our resort, we saw many tourists on scooters heading towards the beach. We stopped at the small family restaurant/taxi stand in front of our resort to inquire about the cost and availability of getting a taxi ride for a late afternoon visit to a large attraction/development complex – some 44 kms further north from our resort. Thanks to Google Translation, we secured a taxi for Saturday to visit Grand World and planned to have our dinner there. We enjoyed our infinity pool once again before returning to our room. In the evening, we had a good dinner at the small family restaurant across the street from our resort – for a fraction of the price of last evening’s dinner.

2023.03.10 – Phu Quoc – Phu Quoc (Vietnam)

We had breakfast a bit earlier this morning as our snorkeling tour operator had informed us of our pick-up between 9:20-9:30am. As a good measure, we showed up at 9:10am at the hotel looby with all of our snorkeling gears. While we were waiting, the tour operator emailed us telling us that our pick-up was delayed to 9:40-9:45. By then we had started to get unimpressed with the tour operator reliability. At 9:50, we emailed the operator to inform him that we were canceling our snorkeling tour (no deposit). The pick-up staff showed up at 9:53am but we refused to join them – especially knowing that the pick-up was late because they had to wait for guests that had over slept. By then tour was clearly one hour behind their advertised itinerary schedule. Sadly, our first attempt to secure a tour in Vietnam proved to be disappointing. As a comparison, our scheduled pick-ups in Thailand and Cambodia were typically showing up ahead of time. But as Jenny and I tended to view things, there was always a good reason for things to happen. We opted to move to tomorrow’s sightseeing agenda: a free visit to the Grand World attraction complex. We managed to get our taxi driver to accommodate our change of schedule. The 45kms drive to Grand World took over 45mins. We were surprised by the extent of the Grand World development area. In the mid-afternoon, the place was pretty much deserted leaving us with plenty of opportunities to snap some pictures. Except for the very large bamboo structure and a reconstructed 16th century Vietnamese village, the rest of area appeared more like some cheesy/fake streets found walking down some Walt Disney World park. The construction of a mini Venice scenery with gondolas certainly attracted the local tourists. Just before dinner time, we noticed that bus loads of local tourists being dropped on the ground of Grand World – most likely for a dinner and some evening show. The sheer size of the investment injected into the Grand World development project left us in awe – but disturbingly many business spaces were either empty or had recently closed. We had dinner on-site before taking our 7:00pm scheduled taxi back to our resort. By the end of the day, we were very thankful that we skipped our snorkeling excursion as Jenny was recovering from a cold.

2023.03.11 – Phu Quoc – Phu Quoc (Vietnam)

We opted for a very relaxing day at our resort. After our breakfast, we spent sometime reviewing and selecting our photos. In the afternoon, we enjoyed the infinity pool once more. And in the evening, we returned to the family restaurant across the street from our resort for our dinner.

2023.03.12 – Phu Quoc – Can Tho (Vietnam)

We had breakfast earlier than usual as we had a 10:10am fast catamaran ferry to catch. We tried unsuccessfully to order a Grab to get to the ferry pier some 18 kms away. We opted to take a regular taxi operated by the family with the restaurant across the street. We arrived at the pier one hour ahead of the schedule. The 2.5 hrs catamaran ride brought us to the town of Rach Gia on the mainland. We then took a Grab to the town’s bus station. Unfortunately, we had to wait 2.5 hrs for the next bus to Can Tho with available seats for us. Jenny was dumbfounded when she learned that she had to take her shoes off when entering the VIP bus as the floor appeared like laminate wood. The bus ride was pretty scenic along the way but nonetheless it took over three hours to cover 116 kms. At the bus station, we took another Grab to get to our hotel – our home for the next three nights. On the drive towards the hotel, we noticed that Can Tho appeared to be a very lively town. As we ventured out for dinner nearby our hotel, we noticed a large number of foreign travelers in town. The town’s riverfront was very colorful and animated.