Leslie and I ended up on the same airport bus with the same guys headed to Taiwan…. again. I found myself sitting at Paris Croissants eating cream puffs. Only a week earlier I was sitting here waiting to catch my flights. I wonder how many hours of my life had been spent in airports and airplanes. I like it.

It wasn’t until after we got on the plane it was a 6 hour long flight. We’re just going over to Vietnam… why is it taking so long? We were traveling over 2,000 miles. We did not realize this. In London the flights were never much more than an hour or two! Things were going to be different here, and more expensive! But this was my first trip out of the country and I couldn’t be more excited.

They treated us like royalty on the flight too. We got all the wine because we could drink, pretty decent meals too. Lots of things to keep our hands clean. We were set. I took a nap with my pillow and fleece blanket. Go figure. This was totally worth the $350 tickets.

Getting off the plane was the first time everything hit us. I mean literally. As we walked off the plane, the heat from the engines hit us like a wall of humidity. A few more steps away and we realized it wasn’t the heat from the engines… it was just the air outside. I wish I knew what the actual temperatures were. But it was hot. I was already glistening in just the ten minutes standing and waiting. Our thirty-minute bus ride into the city cost the two of us about seventeen cents. I couldn’t believe it. The thing I think I’ll remember the most from Ho Chi Minh City is all the motobikes and powerlines. There were millions of each.

On the plane we decided we wanted to go to this sweet island off the coast. When we went to plan that, everything we went to said like $160 each way. We were definitely not paying that. So, then we decided we’d go to Angkor Watt temples, the one we definitely wanted to do while there. We never decided what to do when we arrived, figured we’d decide when we got there. It appeared that we were a 10-hour one way bus ride away from there. We were so disappointed. We kind of gave up and just decided to book tours right away. I didn’t really want to do that. We ended up scheduling a one-day tour to the Cu-Chi Tunnels for $7 and a two-day tour to Cambodia for $45. I couldn’t actually believe it.

Everywhere you walked, people were trying to sell you something. They came up to you and just followed you. No matter how many times you said no. When they finally walked away someone else with the same product comes right up to you to try and sell. I have sunglasses on my face, I just said no to sunglasses. It was exhausting.

We walked around the city after checking our bags into the $7/night hostel. That was the other weird thing – prices everywhere were given in dollars not the local currency. I should have brought all $1 bills! There were travel agencies EVERYWHERE and the flights were a fraction of the price and you could haggle them down to just about anything.

Notre Dame cathedral was in the center of the town, it looked so out of place there. Remnants of the French control there from years ago. People were definitely staring at us everywhere we went. Leslie is Korean but I’m definitely the white face a foot taller than everyone else. You kind of got used to the stares.

Everywhere we went there were Geckos on the walls. Inside, outside… walls, sidewalks.