Saigon

Woke up this morning feeling much recovered from the flu-y bug I’d picked up — thank goodness! I’d hate to waste another day sleeping and feeling sorry for myself, and not seeing anything of Ho Chi Minh City!

We started the morning trying the incredible buffet breakfast at the Intercontinental, which had a spread of various joices, fresh fruit, cereals, hot breakfast items, sushi and some Vietnamese food. The staff were very attentive, and when I hadn’t touched my tea until after I’d eaten, were concerned that it wasn’t a good cup and wanted to replace it! They asked me to fill out a survey, including “what would you recommend us to add to the buffet”, and were very concerned when I wrote down “gluten free bread”. Did I want it right away, or would tomorrow be all right? I reassured her that tomorrow would be fine, so I think they will be scouring the city for gf bread now (or googling for recipes!)

Since we needed a Starbucks mug to add to our collection, we headed out in that direction first up, and found three Starbucks close to the hotel. Yup, the American conglomerates have begun to infiltrate! But at least I got a mug… 😉

One very cool thing we passed was an exercise park – a well-appointed public park with heaps of outdoor exercise equipment. R had a go on a couple of them…

Exercise park

We saw a shopping mall and decided to go in and see if it was any different (no, shopping malls are the same the world over). This one (lucky them) had a school across the road, which had just stopped for morning break, so hundreds of teenagers were racing around the mall. We found a bookshop in the basement which had a few English books, and even had some paranormal novels on remainder that I had to buy – can’t pass up $2.50 books!

While walking, we went past some kind of government building with various war machines out the front – a tank and a chopper at least. I hope there’s more than the tiny padlock on the door keeping this helicopter safe and sound!

Very secure helicopter

Next up was a massage – we went to a lovely place called Temple Leaf, which was reasonably priced and gave a very good massage, including oil, hot stones and a brief Thai-style “throwing around” at the end to crack the back a bit!

A bit of an indulgent day all round, really – lunch was hanging around in the exec lounge for afternoon tea to start – they have teeny weeny macarons! And then after checking out the hotel pool (warm, but not too warm – the only downside is that you have to walk through the fitness room past all the people doing proper exercise) the hotel sent us a cake to celebrate our honeymoon! Awww…

Awww…

After trying out more of the hotel amenities (lounge again, then gym and pool) we started packing for the trip home tomorrow.

And I’m already in the headspace of my next trip, and have been busily booking advance rail tickets for Europe in August! See you then! 🙂