Off to Southeast Asia

We are now off on our third trip to Asia - two more than we swore we'd take after the first trip. This is not a reflection of the amazingness of these destinations. It's more about the travel time - essentially one day+ lost in travel. We started off right by taking a car service to the airport - totally stressless.

Then, thanks to our tour operator Nexus, we had one of the most enjoyable flights ever in the Premium Economy section of our China Southern Airlines aircraft - lots of leg and peripheral room , fabulous service, great seat back entertainment and substantial food and drinks - fruit juice of course .

We chased the night the entire trip - departing at 12:30 at night and travelling west will do that to you. So leg one of our journey - 15.5 hours to Guangzhou China (another of those small Chinese cities at 14.5 million people) didn't get better than this.

Since our final destination was Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, the break between flights was good therapy. We had a three hour wait and another 2.5 hr. flight, plus after meeting the Nexus Representative, we had a 40 minute drive from the airport to the Silverland Yen Hotel. From previous reconnoitering it appeared that this hotel was ideally located and it was, smack in the centre of district one, the heart of all things touristy.

At the Silverland we had a short orientation with Bao, our guide after which we quickly changed and adjourned to the rooftop pool in the rising 35 degree heat of the afternoon. With the humidity, Dawn is quickly transforming into a tight curl Annie.

It's easy to imagine us hanging out around the pool for the next couple of days as our heads adjust to the 12 hour time change. We did get some slow time in our rooms before heading out on foot to explore the immdiate vicinity of the hotel. We are only one block from the famous Ben Thahn Market. There are more vendors crammed into this small space creating shopping alleys that are nesrly untraversable.

Walking just a short distance gave us an appreciation for the need to develop effective road crossing skills so as to avoid being annihilated by one of the myriad of motor scooters that pollute the streets of old Saigon. You'll notice in the following pics that they have two ridesharing scooter services, Uber and Grab.

The buildings around the hotel tend to be tall and thin with many harkening back to colonial days. They are also predominantly hotels.

We had some great Viet cuisine at our hotel to finish the day, unable to search out anything else out there with our foggy heads and then wandered up to the roof for the evening vista. In perfect world this would have been the ideal opportunity for a dip, but we decided drowning could ensue, so we retreated to our rooms and crashed after not having seen a bed for 2 days.