Walkabout Wino

Maybe if we hadnt first gone to Hanoi, which we found so delightfully charming, then we would have enjoyed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) more than we did. Maybe. Oh, we enjoyed it, dont get me wrong. But it fell short of our Hanoi experience in several ways. First of all, its much sweatier in HCMC. Secondly, the people seem much less friendly. Instead of... the steady stream of smiles we got in Hanoi, we got mostly blank stares in HCMC. Actually, some of those stares seemed downright hostile. Perhaps everyone is cranky from being so hot? But even in the air-conditioned tour office we patronized for two straight days, nobody smiled even as they took our money. Then, the third problem is how spread out HCMC is compared to nice, easy, compact Hanoi. The fourth problem was self-inflicted, unfortunately. We pretty much shot ourselves in all four of our feet by choosing accommodations in a bad, out-of-the-way location. Our first hint that wed made a grave mistake was on the cab ride from the airport, when the driver continued right through what looked like the main areaand kept drivingand drivingand drivinguntil at last we got to the Somerset D1mension, which adds a confusing name to its bad location. On the plus side, we got a truly amazing, completely set-up apartment, and the staff was quite nice and helpful. But on the negative side again, the Jacuzzi was ice-cold, and the pool surface was made from an incredibly slippery substance (marble?) which caused Ruby, rushing in on our first day to cool off, to suffer a horrifying backwards fall. She was incredibly lucky not to have been seriously injured, and we left the pool area immediately while counting our blessings. All four of these negatives compared to Hanoi were in evidence on our first full day in HCMC. Since our tour to the very popular Cu Chi Tunnels wasnt until the afternoon, we decided to try to walk to the tour office. Big mistake. Againtoo hot, too unfriendly, too spread out, and closely related to that, accommodations that were way too far off. Although we ...Read More