Ho Chi Minh City Business Trip!

Day 1

Steph, Me and Addy at Vietnam Airport! We reached vietnam around 9+am, the flight was a short 2hrs journey. As time was abit short, the tour guide, thakh brought us to tour mekong river first. We ate lunch at a riverside restaurant.

The chef was cooking STICKY RICE BALLS, everyone was very fascinated and started crowding around him. We looked like a buncha shua gus! All he did was throw in balls of flour and miraculously, the flour inflates into a HUGE ball.

In Vietnam, we ate like kings and queens. Look at the gigantic prawns(they're really deceiving, half f the size is due to it's head, when you peel off everything, you'd realise that the prawn is pretty normal-sized). And i really liked the sticky rice balls cause they taste like sweet muah chee. *licks lips* And you see the ugly looking fish!! It's called ELEPHANT EAR FISH, cause apparantly it's so big they named it after an elephant's ear -_-" It was really tasty though, crisp on the outside and tender on the inside!! I'm missing the fish already :(

We then cruised along the mekong river on a boat. (from left to right: Yanni, John, Val, Me, Addy & Wp) Mekong river is the 12th longest river in the world and it runs through China's Yunnan province, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It isn't exactly the cleanest river around either.

From the words of thakh, our beloved tour guide, "People make chocolate in the river"

FANTASTIC! and i saw boys jumping in for a swim! -_-"

Pictures of Mekong River (Dirtiest river i've seen in my 21 years of living)!

During the boat ride, we stopped over at two islands. We had horse cart riding and got to try out the fresh fruits at Mekong as well as some very very exotic tasting wine....

Guess what i drank??!



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SNAKE WINE!! (it tasted very strong and slightly reptilian~)

and then there were scorpian wine, cobra wine, etcetera....

I never thought there would come a day where i would carry a living, breathing snake. Especially since i'm terrified of lizards. and anything with leathery-like skin. i would consider myself quite adventurous, i mean i could go bungee jumping, sky diving anytime. i've gone jet-skiing, snorkelling, banana boating, rode on scary roller coasters, did 360 degree turns but to make me even touch a a creature as disgusting as this definitely took a lotta guts.

i think i probably vomitted out all my guts that day. i probably don't have any left. i was screaming my lungs out when Steph put the entire snake onto my shoulders. omg. that snake was so heavy, i could had died under it's weight.

And on a lighter note, the fruits at Mekong are very sweet and delicious!!

We also went onto the coconut island, where the locals were making coconut sweets. It was interesting to look at how the typical coconut sweet is made, it tastes nicer when it's warm from the oven. The ladies had to mold the coconut paste first, before cutting them up into square pieces.

The first night, we headed down to Ben Thaim Market (Ho Chi Minh City's night market). Below are pictures of the streets of Vietnam. Motorbikes are their main transportation, it's not uncommon to see 3-4ppl on a bike.

I remember that night i saw 2 prostitutes riding a motorbike up to an angmoh man. The lady riding was wearing hot shorts and tight fitting spaghetti top. They chatted for a short while and before i knew it, the 2nd lady at the pillion ride gt off and the angmoh guy put on a helmet and off they went to some motel or the central park, where couples did "exercise" on their motorbikes. The other prostitute then sms-ed her other prostitute friends to pick her up and before i knew it, another motorbike with another 2 prostitutes came to pick her up.