We arrived last night in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) in Vietnam. It was fairly grueling trip to get here. Being the thrifty budget conscious travellers that we are, we decided to book the cheapest flight available, which had convenient stops in Anchorage, Alaska and Taipei, Taiwan. Our Taipei layover was a generous 7 hours long, and we were actually able to sneak out of the airport for a visit to Taipei 101, currently the world’s tallest building.
David next to Taipei 101
Coming in at 508 meters or so (you can do the metric conversion), it makes the Empire State Building look like a dwarf. We went to the observation deck close to the top, which had pretty sweet views of the city and suburbs. If you ever have only 2 hours in Taipei, we’d recommend going there, since we weren’t able to make it anywhere else. Lauren was able to locate the Burberry and Chanel stores, and hopes to do some serious “market research” in the various Asian cities we visit.
Lauren's former employer
We had our first travel issue in Taipei, which could have left us to miss our flight to Saigon. We hailed a cab to take us back to the airport in Taipei after seeing Taipei 101, and the only word our cab driver understood was “Airport”, although un beknownst to us, there are 3 or so airports in the vicinity, and we actually had no idea what the name of our airport was. After 20 minutes of failed communication attempts pouring over receipts and boarding passes, we still had no idea where we were going. Then, ‘Eureka!’. Lauren had taken a photo of me in the airport, and in the background was the name of the airport (see photo below).
Thanks to Lauren for taking this pic!
We were happy to solve the problem with some serious sleuthsmanship (yes, of course that’s a real word). Lauren’s eagerness to documents even the seemingly mundane moments of the beginning of our trip paid off big time. We made our connectiing flight, and now we’re here in Saigon. We purchased this nifty Acer laptop that we brought with us, and I’m currently writing on it in our hotel bedroom. Lauren is still “sleepster”, as she likes to say. We’re staying at the Liberty 3 hotel on Pham Ngu Lao (the backpacker district). While this place is not what I’d call “fancy digs”, it’s still way past our budget (ideally $75 or less per day including hotel, food, activities, and regional travel). I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that we’re going to blow right through this. If we do, I guess like our student loans, mortgages, etc, we’ll try to make it back one day! We’re meeting up with a woman named Trang this morning, who was working as a translator for a Habitat for Humanity project in the Mekong Delta (south of Siagon) that a friend of mine participated in. I believe she’s going to show us around the city. Also we hope to meet up with a friend of a friend of a friend of Lauren’s father, who apparently has a boutique hotel business here in Saigon. That will be my “market research”. So as you can see, both Lauren and I are hard at work. We’re hoping that these posts serve a not only a way for others to get a glimpse of our travels and thoughts, but also for us have a record or diary of our travels, that we can refer back to when we’re old and gray. Feel free to post comments on our blog or shoot us emails, as we’d love to hear from you along our trip. Forward the blog to others if you think they’d get a kick out of it. See ya!
-DA
