After arriving in Ho Chi Minh city, we started to explore the highlights and new surroundings straight away.
We decided to choose self-catering accommodation as we missed our own cooking and food shopping. We applied our usual formula and only booked 3 nights at the apartment close to the Saigon Zoo. The asking price went up dramatically when I wanted to extend our booking. We, therefore, decided to rather move along. This was better for us because, we found an even better, brand new apartment at a bargain price. The kitchen came fully equipped and the big Samsung flat screen TV still had its protective plastic wrapper.
Self-catering accommodation was a great change for us because this meant we could buy our own groceries and cook our own food. The TV even had English channels. A night in with a glass of wine, our own food and familiar tv programs was a welcome change for the luxury gourmet travellers!
Food shopping in Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam has a number of fabulous “expat” food stores that have all the food and gourmet delights you could wish for, at a price. The Nam-An market is one such store. We were shopping one Saturday afternoon when we heard some very familiar accents. Two South African ladies who relocated to Vietnam to teach English (as many do, we later found out). What a comforting surprise to hear some Afrikaans instead of Vietnamese, which is complete jibberish to us.
They told us that there was another nice local store which had all the products you could wish for, for non-expat prices: MM Mega Mart. You can compare this to a big Makro. It’s a bit further for us to travel, but the good thing is that they deliver your groceries within 2 hours from checkout. This helped us buying bigger loads and meant we could shop upfront for more days at a time.
Sightseeing
The first couple of days we used the Grab to visit all the local highlights around Ho Chi Minh City:
We got to see the War Remnants Museum, Reunification Palace, Dan Sinh market, food markets, luxury shopping malls and Chinatown
Further plans
When we started this expedition, we booked return flights between Amsterdam and Denpasar, Bali. We never expected to stay quite so long in Vietnam yet it almost feels like our second home now.
Our flights are booked out of Ho Chi Minh City next week so we will be able to spend a couple of nights in Ubud, Bali along the way. I can’t wait to see all the family and friends again. We desperately need to do some clothes/shoe shopping in Europe. We have issues finding our sizes in Asian malls. Shopping for basic stuff like pepper, salt, contact lenses and deodorant can be done more easily and cost-effectively in Europe too.
And then? Back to Asia? Maybe we’ll go to South America, or stay a while longer in Europe? No plans have been made yet, so please keep following our blog to see what we are up to.
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