I never thought I’d go back to the ‘Nam, not for another tour. Back in 2001 I’d fought my way from the Mekong Delta to the Chinese border over a month of sickness, ripoffs, theft and bad food. I swore I’d never go through that hell again. Of course, a few years later I’d go for a fast-in, fast-out overnight to Hanoi on a visa run and keep my hotel door locked while I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling fan, but I thought the hellish days of checking the sums on restaurant bills and closing my eyes to cross the road were behind me.
And they are. Saigon Ho Chi Minh is a lot more civilised than when I’d crossed the border from Cambodia 23 years ago. There are traffic lights, sealed roads and I am proud to say that my wallet wasn’t lifted once.
The fact is that I barely got my wallet out, as this was a jolly from Mrs Sachi who wanted me along to sample the delights of Marriott Associate membership. The last time I was here it was cyclos and Bia hơi by the roadside. Things have progressed. The ride from the airport was an eye-opener. The air was hot, the streets crowded and there was a feeling of excitement and vigour. The signs look familiar but I can’t read them.
Let’s rewind a bit. I never wrote up my visit to Australia for Christmas 2024. Duncan and I made a mercy dash for mum’s house on the coast at the last moment. She had lost a few people that year and was feeling shit so we made Christmas a proper family thing. I normally post the travel stuff to the other blog and keep the hospitality commentary here but let me recap a little.
I asked my son, Duncan, what he wanted for Christmas and the greedy little shit paused and said, “You know I’ve never eaten lobster,” so a seafood Christmas it was. They’re the best kind.
Half a crayfish each, was amazing.
Quite a spread, with traditional Christmas cracker hats and fancies.
A fine time was had and better yet, Sachi was meeting us on the stopover in KL on the way back, for a night. Nice! But fate had its own plans.
We had a full day in Kuala Lumpur and went to the zoo. It’s not bad, the exhibits are OK but the grounds are truly lovely. However, these storks looked a little sinister:
They were all over the zoo. We got to see Sachie’s favourite, the tapier or as I like to call them, the panama pig. Sachie says they eat bad dreams, I guess that’s why they sleep all day.
They also have the orang-u-tan, which means jungle-man in Bahasa. Here’s one, any resemblance to your narrator?
They have pandas, which is pretty cool. But here’s where the trouble started…
Vicious little buggers baby wallabies are. He looks innocent but he’s got a bad attitude and a pouch full of UDL premix cans.
No, not really. We stopped over to have a look a the hippos and Sachie got a bit mouthy. “She looks fat,” is an easy thing to say from behind iron bars and she is fat, but safety standards are a little loose in KL and before you could say ‘knife’ (or ‘What the fuck!’) the enraged hippo was upon us.
We sprinted for all our worth and I had a good lead on Sachie and Duncan when Sachie screamed, twisted her ankle and fell head-first into the hippo’s jaws. Luckily, she was only halfway down it’s throat when I punched the hippo in the muzzle. A left, a right, a quick jab and finished her off with a roundhouse kick. The hippo, not Sachie. I put Sachie in a fireman’s hold and ran back to the hotel. She got off lightly, just a broken ankle.
And, boy, would it take a long time to heal. Regular readers will know that she was in a wheelchair for our visit to Muse. Now you know the story. Actually, the truth is that she rolled her ankle while walking in a straight line, sober, on a paved surface in sensible shoes. FML.
So it’s wheelchair service at departures and a scissor-lift off the plane at HCM. Early boarding and first-class service when you’ve got a pair of crutches and a note from the doctor.
A quick Grab ride and we were checking in on the 71st floor. They have a welcome drink for us parched travellers.
And here’s the room. They don’t all have wheelchairs but we are special.
Naturally, there’s a tasteful and tasty little gift for us in the room because, elite.
And it’s a comfy space. We are at the same level as the planes landing at the airport in town.
I recall that they put us on the 66th floor so we had to take the lift up to the lounge. The views there are even more ludicrous. I won’t count the floors of those condos below but they are so many fewer than us that there’s optical foreshortening.
But we just came up for a quick look. They’d be rolling out the drink-cart in an hour or two so we had some time to explore the mall in the basement of this tower.
I didn’t expect a skating rink, nice to see Pingu though.
I reckon Korean joint Dookki could have done a bit of branding research, but I guess I’m not really the target audience.
It’s a fancy mall and they have some of these little karaoke booths handy in case you feel the urge… to sing. But there’s no time to lose, we really only came to Vietnam to roll around on the lap of luxury and cocktail hour was about to commence 73 floors up.
It’s a nice lounge, fairly big and has marble-everything. A very nice spread of nibbles: salmon sandwiches, sushi, smoked duck and beef stew! There’s also a Phở bò station. It’s pronounced furr-boh, not fo-bo and I checked with the noodle lady but Sachi still doesn’t believe me.
And a healthy dessert. Got to watch that waistline or they’ll see it from orbit.
Apart from its astonishing height, the hotel is very nice and the service is top-notch. I thought Bangkok hotels were the pinnacle of obsequious service but you learn new things when abroad. You can tell it’s a classy place because the lounge serves three reds and three whites.
As I have said before, there’s no good reason not to stock a few different wine varieties, as long as they cost the same. Yes, there’s a little overhead in the stock management but you’re probably buying this stuff by the pallet-load for the restaurants anyway. On offer are a malbec, sangiovese and a grenache. Since it’s table-service we asked for a blind sample of each to test our wine identification chops. They were all good so hard to tell apart but we both got the malbec then Sachi won, correctly picking the sangiovese.
The malbec was heavy with raspberries and raisins but without the earthy nose that South American wines usually exhibit. The sangiovese, lots of cherries and some blackberries. I tried the Chilean sauvignon blanc but they’re not as good as the New Zealand ones we had at the wine festival later that year. The prosecco was pretty good though.
However, if you’re not into wine there are… other choices.
I always feel it is my duty to try each of the cocktails on offer, they’re free after all. Here’s the negroni. It comes in a cut-glass whiskey tumbler that has a gentle cone at it’s base, meaning that you think you’re going to spill it each time you set it down. Hilarious stuff and I found one of these glasses in my pocket the next morning. Forgot negroni tastes like medicine.
Below we have the devil’s snifter, an espresso martini. Don’t have more than two of these unless you want to wake up on a beach in Bali with mosquito bites on your penis.
The margarita is excellent and comes with an aged black lime. You may think the barman dropped it behind the ice bucket a year ago but it’s supposed to be like that, this is a classy place.
In all, I think we did a pretty good job. From my notes, we finished up with praline chocolates and a 12-year old scotch. We are very spoilt.
Sachi reckons she got her money’s worth.
Next morning, a busy breakfast on the umpteenth floor. The best we have had in a while.
You can tell a lot about a place by its eggs Benedict Florentine. Breakfast is open until 11am, which goes to show that this is a place that really looks after its guests, especially the hung-over ones.
After breakfast, back to bed. Upon rising, more views of this magnificent city.
It’s very nice to be on the river and watch the boats tootling around.
Down there is the building lobby, were you get in and out.
And here’s the same view in reverse. We were waiting for a Grab car and boy! Was it hard to find in the network of driveways, entrances and round-abouts for the building. Did you know it has two lobbies? Anyway, we were off to the material market, an old building in old town.
It looks like a firetrap and it is. That said, some magical fabrics and clothes on offer.
Exhausting work for this lady though.
Here’s our bounty. The material on the left, little avocados on a pink background, is mine and is now a fun shirt. The other three are already dresses for Sachi. However, we did look for some souvenirs for the kids at the Uniqulo downstairs from the hotel.
OK, that’s… weird. Kind of brings to mind this scene from Full Metal Jacket.
Uniqulo make cool t-shirts local to their nation of retail, sometimes. These ones are quite something.
Well, the US lost the war but Disney apparently won the peace. Back to bed.
Ding Ding! The sundial is striking five-PM so it’s time for the lounge. Thank goodness! I skipped lunch and am famished.
Back in the lounge, things are picking up.
Yes, the busy busy world that is Saigon. Eat your heart out Godfrey Reggio.
From up here, the people look like ants! And you know what, they are! Little ants who run around in the sand while big important people in their lofty towers stamp on them for their amusement. That’s what Sachi said anyway. Now the sun is falling to its horizon and it’s time for the evening nosebag.
I was very impressed with last night’s buffet, what’s on tonight? I see mini-prawn cocktails, plus prawns.
It’s a prawn-everything night.
Here you can see there’s shrimp springrolls, sugarcane-shrimp, tom-yam goong (goong=shrimp in Thai), rice, corn and fishcakes. To quote Bubba from Forrest Gump:
Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.
I don’t mind prawns but it’s no evening meal so I filled up on rice and corn. Can’t abide fishcakes.
I don’t believe in the liquid lunch but I’ll make an exception for dinner. Above is some nice scotch, below is a nice mojto.
And to round-out the food-group I chewed some coffee beans and ate loads of cheese and chocolates. I am a bad man.
Well, not much more to say about our stay at the Vinpearl. They treated us very well, it’s a nice hotel and surprisingly in reach of the normal traveller, if you pick your night. You won’t get the lounge, but the views are astonishing.
Of course I was so drunk they looked like this.
Two nights then back to BKK, another nice breakfast and off to the airport.
So, have I made my peace with Vietnam? Not entirely, but I’m going to say that it’s a lot nicer to stay in a five(?)-star hotel and get ferried around by Grab than backpacking in the old days. Saigon is a lot cleaner, nicer and more developed, but I did a lot of the tourist things last time and found them a bit lame. Lots of folks like it because it’s cheap and exotic but for cheap I kind of lean towards Malaysia now and for exotic, Cambodia or Borneo. But would I come back? Absolutely, if I can stay in this hotel. It’s amazing.