They talked about this great sunrise at preport that we were going to be able to see while going up the Saigon River to Ho Chi Minh City. So I woke up at like 6am to go out to the back of deck 7 and see it. However, it was cloudy/rainy so there was no sunrise. It was cool to see the ship going up the river though, this is the first river that we’ve went up to get to our destination. I had enough after less than 5 minutes and headed back to bed until our diplomatic briefing at 9am that morning before we could debark the ship.
Once again, our ship is located in a terrible location relative to the city. We haven’t docked in a good location where we could go somewhere without having to take a taxi/bus/rickshaw/tender to get to our destination since South Africa, which was located in an awesome spot right next to a big mall and lots of tour places for things to do in and around Cape Town. We’re basically just located in a big ship yard, much like India and Mauritius. Thankfully, there’s a free shuttle that runs from the ship to the city center area. However, the shuttle only runs every 40 minutes or so and going there on a bus takes a lot longer than a taxi or motorbike would. As long as we weren’t in a hurry we would take it though, because it is free – and free is good.
We don’t really have a whole lot of plans for Vietnam, so the first day we just went around to a bunch of different shops. Just browsing though on the first day, I really try to hold back from buying anything the first day. The first day you can get a feel for what’s available in a lot of places (if it’s abundant you’ll have more bargaining power) and what’s more rare. One thing that we wanted to take care of the first say for sure was get some tailor made suits made. We walked around, looked up some tailors on the internet (there’s a lot of different tailors in Vietnam), and went into a few stores for some quotes before we finally picked one that we liked. It was probably the 5th or 6th tailor place that we checked out before we agreed with the prices and thought that the stuff he had in the shop showed quality tailoring. Once we picked the tailor came the hard part, picking out the style and kind of fabric that we wanted in our suit. I would have done a lot more research beforehand if I could have, but I really don’t know what to look for in a suit. 
He had a book full of all different styles and helped us pick out what would look good for each of us though. He was very helpful to say the least. He didn’t speak the best English, but we were able to understand each other one way or another. So I ordered 4 tailor made suits for $100 each, a heck of a deal if you ask me! The suits are: solid black, solid navy, black with pinstripes, and grey with light pinstripes. After measuring us we had to pay half up front and scheduled a time to come back in a few days when it was done. We purposely made an appointment a day before the ship left in case adjustments were going to be needed when we tried them on. Taking care of all of that was a huge relief. It was stressful trying to find the right tailor then the right suits! But I’m happy with what I chose for suits and we were all confident in the tailor. The name of the shop (and I believe the tailor too) is Nhut Van. It’s just a small little shop right off of the street, but not too small
After taking care of the suits we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the ship. SAS always gives us a “Green Sheet” (I think I’ve talked about this before) in every port that has important country information such as emergency numbers, hospital locations, how to contact the ship, ect. It also has the location of where our ship is docked so we can get back to the ship. Well the location that they gave us for Vietnam was very vague so when we show a taxi driver the name of the place that we’re docked in, they have very little idea of where that actually is. Of course they’ll always take you, but we learned on our first cab ride that they had no idea where to go. We ended up giving him more directions on how to get back to our ship than he knew, and we had only been on this route once so our directions weren’t very good. Anyway, we got back to the ship without getting too lost. I heard some horror stories about other people taking taxi’s and them just getting lost and driving around for a long time. Luckily that didn’t happen to us!
We ate back on the ship, then took the free shuttle back to the main part of the city to check out the night market that was located outside of the Ben Than Marketplace. Ben Than is the main marketplace in Ho Chi Minh City. You can tell any taxi driver that you want to go there and they’ll definitely know where to go.
So we’re driving on the right side of the road again. Vietnam is the first country since Brazil to drive on the right side of the road. It’s actually really weird to see. I’m just use to driving on the left side now so when we’re driving I always thing the guy is going into the wrong lane at first. Hopefully I don’t find myself going down the wrong side of the street when I get home! Hahaha. I’m sure that won’t happen… I hope :)
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