An explosive ride with an unpleasant ending

Instead of the planned 6 hours, we spent a good 7.5 hours on Thursday getting from Cambodia to Vietnam. Once again, the procedure at the border was time-consuming. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) later in the afternoon. We had just got off and two men took our luggage and pretended to be employees of the bus company. We showed them the address of our hotel. And then we made a big mistake - we didn't negotiate the price for the upcoming trip before leaving. To our great surprise, we were not chauffeured with a tuktuk, but with a scooter. Our backpacks also each received a personal chauffeur. 😂 So it happened that 4 men rode their scooters with us and our luggage through a city where there are more scooters than people (an estimated 11 million scooters). The trip was a fun experience. Scooters have taken over the streets here and always seem to have the lead. When waiting in line, they push their way to the front between the cars or sometimes even have their own lane and drive up to 4 abreast. Instead of a family car, people here seem to have a family scooter. It's not uncommon for three of them to sit on it. The youngest child sits or stands at the front, then the driver, then the two youngest child and finally the other parent.

After about 12 minutes of intensive scooter riding, we arrived at our hotel and the moment of payment came. We, still completely unfamiliar with the Vietnamese dong, only now asked how much the trip cost. It said 200,000 dong (approx. 7 francs). That worked, but then suddenly the second and third drivers also wanted money and we found ourselves in an unpleasant situation. In the end we paid 300,000 dong. Far too much for such a short distance.

In the evening we found a great restaurant that prepares Vietnamese classics exclusively vegetarian. Afterwards we spontaneously went to the highest vantage point in this metropolis of 10 million people. On the 54th floor we had a wonderful view over the largest city in Vietnam.