Author archive
15 August 2018
Having left Saigon on time, I was surprised we landed in Auckland around 30 minutes late. With no luggage I was out in no time but had to wait for Kim who was expecting that I’d endure a bit more processing. That concludes a cheap little break. The total cost of airfare upgrade, taxes, hotel […]
14 August 2018
Bird’s eye view of Saigon I had enquired about a late check-out till 1600 for half a day’s rate. Anything beyond that would he at the full day’s rate. I decided against it in the end and checked-out at 1100, leaving my pack at reception. I took a Grab car to Bitexco Tower. I read […]
13 August 2018
I had a lazy start today, staying indoors after breakfast till 1100. I headed out for my massage to Pham Ngu Lao. I tried choosing the place carefully again, trying to avoid the many that had skimpily dressed female touts. I stumbled across one with a young masseur. The massage started off well, then about […]
12 August 2018
As expected, I woke early in Saigon and dozed till around 0530. I took breakfast on the hotel’s rooftop in their main building; I was housed in their annex. Surprisingly, they had no pho for breakfast so I settled for an omelette accompanied by a very good personal baguette. It was very light inside and […]
11 August 2018
We landed at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat airport about 30 minutes early around 1915. With no luggage, I was out quickly. First priority was to get money from the ATM. Both the ones I tried imposed a local fee. I chose the one with the cheaper fee and withdrew what I expect to spend for […]
11 August 2018
It’s a long story but I had two free trips to use up, so it was a quick trip to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and a couple of weeks later to my homeland Borneo and then Bali. The Borneo/Bali trip had been planned in advance but the Saigon was a last minute decision after […]
30 July 2018
We landed in Auckland at 0500 which was 30 min ahead of schedule. Despite airbridges being available, we had a remote/bus gate. The airport had subcontracted the tarmac buses to Skybus which meant that we finally had decent buses. They’re still street buses rather than airport tarmac buses but at least they’re nice and modern. […]
28 July 2018
The 777-200 was very noisy on the ground even before the engines started. It was largely the ventilation noise. We were seated in Premium Economy which was very comfortable and it was at a small surcharge to the Economy standby fare. We took off a little ahead of schedule. The catering out of Buenos Aires […]
27 July 2018
La Boca walking tour We were consciously trying to adjust our body clocks to approach New Zealand time. There was a 9h difference (ignoring the date change) and by allowing ourselves to sleep till 0900, I figured we were already adjusting ourselves by 3h. We took the last of the hotel’s yummy breakfast before checking […]
26 July 2018
After a sleep-in, I made a light breakfast of oats and dried fruit to tide us till lunch after check-out at 1100. Walking around Puerto Iguazu, we settled on a buffet-per-kilo place. This one had a higher price compared to our now “usual” joined to the bus station but the quality of the offerings were […]