Cu Chi Tunnel . Ho Chi Minh

Today, I'm gonna bring you guys to have a short tour to Cu Chi Tunnel, a place that you wouldn't miss when you are in Ho Chi Minh. It will be better if you follow a tour to Cu Chi Tunnel, so that you can understand their history more; we picked the Cu Chi Tunnel half day tour from our hotel, the receptionist help us to arrange tour guide. If the hotel you stay did not provide any tour, you can look for The Sinh Tourist, heard that their service is quite good. Off you go, just sharing a little bit photos here:

So our tour guide - Philip came to our hotel around 8.30am, this is the smallest group he ever brought to Cu Chi Tunnel, only 12 people in a van; it was quite good tho, sometimes it's quite troublesome to travel in big group. Before off to our destination, he brought us to Handicapped Handicraft in case we need to grab some souvenirs. They are talented enough to use only egg shells to come out with those gorgeous items, that's why the price is a little bit higher compare to those you can get in night market. 

Once we reached Cu Chi Tunnel, we were first went to have a short lecture on Vietnam history, actually it isn't short tho, took us 45 minutes seating in a 'lecture hall' and watch the newsreel. Off to the huge jungle and Philip explained to us how the army used to make the trap, how to build their houses and etc. The most exciting moment was we get to fire few bullets on real gun, and we chose AK47! It was good one! The tour ended with tapioca as our nosh, this is the only food they had during the war period. 

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Only Running Man have the cure.

Vincom Center . Ho Chi Minh

When girls go for a trip, shopping is always a yay no matter how tired is their trip. Over here in Ho Chi Minh City, they don't really have much malls, some of the malls are more to wholesale store, the price isn't cheap tho. 

Went to Vincom Center on our first day, some of the branded store such as Longchamp, Calvin Klein and etc offer cheaper price than in Malaysia; still we were not here for shopping. Realized that there are so many cafe and bakery shop in their mall, and we went there for second time for their Fanny Ice Cream, stay tuned for the post. Bought a bottle of Royal Pudding in Paris Baguette, was attracted by the bottle at first and brought the bottle back here as a souvenir of mine. Yup, the only thing I got myself there.

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How are you?

Trung Nguyen Coffee . Ho Chi Minh

When you travel to Ho Chi Minh city, one thing that you couldn't afford to miss is their local Vietnamese coffee. It's not hard to find a coffee shop in Ho Chi Minh, but you will have hard time on which one you should go. There are some famous coffee shops featured by bloggers and forum-ers; we just went to the nearest coffee shop that located 2 mins walking distance from our Mayflower Hotel.

Trung Nguyen Coffee is quite famous in Ho Chi Minh (I guess, since we saw lot of branches for Trung Nguyen Coffee), my cousin did asked me to buy some coffee packets from here as well. Went there on our first day and last day, didn't pick other coffee shop on our last day as we really like their service, it's superb. Even though we might have communication problem (only few of them can understand English), they trying hard to serve us and give us the best coffee experience over here. 

Trung Nguyen Coffee implements order-and-pay-upfront before you grab you seat, a number will be assigned to you and they will serve you your order once it is done. Here, they have more comfortable seats at 1st floor and a cup of bottomless water (I guess this is some kind of tea, doesn't taste like water at all) will be served to you.

Mother Land Coffee . VND 50,000

I tried their signature coffee on the first day, this is what I ordered on the last day. It share the same portion like espresso coffee, from this portion, I can imagine how bitter it will be before I started my first sip on it. I'm right on the bitterness of this coffee, end up I poured the whole pack of sugar in it so that I can finished it off. I prefer espresso more btw.

Break Through . VND 81,000

Here comes the signature iced coffee in the shop, when they first served this up, we totally had no idea how to make an iced coffee, never seen this is Malaysia pun. Normally, in other restaurant that we went during the trip, they straight away served the ready iced coffee to us, but here they let us try to make our iced coffee by own-self. They just served a glass of ice and a 2 layer cup (my first thought), then the friendly waitress came and helped us on how to make our own iced coffee. It was so fun to 'play' with the filter but it required 10-15 mins until the coffee is ready. Anyway, good coffee worth the wait. We looked like a pro on making this coffee during the second visit. I even bought a filter and coffee powder but didn't try it out yet at home. 

When they served you the cup, they already placed sufficient coffee powder in filter chamber, a filter press is to flatten the coffee powder before the hot water being poured inside. The coffee will slowly drip through the holding tray and mixed with the condensed milk that already poured in the cup. You may need to grit the bottom of holding tray by using a spoon in order to accelerate the dripping process. Once the dripping process is done, take the filter chamber off the cup and stir the coffee so that coffee mixed well with the condensed milk. Pour the coffee into the glass of ice that was prepared earlier; if you like thicker coffee, you need to drink off the water inside the glass. Ta-dah! Our iced coffee is done. 

Was not really a coffee lover while I'm in Malaysia, but became a decent coffee lover in Ho Chi Minh; really like the thick coffee (because they mixed with condensed milk mah) and we had it almost every meals. Stay tuned for more posts. 

Location

82-84, Bui Thi Xuan, P. Ben Tanh, District 1, Ho Chi Minh.

Website

Trung Nguyen Coffee 

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A revolution is needed for up coming year.

from my eyes . Vietnam

December, please be good to me. I never have this kind of quote until today, and I really mean it and need it. Please! I'm gonna start posting about my Vietnam trip and this is like a prologue before I really go into it in details. Didn't really capture a lot of photos during the trip, maybe I was just too tired or the weather kind of hot; so my mode was like: snap-and-go. Let's get started with things I saw in Vietnam, I just pick some to share here, enjoy...

Just a short one. We might have communication constrain during the trip as most of the Vietnamese couldn't talk fluently/understand English, yet they trying hard to help us in ordering food, pointing us the right way to go and etc. I might go back again, still didn't have enough time to unveil every pretty little thing over there. Oh yeah, in case you don't know, Vietnam is in the list for Top 10 Safest Asian Countries for Female Traveler [link], if you girls plan to have a solo travel, you can refer to this list. Till then for next update.

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I'm finished with fins.

Souvenirs

October and November (and maybe December) are becoming the travel season, you will get to see friends posted photos or tagged themselves at International Airport elsewhere. I also get some souvenirs from friends and colleagues, I gave some but I did not get enough souvenirs at Vietnam and end up I gave all the souvenirs to others while I left with nothing. I don't mind at all as long as they are happy. Decided to have a post with all the souvenirs I got before proceed to post the Vietnam trip. Procrastinating again. 

People tend to get nougat and pineapple cake whenever they go to Taiwan, which Taiwan really famous with. I just realized I keep eating these things for whole year long, maybe our company do intake Taiwanese trainees and they will get us these as well. The plum sweet is meh, so I didn't grab much of the sweets. Got the alcohol (the tiny bottle) and I'm not gonna drink this, just for decoration.

The best souvenir you can get in Hong Kong is their variety of cookies; I got some and just took these few to blog. Thanks to Jhu babe for the postcard which drawn by Chailie Ho, but guess what it was not posted to my house; she got this and pass it to me hand-to-hand. Laugh. On the other hand, I got the Winnie the Pooh key-chain from my colleague, TY, which he bought from Disneyland. 

Bangkok is like a shopping paradise for all girls, but surprisingly my colleagues MH and her friends just spend around half day for shopping; they actually hunting on food for the rest of time. Glad that she bought me this, my room now is full with iPhone casing, but I still ask my sister (she going to there on next 2 weeks) to get me some from there, since it's so cheap over there compare to here. 

Last but not least, got this cutie pie (body lotion) from Florence, I was actually planning to get one because it looks so cute, she also get us the pencil box from Teddy Bear Museum! I asked her help me to get the spoon and chopsticks set for me, 4 pairs for only RM8; kind of worth it isn't it? I'm quite into Korea, not because of their k-pop star (but Running Man is!), but for their food. Om nom nom.

Thanks!

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It's On-Call 36 Hours again.