I started off my trip by flying into Thailand and picking up a girl I have known for a very long time,two days in Pattaya and then off to the airport for an Air Asia flight to Ho Chi Minh City. First time for me and her in Vietnam,I had done a lot of reading about travelling around Vietnam before hand,read some horror stories but as it happens everything went fine.
We landed about 9.30 am and I was surprised by how quiet Ho Chi Minh airport was,anyway speed thru the immigration as I already had my visa,Thais do not need one so no problem with my friend getting thru either. Just outside the immigration there are a few money exchange booths, pays to check them all as they have different rates. The rates were not as good as in the banks but that is to be expected at airports I have found.
I just changed £100 which gave me over 3 million Viet Dong,I was now a millionaire, a first for me. Walk outside and it is absolutely steaming,hotter than Thailand. I have read about the best taxis to catch and headed thru the usual guys offering a ride to the taxi rank. Went straight for a Mai Linh Taxi which are white and green and also just green,these are all over Vietnam and I used them a fair bit,they were mostly very good and honest apart from a few.
The company has a man at the airport who came over wrote down the taxi number and destination and off we went to our hotel. Cost of taxi into the District 1 which is the tourist area was 135,000 dong plus 10,000 dong airport toll,so 145,000 which works out at about £5.00 and took about 20-30 minutes,the traffic was pretty light so could cost more if stuck in rush hour.
Arrived at the hotel at about 10.30am and they would not let us check in as we were too early,so dropped our bags there and went for a stroll around.Pretty close to the hotel was a nice park so went and sat there for a bit and had a few groups of students come up and talk to us,they were interested in what we thought of Vietnam and where we were from,they were all very nice and polite and spoke a bit of English.
Had to say no to a few vendors and shoe polishers but no problem with them. Headed back to the hotel after about an hour and they let us check in.