Incident free journey from Daisy’s house to the Park Hyatt Hotel in Saigon via Heathrow in Bangkok.
The only remarkable thing about the journey was the lack of remarkable things.
The food on Thai Air was excellent. We set the scene for South East Asian food with green chicken curry as a main and some noodle soup as our breakfast and some chicken and pineapple rice as a second breakfast on the Bangkok to Saigon hop. Good wines and more sleep than usual – still not all that much!
Met by beaming rep (Thien?) who reminded us a bit of Ky!
I need to explain. Ky had been our wonderful guide in Central Vietnam when we first visited the country in 1996.
Quite by chance, it transpired that Ultimate Travel – which we used for this 2012 trip – used the same local agents, Vidotour, as Asia World – which we had used in 1996. I sent the Ultimate agent some of my images of our guides from 1996 and it transpired that Ky, who had been a young guide starting out in 1996, was now Group Director of Marketing for the local agent. He was keen to meet us and for us to have dinner with his family. More on that story anon.
Our room was made available to us immediately, for which we were grateful. We slept a while and Daisy enjoyed a swim.
Then later in the afternoon we ventured round the block to a couple of big malls full of posh shops and eateries but not too well endowed with customers. First Vincom, then Parkson.
Then a relatively early dinner at Square One, the Vietnamese and Western restaurant at the Park Hyatt. We tried pork spring roll wrapped in mustard leaf, river prawn in beans sauce and slow cooked short rib of beef (like my Guangzhou brisket dish). Amazing medley of chocolate puddings and chat with Aussie chef afterwards.
