Sunday 20 September, Day 1: Ho Chi Minh City - crazy traffic & pool time

We are dusting off our old blog for out latest family adventure, this time in Vietnam. To give some background for any new followers, we started this blog when we travelled to Sri Lanka over 3 years ago. The idea was to share our adventures with family and friends and also to provide a way for each of us to capture our different perspectives on our experiences and share these with each other at the end of each day.
We had a very relaxed and non-eventful flight to HCMC. Flying during day time has the benefit of not having to nag kids about going to sleep, or fretting about losing a day to exhaustion, so we all enjoyed catching up on movies, reading, and playing games on the inflight system (Dan of course).This first entry from Vietnam covers our arrival & first few hours.
We were met at HCM airport by our lovely transfer agent and were soon on our way to our hotel. It was still day time so we were able to have a good look around from the van. The traffic was the first thing that really grabbed our attention. So many motorbikes and scooters! And everyone driving in all directions and dodging each other with no apparent order in the chaos. Right of way seems to apply to everyone except pedestrians on zebra crossings. First lesson to the kids was to NOT assume a zebra crossing meant they were safe to cross! Despite the craziness of the traffic it all seems to work well with very little tooting or cross words. Makes the all too common road rage incidents in Melbourne seem very petty.

We were soon at our (rather posher than expected) hotel for the next 3 nights. It wasn't long before the kids had located the pool and Rich & I were relaxing with a very welcome cool beer.

After a swim and late dinner we all crashed out in very comfy beds with "the best pillows ever" (Sarah).

More to come soon about Day 2 and our first full day. Here are the the top 5 for today from the kids....
Sarah (the teenager)

• Before plane. In the airport
• After the plane. In the airport
• The pillows in the hotel
• The hotel pool
• The food at the hotel

Dan

• I was really excited to go to the airport because it looked awesome when we went there to pick Pa and Janet up.
• I liked watching movies (planet of the apes) (avengers: Age Of Ultron) and of course playing the games (space invades). I got the high score.(highest 6)
• The pool looked amazing at night because all the colour changing LED's that lit the pool up.
• The hotel was 5 stars and was huge. Everything was so modern and fancy.
• The beds were the best part of the day. The pillows were very big and comfy.

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