Asia 2018: Day #24 Saigon Stopover

Disembarkation from the boat at 8:00am was followed by a 90-minute bus ride through the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City.  Our stay on the boat was finally over and we were a bit sad at that. It had been pretty good overall. The food was great, the boat amenities and staff were excellent and the service overall was not to be faulted. I suppose the only complaint we had was the problem on the first day regarding the cruise kick-off point. Robyn and I had already started discussing the prospect of other river cruises, and decided that if this example was anything to go by then we definitely needed to do more research.

Even though we were headed for our final destination the cruise company still had a couple of excursions lined up for us. The first at the Chinese market at Cholon and then to a lacquer factory.

By the time this was all over I was done. A short taxi ride later and we were at the Majestic Hotel right on the waterfront. Robyn had specifically picked this hotel for its location though even she didn't expect it to be as well-situated as we discovered it to be over the next two days.

We had two things lined up for the next two evening in Saigon, one at a restaurant and one at the Opera House. Both were within 15 minutes' walk of our front door.  A better location would have been hard to find. Added to that the hotel itself was old-style French with a good bar on the roof, a decent pool fully enclosed by the hotel and a big room with a comfortable bed; some of the beds we'd had over the past four weeks had been hard as rocks.

Robyn and I had discovered that Luke Nguyen, the Sydney based chef of Vietnamese heritage, had opened a restaurant in Saigon a year or so ago and we decided that it would make a great final treat for holiday to have a meal there. I had booked while we were on the river boat and luckily enough received a confirmation before the internet packed up. So all looked good, and it turned out to be exactly that. The food was excellent, and washed down with a d'Arenberg white from McLaren Vale, a winery situated about 10 kilometres from my father's house in South Australia.

We skipped the set menu in favour of appetisers and main courses. We were stuffed by the end of it. A quiet walk home and quietly to bed.