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2025 Vietnam Holiday - Diary + Extras
🕑 Added 2025-02-22 15:42:51 +0000 UTCJust like in 2024 i'm writing a diary for my Vietnam holiday!
2024 Japan Holiday - Diary
I'm writing a dairy for every single day while i'm here in Japan, I hope it can be an interesting read! Its definitely something new to me and so far i'm really enjoying writing it. Day #0 - It was a 3.5 hour drive from the countryside to the airport then a 10+ hour flight to Guangzhou, then an A...
It's from the 19th of Feb till the 29th, I choose Vietnam since I wanted to visit some of my friends who I play Elsword with, along with visiting a very special someone, I also want to buy a lot of new clothes, glasses, etc
And lastly cuz I just miss SE Asia too~ afterall my background is Thai and I spent a lot of my life growing up there~
Day #1 - 19th Feb - Departure
My flight was at 1:30am on a Wednesday which is pretty wild, i've never taken a flight going overseas a such a wild time, my day started off like this~
On the 18th around 12pm I started packing my stuff and by 6pm I left the countryside (where I love) and drove to my sisters place near the city which is close to 3 hours away, I arrived around 9:00pm to her place and left shortly after for the Southern Cross station to take the Skybus to the airport shortly after, by the end of it all I arrived at the airport around 10pm. Now this is when disaster struck, I did not know that for Vietnam you need to apply for a Visa before hand, so at the airport they would not allow me to check in.... I needed to use a 3rd party agent to get an urgent visa request... this first cost me $400 only for it to get rejected and is now pending a refund, then a second agency asked for $650 and helped me process a VOA letter to be able to check in and fly, safe to say this has been the WORST travel experience I've ever had. After a long 8 hour flight I touched down in Vietnam and was then stuck in the airport for 6 hours.... landed 6am and could not leave until 12pm because they needed to complete the VOA. Never have I seen such a horrible rubbish immigration system. They really try to do everything to squeeze as much money out of you as they can. Its absolutely pathetic, can't even compare to ANY of the other countries I have travelled to (Japan, NZ, AUS, USA, Malay, etc)
I got to my friends place around 1pm and did some very much needed tidying and cleaning up, the rest of the day was spent eating out as a group, watching a movie (new Captain America one) and then some shopping into a awesome late night karaoke session.
Honestly this trip started off so bad due to the whole immigration and visa issue but my friends and this other very special person has helped me bring my mood back, I'm looking forward to the next 8 days.
Day 1 picture collage ⬇️
Day #2 - 20th Feb - Offline with friends #1 Suoi Tien Theme Park
For the second day I went out to Suoi Tien Theme park with friends, it was 5 of us in total. We spent majority of the day trying all the different rides and exploring the park. Sadly it wasn't as epic was the one I went to in Japan and the sun was blazing down on us pretty hard. BUT! The park was basically empty, apparently it's only busy on the weekends so it was super chill and had no queues for all of the rides.
After this we took the metro to Ben Thanh (district 1) and went to a big restaurant called Lang Nuong Nam Bo and I got to try some Vietnamese food.... man I really can't handle raw foods and exotic foods like frogs, rabbit, intestines. My imagination is just too strong so when eating those foods, inside my head it's imagining the living thing LOL. I blame watching too many documentaries as a kid and never trying this earlier I guess.
After the big dinner we went to the Van Hanh mall for abit of simple shopping and bowling. My friends are awful at bowling omg HAHAHA see below 🤣
Day 2 picture collage ⬇️
Gutter simulator gamers (i'm the one who's recording and calling strike 🤣)
Day #3 - 21th Feb - Mall shopping
For day 3 I slept in pretty hard to catch up on rest biggggggggg time, I kinda slept late too 😋 so I was out and about around after 2 or 3pm. I went to two different malls, the Saigon Centre and Vincom Centre, I had really nice Japanese food and bought some new clothes, I mean today was just a really slow day and way too much walking in the shopping malls looking for certain things, I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT EVERYWHERE I GO there is not a single proper electronics store.... Once home it was just a chill night watching movies, etc nothing crazy to note
Day 3 picture collage ⬇️
Day #4 - 22th Feb - Mall shopping again~
Today was fairly chill as well, it was segmented into two half days since I had to play raid with some other friends.... static party things, luckily that took only under 2 hours. The day started around 11am, just to a local Vietnamese restaraunt then a local cafe to try the famous coffee + condense milk combo, it's really really nice, I just cant imagine how much sugar content it probably had.... Then I returned to the airbnb to do the Elsword game raid, after that I headed off to Vinasound to help a friend pick out a USB microphone then spent most of the day at Aeon Mall exploring, and shopping. Things like the arcade, buying new glasses, and eating~
I learnt another lesson and its that, never forget to bring a chromecast when you travel abroad....
Day 4 picture collage ⬇️
Day #5 - 23th Feb - Off-line with friends #2
Today started off really late~ as usual I keep sleeping too late. The day started right at 1pm, after this I headed off to the planned off-line which starts at my friends house. We stayed and waited for the others and played Uno no mercy.... a completely wtf version of Uno and never have I seen such chaos, things like freaking draw +100 cards or + infinite cards so you instant die. The goal of this new version of uno is more to grief your friends rather than trying to get Uno then win.... the wildest thing is I had a perfect hand ready to win then there's this BULLSHIT card that makes everyone swap hands LOL so I lost my two cards. In the end I got killed too.... after this we went to play escape room around 4pm, man.... we had only an hour time limit and spent over 30 minutes just trying to unlock the first door. This was a super scary experience too since we had "npcs" and it was horror themed so staff members would SCARE the living shit out of us. Infact... I tried to escape by rolling and ended up crashing into the wall 🤦♂️ in the end we only unlocked 3/5 puzzles. After this we headed off to another restaraunt called Hang Cuon to have a buffet + ala-carte Vietnamese dishes. One of the friends there made such a wholesome cake 🥺 it literally said "Welcome to Vietnam Takumi", after this outing we all split way and I went and bought some really nifty karaoke speakers, its like a small speaker unit that also includes a microphone and has auto reverb. Honestly super super cool, I can definitely see myself using it a lot more in the future. The night was chill ended with a dessert shop visit and then a movie night. I'm re-watching the entire conjuring universe in chronological order so it was The Nun last night first.
Day 5 picture collage ⬇️
(The speaker karaoke microphone combo thingy) ⬇️
Day #6 - 24th Feb - Originally an offline planned, but then called till tomorrow
So originally today was just meant to be chill activities till late night then I go out for some drinks and food with mates, a "guys night" if you may. But they moved this to tomorrow so for today we started the day off by walking into the heart of the city and visited the apartment cafes. We had brunch at a steakhouse, I feel like English is still very much a struggle for a lot here. Luckily i'm always with someone who can speak full Vietnamese.... After the brunch I went to Landmark 81 for the Vincom Ice Rink, and oh my lord I thought ice skating was going to be easy and simple like roller skating since i've done that before. Boy was I wrong, hit my ass on the ice a couple of times but eventually got the hang of it. Crazy how the pro sports make it look so easy and anime like Yuri on Ice makes it look so elegant...
After that I did some more clothing shopping at UNIQLO and tried some churros 🤣 I was debating whether or not to go up to the top of landmark 81 but saw the prices and said hell nah. The night was chill, just continuing the conjuring universe movie binging. I feel like I haven't gone to enough iconic Vietnamese landmarks yet like the Cu Chi Tunnels or the War Remnants Musuem. Surely in the coming days i'll find time for that.
Day 6 picture collage ⬇️
Day #7 - 25th Feb - 3rd offline with friends
Ermmmm so today.... I woke up around 2-3pm, the day was kinda lost already :D since there was that rescheduled offline planned for 7pm. Today was just the same mall visit (Saigon Centre) to the same Japanese restaraunt since it was sooo good the first time. But I ordered different things this time around. After that it was just chilling walking in the park and then home till the offline atr 7pm. My friend took us to an extremely street food type of cuisine, it was pretty wild and I could only eat like 50% of the food there... Just see the images 🤣 after that we had some street food desserts as well. It was unironically a Thai Dessert. The night was just chill as usual~ Movies, drawing, using my PC, etc. Tomorrow i'll aim to be outside all day, waking up early to go to the popular landmarks like Cu Chi tunnels and probably Go Kart racing with my friends.
Day 7 picture collage ⬇️
Day #8 - 26th Feb - Mekong Delta full day tour
So late night of the 25th I thought... to get to these landmarks it super expensive to do it alone or even as a duo, so did some looking around online, turns out the best way is to go as a group on a tour guide :D for 550k VND per person it's a full day outside, picked up from D1 and then tour bus all the way to the landmark. For this I chose Mekong Delta it was a bit more affordable then the Cu Chi Tunnels, but in hindsight maybe I should've committed for the full on package that goes to both landmarks. Because of this decision, sleep last night was super cope/bad. I had only 3-4 hours of sleep, up at 6:50am and ready by 7:30am for the coach pick up. The tour guide I choose was https://vietnamadventuretour.com.vn/ the guys name was Alex and his English was surpringsly really good... So from D1 to the Mekong River it took roughly 2 hours on the bus, my biggest regret was that I didn't bring my headphones 😭
Once we arrived it was all a journey from there.
River boat to different islands for food, souvenirs, coconut candies, Thai Tuk tuk rides, honey and fruits, and a full blown lunch~ It was a really awesome experience and my first time doing this kind of "full day tour" I definitely need to do it again in the future.
The day continued on and we visited a pagoda as well, after that it was back to D1. The night was just resting in the airbnb and chilling~ It's likely my "last day" tomorrow since the flight is early on the 28th I haven't decided what i'll do just yet. Maybe try proper Banh Mi and Pho~
Day 8 picture collage ⬇️
Day #9 - 27th Feb - Chill day + Extras
The day started around 11am-12pm for this day I just decided to take it slow. I had real Banh Mi for brunch (not 7/11 one) and then just went souvenir shopping to get some stuff for my family. The night was just chilling with a special someone as it has been the past 9 days~ This is basically where the diary entry ends, tomorrows flight is at 11am sharp and friends have told me it's pretty chaos at the airport so will need to depart the airbnb at like 7:30am.
Since this is essentially the last day I want to show some amazing things they made for me too.
Kou, Sian, Kumi, and CG~
Takumi and Sian~
😋💘💘💘🖤🖤🖤 another precious piece made by them as well~
Day 9 picture collage ⬇️
Day #10 - 28th Feb - Departure at 11am
Barely slept today, went to bed around 11pm and was up by 3am. A lot of back and fourth and eventually i'm at the airport around 7:30am.... another crazy sight. The lines were insane. Long story short I made it home safely but it cost me another $150 because arriving in Australia at 12:30 on any given day and needing to get to the countryside is a nightmare.
That concludes my Vietnam holiday trip! If you are still reading to this point, thank you! And as always thank you for supporting me~ I want to get into 3d modeling in the coming months, and maybe cosplay too. Hopefully i'll have some really exciting things to post soon~
