My Little Princess and Prince: June 2022

Thursday, June 30, 2022

28 Jun 2022 - Mind Stretcher PSLE Achievement Award

Javier received his PSLE Achievement Award Certificate from Mind Stretcher today. Once again, congrats Javier, and proud of you!

27 Jun 2022 - School Re-opens but Jerlene falls sick

June school holiday is over and schools are resuming their classes today. However, Jerlene had been feeling nausea since last night and was not feeling very well. As such I've asked her to rest at home while I sent Javier to school. At around 9am, I brought her to the clinic when it's open. Doctor suspected that it's likely some viral infection and gave her 2 days MC. Get well soon, Jerlene!

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

25 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 5: Aerial View of Ho Chi Minh City on our flight home

We took a Grab car to the airport after lunch. Originally we were booked on the 7pm flight but at the last minute we decided to take the earlier flight at 4:30pm so that we will not reach home too late. There was a bit of delay during take off due to traffic congestion along the runway. After we took off, we had an amazing view of Ho Chi Minh city below us.

As we changed our flight at the last moment, we were not given a choice for our onboard meal. We were given whatever was left over after all other customers had been served.

Below video shows the highlights of our flight home from take off to landing. :-)

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25 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 5: Hotel Check out and lunch at Saigon Centre

After checking out from our hotel, we left our luggage at the hotel concierge and went to Saigon Centre for lunch. We had our first meal in Ho Chi Minh city at Saigon Street Cafe and we decided to have our final meal of this trip at the same place.

We will definitely miss all these Vietnamese food after we returned home.

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25 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 5: Another visit to Ben Thanh Market and Coffee at Phuc Long

Time flies and today is our fifth and last day in Ho Chi Minh city. As usual, we had our breakfast at the hotel before heading out to visit nearby places.

We decided to visit Ben Thanh Market, hoping to see more stalls open since it's Saturday. Indeed there were more opened stalls selling all kinds of stuffs.

Once again, we could not stand the heat and decided to take a coffee break, probably our last one in this trip, at Phuc Long Cafe.

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24 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 4: Meeting a Vietnamese friend at Nam Giao for dinner

In the evening, we had a dinner appointment with Tracy's Vietnamese friend. He recommended a restaurant nearby our hotel but we had problem locating it initially. We actually had to walk through the below dimly lit alley before we could see the restaurant.

Once we walked through to the end of the alley, it's like another "world" where there are many restaurants and pubs around. The restaurant is called Nam Giao and it mainly sells traditional Vietnamese food. We were there quite early and there were still empty tables. However within a few minutes after we were seated, the entire place was packed with people, mainly locals. If it's not for Tracy's friend, we would not have found this place.

We ended the day with another coffee break at Highlands Cafe. :-)

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24 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 4: Coffee Break at Trung Nguyen Legend

We had our coffee break at Trung Nguyen Legend cafe. This was the 4th Vietnamese cafe chain that we had tried out in this trip.

The interior of this cafe was very nicely decorated. Jerlene and Javier spent quite a while looking through the menu before deciding what we wanted.

Below were what we ordered. Nice!

After the coffee break, we walked to a nearby supermarket located in Vincom Center building to buy some local delights to bring back home. It was raining at that time and we took a Grab car back to our hotel.

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24 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 4: Exploring Cafe Apartment (a culture shock to the kids)

We walked round the Cafe Apartment building and decided to enter a run-down corridor in search for the cafes in the apartment. We had peeked into this corridor several times earlier but we thought it's some sort of a workshop as we saw all the motorbikes parking by the sides.

At the end of the corridor, we saw an elevator that was under maintenance. Beside it is a staircase which we decided to give it a try.

After climbing up the stairs, we finally saw some cafes and restaurant.

When we peeped into the cafes, the interior was quite nicely decorated and clean. A total contrast to what we saw outside of the cafes.

It's a cultural shock for both Jerlene and Javier as they had never been to such a run-down old building with broken windows, messy wires running all over the place......

As I could sense some uneasiness in them to stay in the building, we decided to leave this place and look for a proper cafe to have our coffee and snacks break.

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24 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 4: Lunch at Noodle Noodle and Visit to a Bookstore

We had our lunch at Noodle Noodle restaurant, which is located along the sidewalk of Nguyen Hue walking street.

It sells all sort of Asian food and we ordered mainly Vietnamese broken rice and Pho.

After lunch, we decided to take a look inside the Cafe Apartment but we could not find the entrance to the building. We ended up entering a book store and all our bags need to be "cable-tied".

We walked one round the store and decided to continue to search for the Cafe Apartment entrance.

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24 Jun 2022 - SGN Day 4: Ascending to Saigon SkyDeck

After breakfast today, we walked to Bitexco Financial Tower where Saigon Skydeck is. After purchasing the admission tickets, we were led to the high speed elevators (7 meters / second) which brought us up to the 49th floor.

Saigon Skydeck offers stunning 360° views of the city and its surroundings.

Other than being just an observatory, there is also an exhibition of Ao Dai, which is the beautiful traditional dress of Vietnam and a symbol of Vietnamese design and culture.

The exhibition displays a variety of beautiful Ao Dai over times and helps to preserve and promote the unique Vietnamese cultural heritage to visitors.