Ho Chi Minh City.
We’re just getting started.

OUR BASE

KiN Hotel Ly Tu Trong Edition.

For our Ho Chi Minh City stay, we booked an Executive City View room at KiN. Our eight-night reservation includes breakfast and a daily minibar. Mat has already taken on hotel-tour duties for our videos. One plans. One presents.

The amended booking total is 17,942,832 VND for the room for eight nights, shared by two travelers. That is the reservation amount, not a verified final card charge or a price promise for your dates.

A location that made exploring easy.

KiN has been an excellent base for us. It is central in District 1, and we could walk to a lot of places. Having so much within walking distance made it easy to head out and explore.

A clean room, with the little extras covered.

Our room was clean, and the hotel supplied complimentary water and soda every day. It was a small touch we appreciated throughout the stay.

Breakfast was a highlight.

We really enjoyed the breakfast. The variety was excellent, with a particularly good fruit selection and omelets and eggs cooked to our preference. My advice: give yourself enough time for breakfast. This was not a grab-one-thing-and-run situation.

Would we stay again?

Definitely. The staff were super friendly, and the combination of the location, clean room, daily drinks, and breakfast made KiN a place we would happily book again.

SEPTEMBER 21 / A FULL DAY OUT

Cu Chi and the Mekong Delta in one day.

This was about 12 hours from pickup to return. It combined Cu Chi with an afternoon in the Mekong Delta, so there was a lot packed into one booking and a fair amount of sitting in a vehicle between stops.

We booked Klook’s Cu Chi Tunnels & Mekong Delta Day Tour with Deluxe Transfer Option. Our selected package was the small-group minibus option, advertised for a maximum of 14 people, with an English-speaking guide and a non-vegetarian set menu.

1. Pickup and a first stop. Our tour offered pickup in District 1. We stopped for coffee and saw handmade Vietnamese craftwork before continuing to Cu Chi.
2. Cu Chi Tunnels. The first main visit, followed by a Vietnamese lunch.
3. On to the Mekong Delta. Around two hours of driving took us to the next part of the day.
4. Thoi Son Island. Fruit, tea, local music, snake wine, and a boat ride. The day certainly did not lack variety.
5. Back to the hotel. Another roughly two-hour drive completed the trip.

Our practical takeaway: leave the whole day free. This is a way to combine two outings when you have limited time, but the driving is a meaningful part of those 12 hours. Check the pickup coverage and package details for your own booking.

BETWEEN THE BIG OUTINGS

Markets, coffee, and a barbecue detour.

The next chapter.

We’re building this journal as we travel. Next are Hanoi and more of Vietnam, then the China leg. The hotel list shows what we have booked, while these notes cover what we have actually done.