Days 17-18: Ho Chi Minh City / Fly home

Day 17: End of river cruise. 

After breakfast on the ship, we disembarked at My Tho port and we're bussed to the Sofitel Saigon Plaza.

We decided to stay at the Sofitel instead of moving to a cheaper hotel, since we were only spending one night in Saigon/HCMC.

I'm glad we did, since it was pouring rain when we arrived. Luckily, we were able to get early check in, but in a slightly lesser room. Since it was raining out, we went to the room and napped. 

A few hours later, it seemed like the rain let up, so we left the hotel to go exploring. Nope! Got to the end of the block, saw more rain coming, and made it back to the hotel as the downpour hit. 

So we decided to book massages (although there weren't any openings until early evening).

Around mid-afternoon it was only lightly sprinkling, so we went to the pool area to check out the area from above.

At this point, the rain stopped, so we headed downstairs to go for a walk in the area.

We found a busy restaurant (lots of to-go orders) and stopped for a late lunch/early dinner.

After eating, we walked a bit further before then heading back to the hotel for our massages. 

Steve had a really good massage and extended his, then needed to come back to the room for more money to pay. When I went down for mine, they treated me like a deadbeat/potential criminal and made me pay in advance. My foot/leg massage was just mediocre and disappointing, since it was the most expensive one on the trip.

Night view of the city from our hotel 

Day 18: Fly home.

Today was an early morning. We left the hotel at 4:30 am to arrive at the airport for our 8:00 flight. While it took awhile to get through check-in, immigration, and security, it was quicker than anticipated. We were past all the checks by 6:45.

Leaving Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon airport. 

We had an uneventful flight to Tokyo and enjoyed a beer in the airport 

We then had a 4-hr layover in San Francisco before flying home.

After 26 hours of travel time, we are exhausted!