SH Garden Restaurant at Ho Chi Minh City

During my last day on business trip, we had dinner with my friend from Indonesia who has worked in Ho Chi Minh for a few years in a very nice view restaurant, called Nha Hang San Vuon Son Ha (SH Garden) 147A, Hai Ba Trung, P.6, Q.3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, phone: 08 3822 3566. We arrived around 19:15, all the tables next to the windows with city view was fully booked.

We saw one empty table with "reserved" signage, lucky us that the waitress was kind enough. She said if we could finish the dinner within an hour, we could use the reserved table as the guests would come at 20:30. That's a very good service, we agree to order and finish our dinner fast. The scenery was beautiful, there was a low glass window as the fence, we still could take picture from top of the glass to avoid reflection.

My friend who stayed in Vietnam was the one who selected the menu, we were busy to capture the colorful lights of Ho Chi Minh city at night. The green fountain in the middle of the street could be seen clearly from above, as there were many trees surrounding the fountain, it's difficult to see from the same height on the street. A beautiful REX hotel stood gracefully with yellow lighting and the landmark city hall building could be seen too.

We ordered some traditional foods, such as fried sticky rice, fried spring roll, crispy prawn, meat with vegetables. For beverage I ordered Vietnam coffee, while waiting for the food, they provide us a complimentary nice crispy cassava cracker, it's very delicious, the waitress was kind enough to deliver us when we ask for more portion.

We didn't want to waste our time enjoying the good scenery, many pictures were taken to capture the beautiful scenery, of course some of them with us inside the picture. The beautiful waitress was kind enough to take our picture together with the beautiful city view background.

When the food was coming, we didn't wait any longer to finish everything, because we were starving after a long walking distance to visit some tourism spot in Ho Chi Minh city. I like the fried sticky rice that was eaten with sweet sour spicy anchovy. My friend who stayed in Vietnam taught us how to eat the meat. We had to take 1 slice of the thin round crispy wrapping (such as plastic), then add with variant vegetables, put the meat on top of it, then rolling it such as spring roll. You could eat with the sauce if you like.

I'm not quite sure whether the restaurant was on the 2nd or 3rd floor, there was an antique lift to go up and down, that still used iron bar door and wooden door. Guests were not allowed to operate it by themselves, a waitress always stood by for accompanying the visitors. The lift is quite small, so we had to cramp inside. It's a rare experience to ride this lift.

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Exploring Clamorous Hanoi

Hanoi was our destination after visiting Halong Bay, we stayed in a budget hotel, called Platinum (67 Hang Than - Ba Dinh Dist, Phone: 84 4 39274222, Fax: 84 4 39274223, eMail: sales@platinumhotelhanoi.com) which’s located in downtown area. It’s already 16:00 when we arrived in the hotel, Dong Xuan traditional market built in 1889, the oldest and biggest market in Hanoi, just in a walking distance. Dong Xuan Market is also a historical place where there was a combat of Vietnam soldiers against the French attack to the heroic zone I, in February 1947.


If you want to buy souvenirs, you could find various things here, such as keychain, Vietnam dolls, T-shirt, paper fan, painting, clothes, snacks, etc. The market is not only for tourists consumption but also for local people, it did not only sell the traditional stuffs, but also daily needs such as allspice, peddler stuffs, uniform materials and clothes, household, etc. The market was contained of 3 levels, it’s quite clean, but very crowded with many merchandizing, because the seller could display them outside their stand. You had to bargain in the market, so many stands provided the same thing, you could easily compare the same stuffs in different store, but most of them would give the same final price. Don’t worry with the language, although I could not speak Vietnamese, I could communicate with the seller using calculator to show the price.

The market closed at evening, around 18:00 o’clock, so we didn’t have much time to shop. However all of us managed to buy many souvenirs only in an hour for friends and relatives in Indonesia. At night the function of the market changed into the brightly-lit food zone, so many food stalls open serving late night guests to have dinner or just snack until early morning. Actually I wanted to taste some foods, but the seller could not speak English at all, so we had difficulty to understand what food it was, then we canceled to order.

We stopped by at Cha Ca La Vong restaurant (14 Cha Ca street, phone: 825 3929) recommended by our colleague to have dinner. The restaurant demanded a fixed price for the food, although you’re not eating, you have to pay 70.000 Dong/person for the drink you have to pay more based on your order. The place was quite small, it’s consisted of 2 levels. The first level was for praying place, we should climb a very narrow and steep ladder to achieve the second floor. Wow… it’s very crowded room upstair, so many people cramped in the room with some tables arranged very close to each other. If you’ve just shopped such us, you would find a difficulty to find the place to put the item purchased.


The restaurant only provided one kind of food, a white boneless fish cooked with yellow oil such as curry then adding vegetables on it, a full plate of white rice noodle as the companion to eat.

It’s served on a hot small frying pan on the brazier put on the middle of the table. The waiter will add the fish from the bucket after the oil and sauce boiled, you’ve to be careful to avoid touching the hot pan and sauce. Take some of white noodle to your bowl then pouring the yellow sauce, fish, vegetables and also fried peanut; the rice noodles was unlimited, you could ask more if you would like to. One of my friend likes it very much, while all of us could not enjoy it :-). Anyway it’s good to know the traditional dishes.


After eating we bought some breads for my mom’s friend (she could not eat in Cha Ca), water and snacks on the way back to the hotel. On the way back to the hotel, we saw many people sat on the small bench on the pedestrian streets in front of the shops, drinking and eating while chatting with their friends. Many shops were still open around 20:00, my friend’s mom was very tired, we tried to bargain for Xyclo, but the oarsman asked a very high price (60.000 Dong), although the hotel was only 2 blocks further. My friend’s mom decided to walk slowly, so many shops to visit on the way or just see the merchandise on the shop window, it could help reducing her exhaustion to reach the hotel.

At the hotel my friend run out of her money, so she decided to change her USD to Dong. The rate in the hotel was quite good, 1 USD could get 18000 Dong, she thought she’s rich at that moment, but it didn’t last too long. It’s finished so fast in a few seconds, only left a few hundred after she paid me and my friend, because she borrowed from us when shopping. We decided to take a rest after walking, eating and shopping that day.

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Surprise Cave at Halong Bay

In the shiny morning, after a very mini breakfast with one croissant and a glass of juice we were ready for exploring a cave. Sung Sot or Surprise Grotto is on Bo Hon Island, and is one of the finest and widest grottoes of Halong Bay. To go there we had to go by a small boat again, passing a small floating village. We passed a wooden bridge with some boat sellers on the side of the bridge.


Some paved stone blocks have been built to make guests easier to reach the cave entrance. It’s still heavy for me who seldom does exercise :-). I was sweaty although the way was covered by trees. The scenery to Halong Bay was very beautiful seeing from the steps when reaching the cave. Many times I stopped to take beautiful pictures of the bay, although I’m not a professional photographer, the scenery itself could create a magnificent picture. Lucky that it’s not too high, there were many visitors came to the cave from different junks, so we had to be patient queuing.

In the cave, so many stalactites hang from the high ceiling and stalagmites created a beautiful sculpture as if carving by God. Colorful lights were installed to create more stunning environment. The cave is quite large, we felt such as in different world. It is partitioned into two chambers; the first one being similar to a wide theatre hall. The guide shows us a sculpture looked like a camel, Budha, Kwan Im, a horse, dragon head and tail, etc. The cave could be captured by camera without using flash, unfortunately I didn’t bring any tripot, my hand was not steady enough, so that most pictures were blurred.

We should go through a narrow passage to the second rooms, where a flow of light meets visitors, the chamber is so spacious. At the deepest point of the grotto, a "royal garden" appeared with a clear pond and a seemingly fascinating landscape of mountains. In the middle of the cave, there was a stalagmite such as giant turtle, where people threw coins there to wish for a good luck. On the way out of the cave, I still got a chance to take pictures with colorful stalactites and stalagmites as background.

All of us were tired, on the exit cave there was a bench to take a rest with pretty Halong Bay scenery as the background. If you like shopping, there was also a small shop selling pearl and some Vietnam souvenirs. It’s windy, with beautiful scenery, I felt that I didn’t want to go back to the ship, I wanted to stay longer, unfortunately we could not do it. All our friends from the same junk have been returned to the boat, they were waiting for us.

We had to rush to step down the stairs, but I still had a chance to take some more beautiful pictures. After finishing the stairs, we had to cross a long bridge where there was some Vietnamese selling snacks, water, etc on the boat. This scenery were completed the scenery, the ethnic situation was very high and made people love to see it. The visit to the cave is quite worthy, beside seeing the beautiful of God creation, it’s also healthy because you did exercise by climbing the stairs

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Fantastic Beauty Halong Bay in Vietnam

Have you heard about Halong Bay? My friends and I have decided to visit it since November 2008, we've booked the flight on that month for flying on July 2009. There were 6 of us, we found difficulty to find Dong (currency in Vietnam) in Indonesia. Money changer seldom provides it, so only in black market Dong is available. The rate is not good either, Rupiah were valued less than Dong. My friend who works in Vietnam suggested us to bring USD and change it in Vietnam with much better rate, and she is right. In the airport we could get a good rate around 17500 Dong for 1 USD, even in the city you will get much better rate, around 18000 Dong for 1 USD.


Because we were blind of Vietnam environment and language, so we booked the tour from internet since we were in Indonesia. A nice van picked us up in Noi Bai - Hanoi airport, directly going to Halong Bay, it takes around 2.5 hours from Hanoi to Halong Bay. The driver could not speak English, so we should use symbolic language to talk. My friend gave a nick name for him "Mas Tek". Mas is Javanese language for Mr. He didn't mind we call him with the nickname. During the journey to HalongBay, my friend kept trying to communicate with him, unfortunately no luck, the communication barrier was still high :-) It's ok as long as we would arrive safely to the destination.

We arrived on the pier during lunch time, the scenery was amazing. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes decorating with beautiful modern traditional ships. With a small boat we crossed the sea to our magnificent lovely "Victory Star" ship. We were welcomed by the crew with a wet towel to refresh up. On the second floor, the key was submitted to us, the luggage were taken care by the crew. Entering the bedroom surprised us, the room was very nice, with air conditioning (AC), shower, toilet and wastafel, and you could look through the window for the magnificent scenery of Halongbay. There was a balcony outside your room with 2 rattan chairs and a table.

Hạ Long Bay (literally: Descending Dragon bay; Vietnamese: Vịnh Hạ Long) is a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Quảng Ninh province, Vietnam. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes. We stayed a night on the boat, so we could enjoy the morning on the sea surrounding by beautiful rocks. The bay consists of a dense cluster of 1,969 limestone monolithic islands, each topped with thick jungle vegetation, which rise spectacularly from the ocean

Floating fishing village was one of our journey visit, we went there by the real traditional boat rowed by a real Vietnamnese fisherman wearing the traditional costume, all of us as passengers were lent the ethnic cap for avoiding the sun shine, it's very hot. When we tried to row the boat, it's very heavy, we could not move forward, it moved backword or even went round and round at the same place until we gave up :-) My friend's mom was quite excited, she could row well quite a long time, of course she gots sweatening. There were hospital and school in the floating village. They made a living by maintaining pearl and fishes. We stopped by at the school, trying to feed the fish.

After visiting the village, we stopped by at a pier in the middle of the sea. The passengers were divided into 2 groups, I was in the different group with my friends. We were racing on the dragon boat rowing accompanying by the cheerful sound from the drum hit by a person at the head of the boat. The rower sat on 2 rows at the left and right side, all of us were very enthusiastic to win the race, luckily my team was the winner, what a lovely experience.

We returned to the ship for taking a bath, some of the passengers were swimming. The activity was continued with a cooking class, then we could take a leisure by enjoying the lovely sea view on the deck, chatting with others. Not a long time after a complete seafood dinner set which was served by the ship crews with colorful Vietnam traditional costumes, we tried to fish the squid, it's quite difficult. Only 3 kids tried to fishing, a large light was spotted to the water to attract the squid, unfortunately after an hour, they only got a squid. FYI in the ship, you could order various wine, meal was included in the tour but for drink including water you have to pay separately by yourselves. Anyway the ship was very nice and luxurious, you won't regret to have journey with it. Wanna make a try?

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