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About Me

About Me
CrystalPhuong.net is a Personal Style & Travel Blog based in Singapore, written by Crystal Phuong. The blog was nominated FOUR times in Top 10 Best Fashion Blogs in the annual Singapore Blog Award from 2012- 2015, voted as one of the Best Lifestyle Blogs in Singapore in 2013 by Hotelclub.com, and Best Travel Blogs in 2016 by Foodpanda.com. Crystal hopes to connect and inspire young women to lead a healthy and happy life. Be confident, be positive, and be kind.

DAI NAM TOURIST PARK


The first two days in Hochiminh was wonderful. On the third day, we headed to the Dai Nam Tourist Park, located in Binh Duong, an outskirt area of Hochiminh. It was exactly like another image of China in Vietnam, from the way in, they built up as the Great Wall of China. It was raining during the time we came there, so I just could took the picture from inside the car The total measured area is 450 hectares. We couldn't finish visiting them all as it would take at least 1 day if you want to visit every single temple. I just managed to visit few:
The main gate of Dai Nam from behind
From here, we got a "mini bus", I called it a bus because it's combined by many beautifully painted small cabins together.
The man behind was looking at us is bus driver, lolz...
Not only using this mini train, we had to use another bus same like KL bus to go from one temple to another. It's really huge. This was another gate led to the main big temple. I don't really know which one is the main one, which one is the biggest one because they all are enormous. My neck was sore from heading up to have an entire view of the building.
A man-made lake from the side of the bridge!
This is another "wonder". This house is built to describe the High Court of King Dynasty. I just took a picture from outside, no time to go in. I was more interested in discovering the next stop which was "18th level of hell". It's here!
This picture taken where I was standing under the neck the dragon. From other angle. How big!
Side angle. And inside! When we went inside, we were not allowed to take any picture or to turn on any light. All were dark and suddenly the ghost from nowhere fly up to you. Luckily we went in as a group so that we could protect each other. It turned out that none of us could even protect ourselves. Scary but it was really fun and amazing the way they did. After done visiting with all the dynasty, high court, temples, hell, we went to the zoo by another bus. This zoo is still belong to Dai Nam, you can imagine how big it is. Crazy tree!Beauty and the beast. That's a real tiger right there After the zoo session, it was about time to go as the clock pointed 6pm, we needed to drive back Hochiminh because my friend had to prepare for his show the next day. This construction has not been completed. I heard that they have been building up this for 10 years til now. And the very special point here is: This whole Dai Nam construction doesn't belong to government. It's private property invested by a rich millionaire who is 60 years old man. 
Crystalicious
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HOCHIMINH TOUR


I was back from Vietnam yesterday afternoon. I've had an EXCELLENT trip to Vietnam this time with my friends. Total places we visited: 15, total day we spent: 9. Total types of food we tried: 30, total photos we took: 700, total souvenir iIbought; 27, what else? Total money we spent: ???????? (read til the end) I know you are dying to see my photos, but I'm sorry because I can't post it up all at the moment. Please gimme this 2 days weekend. I'll promise I will give you the best post about this trip! Be patient! OK? Smile :D
First day!
One photo at the airport first before I start!




We went on 30th Sept, the KLIA airport was quiet, surprisingly. Most of the shops closed at early 12pm. It must be due to Hari Raya I guess. We landed in Hochiminh at 3.30pm, 1h 45 min flight only. It's pretty fast as if when the stewardess gave me the food, I finished up, took a drink and they asked me to get ready for landing off. By the way, the flight attendant whose names Wooi Lian is so cute and handsome. But too bad, I couldn't take any photo with him (*sigh).

The very good thing in Hochiminh Airport is that when you get out of the plane, walk into the hall for luggage claim, your luggage is already waiting for you there since when. Super fast. We didn't have to wait even for 1 minute. Rapidly got out of the airport after checking in, we took a taxi to the hotel. The hotel I already book before I went off so now they were just waiting for me to arrive. We stayed in An An 2 Hotel, located in very happening area for only foreigners and tourists. There are a lot of souvenir shops, restaurants, and especially tour companies there. And no worries, they can speak English even though their English is something like: "I sell you cheap price. This is very beautiful. How much you want?". The room here is pretty small but clean, 1 night only USD22/ room with double bed. So if you go with few of friends, you can save a lot of money for accommodation. Check HERE if you want to find out about this hotel. Settle with the accommodation part. So, what to eat? Of course, beef noodle or we called it PHO BO. I took my friends to a popular restaurant about PHO. Most of the customers were sitting inside are foreigners too. Three of us took spring roll, beef noodle (2 bowls), 1 chicken noodle. This is my food: And the total bill is VND178,000 which equals to RM40. This is a quite high-class restaurant, thus the price is slightly higher. If you eat 1 bowl of noodle at the normal store along the streets, it costs you just RM4 for once. Cam-whoring inside the restaurant for a while, hehehe: When you come to Vietnam, a tropical country, you MUST try the fruit here. Even the mango, the longan, the lychee, it tastes so different from Malaysia. We had try these plus 2 fresh fruit juices. It costs RM4- RM5 all together. While eating the fruit, we were enjoying watching people busy on the street at night. The weather was just perfect, windy and clear. It's kinda fun you know? You guess what is it? The guy who sold dry sotong (squid). with only the small bicyle and a simple stuffs, he grilled the squid on the spot to serve you. See, he was grilling the squid for me. He was standing there for so long to wait for us to buy from him, so we just supported him  It looked a bit ugly but it's very yummy you know? Ok, done with the sotong session, we were heading to the Ben Thanh night market by Xichlo. I'm sure you all know what is 4 wheels drive, but.......3 wheels drive probably you don't. Lolzzz, so this is the 3 wheels drive lor:D This is very very old vehicle of Vietnam in 1990, nowadays they use it for tourism purpose only. I couldn't take any photo in this market due to busy with shopping and looking at the stuffs there. But a tip for you, if you want to purchase something there, the seller says VND600,000 for a skirt, you just pay VND150,000 only, then slowly markup. If they don't want to sell, pretend to walk away. They will call you back, trust me. What if they don't call??? Forget about it and go to the next store because you already know roughly what is the lowest price of that item. So, just go ahead and shopping but be aware of pickpocket as well. Crime is everywhere in the world! We finished our shopping session, then I needed to go to see my friend- the singer as he just ended his show also. He took us with a group of friend to go to eat again! We ate Ice-cream, we ate seafood. I was pretty tired at that time 11.30pm. So took 1 ice-cream photo only. This was mine!

  And after this evening activities, we went back to our hotel to rest and prepare for the next day beach tour.


Second day!

Waking up at 7am, we quickly had our breakfast and got into the car heading to Vung Tau, a city which is far away from Ho Chi Minh about 2 hours drive. I was so looking forward to going to Vung Tau, a beach city, also a very happening area for tourists and seafood lovers. The weather was just so nice and clear. There was 7 of us all together in 1 car: 2 girls (me & my friend), 5 guys. Arrived there at 12pm (depart at 8.30am but only 12pm we reached the hotel because we stopped along the road to try the food, hahaha...All big eater!) The interesting part when u travel to Vietnam is you can eat a lot and you may feel full at that time, but after 2 hours, you still can try other food as if you have never eaten before :D) That's why once we arrived the hotel, we went out to look for our lunch also. And this is our very southern meal style: Sweet and sour fish. This one was quite nice and I kept eating it non-stop. God! :D
Fish soup with star fruit and basil leaf!!!
The big eater group: 2 singers, 1 driver ( our friend), 1 hair stylist and 1 me :D
Done with our bloody full lunch. The bill was RM100 for 7 of us. We ordered 4 dishes, each dish times 2, plus those drinks, service charge, whatever. I think it's cheap! After lunch, we went to sing Karaoke, just to reduce the fullness of the stomach. I couldn't sing any Vietnamese song because all the songs are new to me, and I don't really listen to it. This gentleman was a hair stylist before, now becomes production manager who helps my singer friend (Bang Cuong) to get the shows and so on. He loves taking photos as much as I do. Everytime, I cam-whoring, he wants to photo bomb. But just a clarification, he is STRAIGHT! I mean, he's not gay. We went to sing Karaoke while waiting for the late noon to go swimming. And yeah!  It was so nice to lie down there, enjoy the wind, the salty smell of the beach, the sand was still hot under your feet and looking at people around or just doze up for a while. I'd just applied Tanning lotion coz iIwant to have tan skin color, but it seemed doesn't work that much. Only can get until like this: I wanted to ask my friend to take more photos, but there were so many people kept looking at me. I don't know whether they recognize the 2 singers with me or they never seen anyone wears blue bikini before. There were 2 ladies sold seafood along the beach also want to stay there and watch. I felt wearing bikini is just very normal, but don't know why they were so keen...We swam until the sky became very dark, then we ordered the seafood from the 2 ladies behind. We bought very big crab, prawn. She steamed them on the spot with beer and we eat...Yum yumm...Can you imagine, you just finish swiming, sitting at the seaside, and eating seafood!!! What a heaven! :D See, how big is my crab! :d I feel a bit lazy after a full dinner. After the seafood feast, we went for an actual dinner :DDinner was just simple but it was tasty and the thing I like most in Vietnam food is IT'S ALL ABOUT VEGETABLE! You see:
Steamed mix veges. Vietnam Taufoo :D

Rice with fried egg cover...Yummy Giant turtles!
At night, we ended up walking along the beach, shopping around the street and drinking fresh sugar cane. What a tired day but everyone was happy! :D
Next day, I'll post up into new entry. This one is pretty long, scaring enough to read :D
Crystalicious
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