Ben Thanh Market, Vietnam: Shop like a Millionaire

 My picture and Ben Thanh Market at the background

Good morning Vietnam! My very first day in this not so familiar land. While in bed, with eyes closed, I took a deep breathe and told myself – now this is for real! Away from the suburbs of Manila!

I was so anxious to get to that breakfast table with friends (so hungry I could eat a horse!). I got a chance to see and observe how their culture is, comparing such to our country, we do have similarities. Their landscape was just like the city of Cebu (province in Philippines). Hardly any tall buildings, the pollution from fleet of motorcycles created a line in the sky. Under that sky were happy Vietnamese sipping their signature coffee (local coffee blend with condensed milk) seated around breakfast tables that were lined-up in the sidewalk.

Checking into my itinerary, we headed straight to the famous Ben Thanh Market. But of course before doing that, we just have to change our Dollars to Dongs(Vietnamese currency). And to my surprise, we’re absolute millionaires! We were very glad to know that our few hundreds of Dollars became millions! I mean multi-millions! I thought for a while we’re like the “Rich & Famous”. Could you believe it? We just flew a thousand miles from Manila and suddenly, we were all millionaires!

 

Ben Thanh Market is a big market place divided in departments. What is good about Ben Thanh is how you bargain with local business owners. Comparatively speaking, Ben Thanh is more like old Manila’s Divisoria but on a smaller scale. Here you can bring down the price to half… if you have the talent to negotiate. Incidentally, I was wondering if they do have gigantic malls like what we have in Philippines.

Walking towards Ben Thanh Market to shop, my eyes were already popping with so many things to buy and things to bring home (stuffs my mother would like to have after our house was washed-out by typhoon Ondoy). Products such as memorabilia, clothes, artworks, bags, shoes, toys and gadgets and many other interesting things. Haaaayyy….. GRABE! ANG SAYA! (Waw! Overwhelmed!). To sum it up, I never bought anything after long hours of looking and checking. I was trying to savor all the products first and think about what I really wanted or needed to

With my loved ones in mind, I was ready to attack Ben Thanh Market, carefully choosing the things to buy for them. It was a piece of cake for a “millionaire” like me to buy those “pasalubong”(gifts).

Fun that is at Ben Tanh. Shopping has never been the same. They were very friendly and would always love to be of service to you even if there were barriers in culture and language. They don’t speak English, we would communicate thru hand gestures every time. But mind you, they know their mathematics – with the help of their pocket calculators. With their convincing skills, I ended up buying for more people as “pasalubong”(presents) back home.

After completing my “pasalubong”, it was time to buy stuff for myself. I heard that Vietnam manufactures some of my admired brands. I bought a pair of shoes from Adidas shop, as expected, it was cheaper (almost half the price, for an original Adidas shoes). Then I went back to the stores selling bags like Crumpler, Northface, Samsonite, etc. I also bought a dozen shirts and short pants which I got for a wholesale price from traders in a night bazaar outside Ben Thanh.

Summing up my shopping expenses, would you believe I only spent around 2.5 Million Dongs (a little above $100 USD)?

WAW! What a great deal to shop at Ben Thanh!

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