Translation of malachite in Spanish

When we landed in Ho Chi Minh city I immediately perceived that the building, houses and structures in the airport had a Russian or a communist influence: large, concrete, grey buildings all over.
I can understand a little Spanish with the base of Italian and heaps of words sound familiar. I will try to have conversations as much as i can. Just learning the vocabulary and the grammar isn't enough!
As my wife is a travel agent, and knows that in certain cases people do not show up, we decided to take a taxi to the airport nonetheless. It was actually not far from the border, about 5 kilometers away.