Ho Chi Minh City

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We ended up going to Saigon by plane after not the trains were all booked up and neither Cat nor I could face another mammoth bus journey so it was a very civilised 1.5 hour flight down to Saigon and whilst on the plane we met 2 english girls who were also travelling around the world together. We joined together to get a taxi into the centre and headed for the Pham Ngu Lao area which is a bit like the Khao San area of Bangkok but a little less developed.

2 of us went of to find a hotel leaving the other 2 in a cafe with our bags. We soon realised that all the hotles were very tall and narrow so we were going to have to have a least 4 flights of stairs - in the heat, we werent that impressed and then we found a little hotle who had the ingenius idea of having a winch for the bags going up the centre of the staircase - it clinched the deal and we had found our hotel!

The next day Cat went off with the other 2 girls on a day trip to some of the must see sights that I had seen on my previous trip which meant a nice long lay in for me and a little bit of sightseeing to the post office and grand palace in the afternoon - a very leisurely day. It was quite nice because I walked everywhere and got to see the city a bit more than I did last time when we didnt really leave De Tham Street where we were staying.

One thing that I did notice about Saigon at meal times was there are a lot of rats and cockroaches around - you certainly have to let your hygiene standards slip when eating here otherwise you will be going very hungry!

The next few days Cat and I hit the markets and wore our feet out by walking around the city. The markets were quite good fun as the Vietnamese know how to barter well and you can feel like you got yourself a good deal because you more than halved teh starting price. Half way through the day we did have to head to an airconditioned department store though because the city is so hot and sticky a bit of respite was definitly needed in the middle of the day.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by how nice the waterfront was, as I hadnt seen this before. Overall i quite liked the bustle of the city and the adventure which is crossing the road. One of the markets that we visited was the armsy surplus market which actually had quite a weird feeling about it. You pay more for an item that is second hand and there are cabinets full of old watches and dog tags and it was a little chilling to think where all of the items had come from, it was worth a look though and Cat and I both bought ourselves a whistle with a compass on - i wont be getting lost again!

Cat then headed up to Hanoi and I had a few more daysin Saigon while I was waiting for my clothes from Hoi An to be posted down to me. I had a few lazy days having already seen most of the sights and one of them I headed to one of the water parks but unfortunately I had without thinking chosen a Saturday to go and it was absolutely packed - as in you could barely move and I felt very underdressed as all the women are very covered up in shorts and t-shirts while the men wonder around in their skimpies. I soon found the sign for the 'sunbath for foreigners' though where they had a few sun loungers and free lockers (quite bizzarely these ones were free but all the other ones for the locals you had to pay for!). I went on a few of the slides but I opted for the sunbathing option for most of the time.

After a good 5 days in Saigon I decided that I couldnt wait any longer for my clothes to arrive so hopefully the hotel has posted them on for me to home with the money that i gave them - fingers crossed.

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