Damn, he ain't gonna be in Rush Hour 3!

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Another day, another airport...

To our surprise, the tiddly (and a bit dirty...) domestic terminal of HCMC airport has computers (albeit incredibly old and slow ones). But I'm going to learn from my mistake at Phnom Penh and make sure I copy all that I write before I click anything.

But, technically, the airport is a day into our future, at least as far as this post is concerned. So I'll let Mike write all about it on his post.

Our day in Ho Chi Minh City on the 5th September got off to a slow start. Because we were no longer going on our trip to the Mekong Delta (I was disappointed about this), we didn't have that much more of HCMC to see. So we skipped breakfast in favour of a lie-in, and instead got up for lunch, which we ate in a bar called Chu Bar. The guidebook had described it as an American-style cafe, but it was definitely not. However, my garlic black bean beef was nice. We got lunch only after a trip to HSBC bank, to change up my traveller's cheques, which no-one else could do; neither the hotel nor the various littler banks and money exchanges (even at the airport) would change them for me. HSBC lumped a huge fee on me though, and took absolutely forever to do it.

Post-lunch, we took a taxi to the Jade Emperor temple, which was so far out of central HCMC that it wasn't on our map. This caused problems on our way back, since we wanted to walk to the relatively nearby Botanical Gardens, but only had a vague compass direction to guide us (but my fabulous sense of direction came up trumps here, and I successfully navigated us back into town, partly by remembering the route that the cab had taken on the way) . But I'm getting ahead of myself again. The actual temple was a bit strange. In the courtyard at the entrance, there were vendors selling live fish, and even turtles. We weren't entirely sure why, but we thought that perhaps we were supposed to put them in the little fountain, which had the same animals in it. This is silly though to buy an animal only to put it in the fountain so that the vendors can fish them out and sell them to someone else! So we didn't. At the right of the main doors to the temple was a bigger fountain, filled to the brim with huge turtles. They were a little scary, with their snapping mouths, but I thought of Crush from Finding Nemo, and then they seemed quite cute.
Inside the temple was about 45000 tons of burning incense. This gave me a headache almost immediately. People were praying to the Jade Emperor figure, placing the incense in a fan above their heads and bowing. The temple was very dingy though, and we weren't sure why the guidebook had said that it was THE temple to visit in HCMC . We went to the balcony on the roof, and the roof was really pretty, but still dingy. We made a relatively quick getaway because of the smell of the incense.

So we walked southwest to the Botanical Gardens. It was quite a few blocks, and Mike was feeling a bit delicate because of the heat, but we made it, and went in . Mike quickly changed his mind about not wanting to go to the gardens when we saw a huge giraffe right up close from a raised platform. We could have even touched it, but we didn't because we didn't want to freak it out. That was really cool though, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a giraffe in the flesh before. We also saw zebras and leopards and elephants, and Mike bonded especially with the monkeys, who, sensing one of their own, didn't want him to leave, and cried out to him! But eventually I pulled him away, luring him with the prospect of drinks in Panorama, the bar at the top of the Saigon Trade Centre, which supposedly had an amazing view of the whole city. Having shlapped there though, we were told that the bar had long been closed! We were sad about this, but at least we got to see the very pretty, green trade centre. We cabbed it back to the hotel, and I had a nap whilst Mike did various things (I know not what, only that he said he was going to have a swim and then didn't).

In the evening we headed to Augustin's restaurant, a french fusion restaurant. My very 70s duck a l'orange was really good, and Mike enjoyed his sole. We enjoyed the meal, but it was expensive compared to the other restaurants in HCMC. Then we went to Fanny's ice cream parlour, which, despite the dubious name, was amazing . My ice cream, named Mount Secrecy, was blueberry sorbet with fruit salad and a white chocolate lotus flower, with a great and really big wafer and whipped cream. It was gorgeous. Mike loved his too.

We walked back to the hotel in the rain, but this wasn't too bad as the rain was quite warm and in big droplets - a good kind of rain, I think.

We also watched a bit of Julie and Julia. And then I fell asleep.

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