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Published: February 15th 2008
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Hi guys,
Once again thank you for all your messages and comments. It's great to hear all your news. We are trying to reply as much as we can although our main priority is the blogging, but we are enjoying reading them so keep 'em coming. I am writin this blog from Cambodia ( Cambodia blogs to follow....) and although the connection speed is suprisinly ood, some of the keys are very sticky, especically the ''G'. I have to really bash it to get it to work, so I let you fill the aps in!
( There is an awful lot of porn sites that have been used on this computer! And this is a public internet cafe!! The keys are all sticky ....ew!! horrid!)
Anway back to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it is no called, although nobody actually calls it this. We took the train, aain overnight, aain a hard sleeper, as it was still TET.....how any country can dra out their NYE celebration for nearly 2 weeks I don't know?! However, as we are now old timers at this travellin with the locals business, we found it very easy this time. We had a cabin
Notre Dame
The Bells, The Bells. with 2 Vietnamese couples, one of whom actually lived in Canada, and spoke perfect Enlish, so they were able to fill us in with useful info about Saigon....mainly how to avoid the scams! We slept reasonably well, as they were all sleeping by 10pm, so we had silence thankfully. We were woken quite suddenly by the uard shoutin and bangin on the door followed by very loud Vietnamese music bein played through the loud speaker, great at 5.30am! And I think some mosquitos shared the cabin with us, as my feet had been massacred.....dengue fever can't be that bad can it? Apparently there is an epidemic at the moment!
Anyway despite the advice we were still nearly scammed by the taxi driver who was oin to make off with our $50 bill, which was promptly rescued by Stu leaning into the car and personally removin it from his pocket, and a few harsh words. Phew!
Even though it was early 6 am we could feel how much hotter it was in Saigon already. We found our hotel, aain down an alley, but it was lovely, friendly and clean, and they immediately supplied us with a breakfast of bread
and jam and fruit, with local tea. Our room was not ready so we had to o out for a walk for a while, and I am afraid I had another Vietnamese belly rumblin episode and had to dash into the nearest establishment at the time, whch happened to be a 5* hotel..... It was a pleasure to be so ill, in the best toilet in Saion! And it was easily sorted by a few immodiums and a maxalon.
After checking in and freshening up we decided to have a quick snooze, turned on the sat tv in our room, just in time for the Wales - Scotland ame from the day before, fab....come on Wales! In fact we managed to catch all of last weekends rugby!!
Saigon is as dirty and crowded as Hanoi, but hotter, it perhaps lacks some if the character of Hanoi, and there are loads of tourists. It wasn't our favourite place, but still we enjoyed the atmosphere and vibe. The people definitely feed off the tourist trade, and you get the impression that you are more likely to et ripped off. But as everywhere else enerally the locals are friendly and helpful.
As Dunc would say it was real and it was nice, but it was not really nice (apparently!?)
We ventured deeper into the city in the evenin. Headin g for the 'posh'part of town. Dong Khoi is a huge boulevard that originally was built by the French, so still has lots of colonial charm, but was used as 'go-go' bars in the 70's by the american GIs. Now it is very clean and pristine again, and full of bi hotels and shops like Louis Vuitton, Gucci etc... It is such an uncomfortable contrast to the rest of the city with its areas of extreme poverty.
Somehow, tet celebrations were still going on and the streets were decorated with lights, flowers, fountains, and again fireworks wowed the huge crowds.....but we went for a beer and food of course. We finally found a lovely balcony restaurant above the bustle below and the food was great. Satay prawns were especially good.
On our second day in Saigon we walked around some more, we saw the main sites, Reunification palace, Ho Chi Minh museum, the waterfront, (the Saigon river was really just a large expanse of smelly brown silty sludge...not the romantic
Flowers that reminded me of mum
The grey panther would have loved this stall at the market. idea I had in my head unfortunately).
We got a bit more into relaxing too, we had a few drinks in some roadside cafes, which was lovely until we overheard some middle aged overwieght Londoners chatting amongst themselves...referring the the reason they spend some much time in Saigon, away from their wives of course, going into great detail about what they get up to with the local ladies....I didn't feel very proud to British! The seedy side of the city is noticable, but putting it into perspective, it was not as bad as I imagined it to be.
After 2 days in the city we felt it was time to move on, so we booked oursleves onto a tour to leave Vietnam and make our way to Cambodia via the Mekong delta, mostly by boat this time.......so we just kicked back and strolled around a few bars and ate some local food on our last night, 6 am wake the next day.....
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Welshy
non-member comment
ot a ood rasp of rammar but no letter ' ' key
Wicked way to mix up the blogs a bit - lose a random key every time, adds an interesting dimension. I for one particularly liked the description of Saigon (Saion?) as being 'full of bi hotels and shops'. Puerile I know. x x x