We're going to share!

---

The night before leaving Mui Ne we decided to treat ourselves to another good seafood meal. As hard as we tried we still managed to spend only 7pounds. We had 5 shrimps each, and then a big red snapper that was smothered in garlic. After we ordered we could hear a row coming from the kitchen, not sure if we caused that by asking for a large portion of chips or not!

We left Mui Ne and got a bus to Ho Chi Minh City (although it is locally always referred to as Saigon). We wanted to leave Mui Ne in the morning so that we arrived here in daylight, but the only way we could do that was to take the 'local bus'. This conjured up lots of images as to what we could possibly letting ourselves in for. As it turned out we were pleasantly surprised, with a bus that had the same number of passengers as available seats, and not too much random baggage. This bus went significantly faster than the tourist buses, and stopped frequently to let locals off in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. As this was a local bus it didn't take us to our final destination, but dropped us at an out of town bus station. We then managed to get ourselves onto a city bus, and ended up exactly where we wanted to be!

Despite what people have said about the traffic here, we don't feel that it is any worse than Hanoi, and if anything it appears less as the roads are wider. Whether this is because we have a better idea of what to expect, or it is calmer, it is hard to tell. I guess the problem with wider roads is that they take longer to cross leaving more time exposed to the bikes. There is probably a mathematical equation to work out the relative danger!

Yesterday we did the touristy bits - visited a local market, went to the Reunification palace, and to the War Remnants Museum. At the market we were tempted by the food, and had a good meal of cold noodles with seasoning, salad leaves, and hot pork and spring rolls. It was not what we thought we had ordered but even so it was really tasty.

We have secured the rest of the antimalarial tablets that we need for our trip. We only took a couple of months supply from the UK, but we had no problems buying it here. It cost less than a quarter than it did at home.

In the evening we decided to avoid all of the restaurants aimed at Westerners and go to where the locals were all chilled out a corner restaurant. It had a good view over a busy crossroads. It was interesting to watch some police there so we could watch drivers being pulled over for 'illegal' left turns. They even pulled over one of the local buses. Inexpensive entertainment!

We started with a couple of cold beers (which they serve huge bricks of ice in), and then got a bit peckish. The menu consisted of photos of each of the dishes they served, some with annotation in english to give you a clue as to what you were ordering. We decided to go for the 'mixed hotpot', as the picture showed a soup based dish with noodles and veg included with some protein (we didn't know what). Not knowing if that would be enough for 2, we also ordered some fried rice.

When the guy came to take our order, he had to remove the photo and read the Vietnamese on the back to establish what we had ordered - It can't be that popular! He looked shocked when we ordered the rice as well - Rob stressed that we only wanted one of each dish and that we would share. He went back to the other waiters and they were all laughing - we didn't think our order was that entertaining!

Once the food started to come we could see that we had ordered a huge amount of food. A paraffin burner was placed on our table, and the stock was heated and then the protein added ( a mixture of squid, clams, chicken, beef, and offal - liver I think), followed by the greens.

As true porkers, we managed to finish the majority of it as well as the large plate of rice! Three beers each and a feast for about 5 pounds.

---