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Published: June 24th 2009
We made our way back to Bangkok airport and boarded our 6th Air Asia flight to Ho Chi Minh City clutching a crumpled bit of paper proving we were supposedly allowed to enter the country and collect our visa's on arrival. After some confusion and form filling in and $50 we exited the airport to find our giant bags on the floor all alone, i guess the entry process wasn't that quick after all!! After quite a while bartering with taxi drivers we got a cab through rush hour Saigon (I have never seen so many bikes) and made our way to a lonely planet recommended hotel. I can't quite explain why we still haven't learned to IGNORE THE LONELY PLANET, (possibly hopeless optimism), but after being told they were full and then after a few dodgy looking blokes exiting rooms quickly we had a choice of two 'suites'. The rooms were hilarious, art deco columns, plastic fruit trees and a gorgeous child size yellow plastic corner sofa and all for the bargain price of $18! We hesitantly checked in, left our bags and made a hasty exit from the normally rented by the hour hotel to go and explore. Having
been in Southeast Asia for a while things were beginning to all get a bit same same but, we were very pleasantly surprised. Saigon is loud, bright, smelly and full of motorbikes (3 million apparently!) but the people are very friendly, slightly crazy and they know how to enjoy themselves. We came across a newly opened bar and sat and enjoyed free drinks while being entertained by a hilarious body popping 5 year old called wee - genius. We had way too much to drink and returned to a night in the worlds' most uncomfortable bed so far! We were up early and made a hasty exit from the Giant Dragon, had some gorgeous Viatnamese coffee and checked into a slightly more pleasant hotel further down the road. As we were about to go out a massive storm appeared so we rented a dvd player from the reception and spent a totally idle sunday watching dvd's we have been buying since we left home and eating take away pizza-heavenly!! We went out for a few drinks and found a very sweet cafe where we were treated to an evening of traditional Viatnamese dancing, slightly more fawlty towers than the royal
ballet but we had a lovely evening nonetheless. We decided to book ourselves on a two day trip down south to see the Mekong Delta and the floating markets and so made our way to bed for the early start the next morning.
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work,work!
Work is often thought as the definition of what makes a person. Your work is thought to be what you ultimately are - but how silly is that? (What if you service septic tanks for a living?) The author, philosopher, historian, and mathematician Bertrand Russell once wrote an essay called In Praise of Idleness, and we often forget the simple pleasure of writing a poem or doing crosswords in the paper, or reading someone's memoirs, if it's interesting enough. (The recollections of a business software engineer wouldn't count - boring!) In modern life, we too often are caught up in work or whether or not to get an online payday loan, and forget to take time to do nothing.