Day 1:

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What a day!
Arrived last night and we were miraculously met at 9:00pm local time by our hotel people organised from a different world away.
Immediately we recognised the truth about the attention the children would generate. Caitlin, Fred and Lucy were all grabbed and variously innocently fondled by hordes of locals at the arrivals customs exit. Quickly and expectadly we also realised that Caitlin is the STAR of our caravan. Blond, 2 and cute as a button, how could it not be so.
The traffic on our drive to the hotel was also as crazy as expected. On reflection, and with another days experience, the only remarkable thing about it is it is so unremarkable. 8 "lane" roads converging to 2 in 20 metres; motorbikes with up to 5 people on them travelling in the middle of the opposing traffic. No rules is literally the case. Kylie required more valium whilst grabbing pretend seatbelts.
I was up bright and early at 4:00am local and went for a big walk looking for the much vaunted Vietnamese coffee. I found it, and about 2,234 prostitutes. Coffee was excellent, prostitutes at 4:00 am look like I prostitutes at 4:00am.
Our hotel Elios is good. Clean, functional, good breakfasts, free wifi ect. $88/ night for the 5 of us. Probably too expensive.
Anyway, after early coffe, we headed off to the biggest market in town to have a look. Lucy almost had a breakdown at the smell of every conceivable animal part that was available. We thought it was excellent. Mounds of fresh mud crab peeled and ready (90,000 dong / kilo($5.50AU) Eels, cow heads, intestrines, 1 billion fishes; you name it, it was there. NO BLOODY DOG yet! I am eating it; and cat.
So, the kids quickly self destructed so we thought we would do the Vietnamese cultural thing, we headed for Ho Chi Minh Cities answer to Disney world. It was enormous, much bigger than any theme park I have been to including Disneyworld. Everything was dodgy and the rides were stuck together ith chewing gum. Safety was not an overwhelming priority which was refreshing. The rides were great and the whole thing was cheap as chips. Caitlin was mobbed at the water park and it got to much for her and she started to lash out at people who touched her. It was funny. The Vietnamese generally were stunned that Caitlin, Fred and even Lucy were good swimmers. The life guards tried to rescue us all a couple of times.
For dinner that night, we headed into the back blocks of District 1 and found a locals restaurant serving the local dish Pho. All up dinner was $3 including 3 beers. It was awesome even if we werent sure exactly what was in it.
Latter that night after the kids and Kylie went to bed I went out to have a look around. Vietnam had just won a big football match and the trffic was even more boisterous. I saw a huge traffic jam in the very centre of town with people going crazy on their bikes cheering and waving flags. That was untill several police or military arrived with electric cattle prods and starting jabbing people to get the traffic moving. Yes, real cattle prods. Anyway, it worked.

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Photos

3 isnt a crowd
We have a competition trying to find the most people on 1 bike. Up to 5 is all we have got to.

What was that in our stirfry.
We found this in our 1st meal. When we complained, we had to pay extra