Saigon

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We jumped onto our plane and arrived in style in Saigon, though it was a tight squeeze as the plane came down to land in the middle of a row of houses. I don't think Cuffley was enjoying it to much, apparently he isn't to keen on the idea of a plane crashing even after i comforted him about how painless it would be if it did happen. We then made the choice to get the bus to our hotel, normally this would not be such an ordeal but halfway through the journey we remembered we didn't actually know where we were supposed to be going having never been to Saigon before. Luckily the bus driver must have seen lost weirdos like us before as he stopped and helped point us in the right direction which was rather kind of him.

After a week on a deserted island, the total madness of Saigon was like being slapped round the face with a haddock. The bikes are everywhere, on the roads, the pavement, going both ways down a one way street, its total carnage. Crossing the street is an act of faith, just walk out and with any luck you turn up on the other side with all your limbs intact.

We actually managed to spend a day doing some random sightseeing which is a relatively unique experience for us on this trip so far. We found the reunification palace which looked OK from outside, kind of like a big building really, once they turned the fountains on it was a bit better. We saw the Notre Dame cathedral, no not the one in Paris, the small local one here which had plenty of wedding photos going on outside at the time, that was right across the street from the most over the top post office surely anywhere in the world, it was so elaborate we thought it was a museum at first until we ventured inside and discovered otherwise.

The main reason we saw so much was more luck then anything else, well maybe luck is the wrong word, more idiocy as we were lost wandering around trying to find the war remnants museum. We finally found that and took our history and culture lesson for the day. It was pretty grim seeing all the photos and reading about all the atrocities the good old US of A had committed during their time occupying Vietnam. Its no wonder the world isn't to keen on America when they vote in Senators who brutally butchered and tortured villages of people to keep themselves amused. We read about the amount of money given to war veterans around the world who had been exposed to the Agent Orange chemicals and how America had refused to acknowledge and compensate any of the Vietnamese families and communities damaged and destroyed by the same war experiments. Maybe it was this that stuck with me most as our cleaner seemed to be a victim of the birth defects caused by these attacks and was born with only one deformed eye. Unfortunately she is just one of many people affected by this.

So after a thoroughly depressing day at the museum we decided to have some fun the next day and went on a mission to find the horse racing course in Saigon, after making many horse noises and impressions we finally got a taxi driver to go drop us off. Luckily when we got inside we got chatting to an old local man with who spoke good English and he was able to explain how the betting works in Vietnam. It was a good day in the sun, drinking some beers and having a bet, it made up for having to miss the Leicester racing St Georges day meeting this year (Good luck to all the boys if you head down). Jimmy actually won half a million which is not something you get to brag about to often in your life. I however had seconditis and didn't do quite so well. The horses were more like ponies in reality and the jockeys only looked about ten years old but they did have one horse that was meant to be quite the big deal in Vietnam and that won comfortably. It was kind of strange in a country where even the online betting websites ate blocked and illegal that you can bet till your hearts content at the race course but i guess that is just ties in with all the other contradictions of Vietnam, the communist country that's really an orgy of capitalism everywhere.

Our last day in Saigon turned into a bit of a farce as we headed to the water park, only after a half hour taxi ride did we find out that it was shut for the first time ever on the afternoon we had gone, so after a bit of fannying about we got the taxi to take us to a different water park he knew of. We payed got inside and headed for the pool only to find out that we could not use the proper swimming pool unless we rented out some speedos. Now come on, seriously who reading this expected at this point the story to end up with us putting our hands into our pockets and renting a pair of old speedos worn by some sweaty old man ten minutes before us? Obviously we declined this offer. We were however allowed to use the kids pool with no problem in our shorts but after ten minutes of feeling weird and creepy we decided to do the only thing left to do and cut our losses and opted for the long walk home having been to two water parks in one day and getting in the water for a whole ten minutes. The moral of this story, in fact i don't know if there is one, but if there was it would definitely be - Don't go to Dem Sen Water Park on a Tuesday afternoon.

After a days in the wild west of Saigon we were ready for the beach again so having packed some sleeping tablets we were ready for our first experience of the legendary Vietnam night buses which was going to take us up the coast to the sea, sun and sand of the beach resort known as Nha Trang which we would be calling home for the foreseeable future...

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