Chau Doc and Saigon

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Suzanne here...

Another day, another new country. Our first stop in Vietnam was Chau Doc. Passport control was a breeze (a lovely lady took our passports and got them stamped while we sat having some lunch). We really enjoyed our boat trip along the Mekong. All along the river kids came running to the bank waving and shouting hello, a nice introduction to Vietnam. In fact, everywhere we went children waved and said hello. Walking past a school at lunchtime took some time!

When we arrived there was a power cut all over town, quite common apparently. No matter, we thought we'd pop out, draw some money out (we didn't have any Vietnamese currency at this stage) and get something to eat. After a bit of a hunt we finally found an ATM. The more perceptive among you might be anticipating what we failed to... that it is pretty difficult to get money from an ATM when there is no power. Not our finest moment! Thankfully after an anxious couple of hours the power came back on.

Our hotel, Trung Nyugen, was nice, with a little balcony overlooking the market. If I'm honest, there is not a great deal to do in Chau Doc. Three nights was probably overkill. Still, we had a nice trip out on the river one morning with the lovely Diem, who showed us the floating market, fish farms and a local village. We had an interesting chat about life in Vietnam too.

Our next stop was Saigon. We were particularly looking forward to this part of the trip as we have friends there, Nik and Stu, and were really looking forward to seeing them and their new baby, Scarlet. We couldn't believe our luck when they offered to give us our own apartment for a few days. We arrived feeling slightly stunned. The complex was amazing, and the apartment real luxury after pokey backpacker guesthouses. We had a sofa! A kitchen! A DVD player! A hot shower that does not soak the entire bathroom! A lovely lady who did all our washing! Most amazing of all was the silence. Asia is noisy. Very noisy. it doesn't matter where you are, you will always get woken up in the early hours of the morning by a cockerel. People will always shout and beep their horns outside your window at 5am. This is just the way it is. For the first time in two months we actually had peace and quiet. We could laze in a hammock, swim in the pool, even have a lie-in, all in blissful peace. We had planned to stay in Saigon for three days but were offered the apartment for six, and frankly there was little chance of us leaving before we had to. It was great having friends nearby that we could spend time with. Plus seeing little Scarlet was a bonus.

To be honest, it was hard to drag ourselves away from the apartment. We did pop into Saigon a couple of times, visited the War Remnants museum, did a bit of sightseeing, went out for dinner a couple of times. We particularly liked the beer at a German style Brauhaus called Lion, best beer we've had on our trip. Mainly though, we just enjoyed having our own place. At home you undervalue the simple pleasure of sitting on your sofa with a bottle of wine watching a DVD. We caught up with the end of Dexter series 3 (at last we know what happens!) and watched the whole of series 4. Now, to you this may seem a waste of a trip to Saigon but after three months of travelling we relished every moment.

We're very grateful to Nik and Stu for putting us up, it was a very relaxing stop. However, there is plenty more of Vietnam to see, so it was time to drag our butts off the sofa and head north.

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