Saigon Days

Our trip to the Cambodia/Vietnam border was uncomfortable but bearable. That is until we got to the border itself. If we thought the beauracy at Thailand/Cambodia border was bad, it had nothing on the long drawn out three hour wait we spent sweating under the midday sun whilst carrying the equivalent of a five stone child on our backs. It really was horrendous and we were pretty disgruntled as we set foot on Vietnam soil - even more so when we realised that our bus had gone without us. Left with no option, we paid a second bus to take us to Saigon or Ho Chi Minh city as it is now known. Tired and grubby the four of us decided we would treat ourselves and stayed in the nicest, cleanest and most expensive hotel any of us had stayed in since we had been travelling. At $14 it was a bargain with hot water, flushing toilets, white grouting (details, details), balcony, comfy beds and yes, it even had a television! It was a big expenditure on our budget but worth every penny (or Dong as the currency is in Vietnam). Showered and clean we spent a lovely evening sampling our first Vietnamese cusine - largely stir-fried meat with rice a little like upmarket Chinese food but with less flavour than Cambodia and less strength then Thailand. If truth be told, it was a little bland for our chilli-converted palettes - particularly for Beth who even has to put chilli sauce on her breakfast! We spent the following morning exploring the crazy city of Ho Chi Minh - chaotic but very vibrant. We took in sights like the Ben Thanh market and went into a frenzy of handicraft purchases. Returning by cyclo (a seat on the front of a large bicycle peddled by a Vietnamese man) we spent most of the journey with our eyes shut as motorbikes seemed to come straight at us from all directions blaring their horns - a sound we were to become used to as we travelled through Vietnam.

Saigon/Ho Chi Minh is in defiant contrast with the communist rule - instead the pavements pound to the vibrant beat of free market practices: trade and enterprise. The streets are alive with the latest Nokia mobile phones, ring tunes and scooters that seem to outnumber people. As our first foray into a communist country, Ho Chi Minh, the capital of the South seemed anything but. As our guidebook acknowledges, the only communism in evidence in this city is the traffic system where everyone relies on each other to avoid being hit. It seems to work too...most of the time!

Our final night together after a brilliant two weeks spent with Katie and Will was a posh one. We felt the least we deserved was a slap up meal before the next time we met up again for a dinner party in England! We started off with dinner at the glamourous 'Lemongrass' restaurant which served wonderful Vietnamese food and even bottles of wine which we hadn't drunk since Australia. We finished off at the Rex Hotel roof top terrace where we drank cocktails in the bar famous during war-time for it's American solider presence - dining ladies, smoking opium and generally relaxing after a hard day fighting. That's the American officers, not us of course. In a surreal setting with caged birds and a rotating crown we supped our 'Miss Saigon' and 'Morning Saigon' cocktails whilst toasting our good fortune of having met such like-minded people and had the opportunity to travel with each other for two weeks. It was a sad goodbye to Katie and Will the following morning and Saigon just wasn't going to be the same without them...although their legacy lives on as we continue to crave beer in the early afternoon!