Longlongboringboringboring bus journey to Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC) / SaiGon. Intercepted by man waving a card for a guesthouse (creatively named “Room for Rent”), which sounded cheap and close, so Gillian and I followed the little man (not condescending; he was short) and plonked our bags down at Room for Rent to hunt for dinner. Room for Rent is down a little alley, off a park where half of the city comes out at dusk to do some kind of exercise. The most common sport is a sort of volleyball, played with a shuttlecock, but using feet as racquets. Anyhow, much excitement that night, started off well, but ended badly: we latched on to two Irish “lads” and had a great night out: nightclub, chewy dried squid, a bar where you get a free massage and popcorn with your 30p pint of beer… but at 4:30am when we went back to Room for Rent and I was halfway over the wall because we were locked out, Gillian’s wallet was stolen by some nasty little man who ran like the wind while I leapt after him screeching and waking up all of HCMC. Needless to say we never did see Gillian’s wallet again. We actually didn’t see much for a while because immediately afterwards the district had a blackout.

The next day, after 3.5 hours sleep (enough time for a hangover to kick in); we went to the police station THREE times. Cushy job, being a police-person in Vietnam. Desks in the interview room acted as beds for a few policemen while Gillian was interviewed, and it’s a strict rule that no more than one person may actually do anything constructive at any one time. Not much achieved that day, except dressing up in donut suits we found in a coffee shop and trying on bike helmets coloured as ladybirds.

The following day was crammed with culture. Attached ourselves to a tour to a Cao Dai temple (mad religion which kind of makes sense till you hear that Victor Hugo is a patron saint, alongside William Shakespeare and Napoleon Bonaparte…), then on the Cu Chi tunnels; tunnels where Vietnamese hid from the “mad, crazy, American devils” (quote from a film at the Cu Chi Tunnel centre) during the Vietnam War. There was an option to pay a heap of money to shoot a couple of rounds of an M60 automatic… which OF COURSE we had to do!

I wouldn’t make a good soldier: very noisy, guns.

During the next few days we wandered around HCMC, becoming regulars at the night market (mmmm, bbq “meat” on noodles…); visiting the War Museum (sad place, but a bit of a one-sided story, no?), the Reunification Museum (unofficially Vietnam’s largest collection of disconnected telephones and the most boring museum in the world), discovering coconut candy and Fanny Ice-cream (…); finding the Jade Emperor Pagoda (again and again and again); and getting stuck in a massive rain storm, hiding under a pagoda in a park for 2 hours with a soap opera film crew, singing songs about rain (just Gillian and I, not the film crew).

HCMC: Done! Next: Mekong Delta!

Cao Dai Temple