After China our arrival in Ho Chi Ming has been a welcome temperature change. From below zero to 35 deg. It feels great to be in a mad house asian city, and we have had a wacky start to our visit.
Why is it that taxi drivers like to put on a show for tourists. Ours from the airport was a complete loon. Saigon is a totally bonkers traffic city, thousands of scooters going in absolutely every direction, horns blaring all the time. But taxis think they are the kings and so they and buses are usually avoided by the scooters. Our one however was on a mission to knock a few thousand off regardless of the miniscule following of road rules. We were happy to arrive in one piece.

Our hotel is good pretty standard stuff in district 1, clean and very well located. We slept a full night for the first time since our trip started.

First day we took in the sights of the Ben Thanh Market and had some great pho noodles at Pho2000, famous for Bill Clinton’s visit in 2000. I think it was cleaner then… Actually having had some pho at Pho in london, the london version is pretty accurate which is a good compliment.
We then walked around for a few hours, and the usual mad dogs statement rings true. KT looked like she was cooking, so we went home and cooled down for a while. Its hot, and there are no complaints from us.
So we booked a massage, and not a dodgy one, at My Spa, which is listed top on trip advisor. Having had a few massages i can honestly say i have never had such a bonkers one. Not sure you could call it relaxing, but amusing it certainly was. Our two tiny Vietnamese ladies giggled away and seem to take great amusement in our squeals. Not sure i will ever have a more amusing sight or sound than KT lying flat on her front with her lady walking on her back.

We finished up watching the mayhem with a few lovely cold Saigon beers down in the backpacker district. The noise and view is intoxicating. Crossing roads is fun, it reminds us of dodgeball. If you can cross the road with 500 scooters, a few cars and a mad bus coming at you, you can cross any road. China fortunately gave us some practice, but its best just to start walking and don’t look, and definately do not hesitate.

We took another walk around to see the museum and ended up in the zoo. We dont really like zoo’s but there was some entertainment show on, so we thought it worth a look. Watching what must have been 4 year olds riding unicycles was certainly distracting. The grounds are very nice. Saigon is quite a green city, lots of trees, so different in terms of buildings, architecture and design than China. Oh and people smile at you, and its nice not to be stared at.

Kt went to a yoga class today at Soham yoga, whilst it wasn’t bickram yoga it certainly felt it. It was a good class and highly recommended to anyone in the area should they wish to practise their bendiness.

We move next down to the Mekong Delta and then onto Phu Quoc island for soe beach time ,we used Sinhbalo who were very good in sorting it all out,and also our flight out of Hanoi in March.

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