Last Day.

Sleep in today as we've got nowhere to go.  Finally realised that fried eggs were available at breakfast, you just had to ask for them. Everyone had eaten breakfast by the time Kyra had hauled herself out of bed and got to the restaurant.

Angela was packed and ready to go, but Kyra wanted to repack all our bags so only one would get searched by customs. Callum's, in fact.

After everything was packed, there was an expedition to the day markets. Christopher got yet another pair of shoes in shoe street, before entering the day markets. I lasted about 30 mins there before I had to leave. I was over the constant "you wanna buy xxx?" badgering from my "mates" after a sale with their "ozzy, ozzy, ozzies" sales banter. That and the fact it was very warm and humid. Kyra bought a new purse and a Budda statue. Ron also got a Budda as well so he can set up a shrine in the living room and get in touch with his spirituality.

Popped down the road for a vietnamese coffee and some macaroons, dumping the kids at the hotel for some movie time - we'd arranged to keep the Banning's room an extra couple of hours, so we didn't have to vacate it until 2pm.

For lunch we went back to Mon Hue as it was of known quality and we didn't want our last meal to be the foul one from last night. As before the food was excellent. One minor hiccup was Callum having a huey at the end of the meal.  Hopefully nothing major as we're getting on the plane soon. Managed to spin the meal out until 4pm when we needed to catch taxis to the airport.

We went around the table for our top highs and lows of the trip:

Kyra
Low: Thinking she was going to die at the side of the road to Sapa
High: Countryside and people

Ruby
Low: Getting food poisoning
High: Meeting the people

Callum
Low: Nha Trang hotel
High: The guns.

Christopher
Low: Perfumed pagoda
High: The whole of halong bay

Angela
Low: Disappointment with Nha trang.
High: Serenity of halong bay

Ron
Low: Nha Trang in all its aspects
High: Getting a better understanding of vietnamese culture and history

Jonah
Low: Russians at the mud baths
High: Kyaking in halong bay

Me
Low: The War Remnants Museum
High: The War Remnants Museum

For me the mud baths came a close second for a low.

Callum had a change of clothes when we got back to the hotel and we called for two taxis for a final blast through Saigon rush hour traffic to the airport.

There was a minor panic from the Williams's when it was confirmed that empty bullet shells were not allowed in your checked luggage. These were duly removed and disposed of.

Whilst everyone waited in front of a very noisy football game on the TV in the departure lounge, Angela and Kyra ran off for a final dong based shopping spree. Turns out you can't take duty free bought here through Singapore, which put a bit of a downer on things as the booze is extremely cheap here.

Set to board in 20 minutes, so here's a big goodbye to Vietnam and thanks for a fantastic holiday.

Next stop Singapore where we board a midnight flight back to Brisbane.

...

We had a frantic rush through Changi airport to get to our transfer terminal, which was about 2.5 km from our arrival gate. I love they way they subject you to the maximum possible opportunity to shop between gates. On this occasion Angela failed, but she did at least try.

There was much hilarity at Kyra and Ron's, wobbly, Kath and Kim style power walking to keep up with the sensible people on the travelators. We got to the gate with minutes to spare. Angela forgot to pick her backpack up after having it scanned and had to backtrack before boarding.

Another seven hours and we'll be back in sunny Brisbane.
...
I had a really peaceful night and managed to doze a couple of times. Apparently Callum was sick again on the floor of the toilet, which only goes to show the importance of a window seat, because I was unaware of that. Of course the down side is a cranky Kyra for the rest of the day, because she didn't get any sleep.

Once the plane started to awaken, which was about 7am Brisbane time, there was a whole new bout of vomiting from all of the kids. Even Jonah was feeling poorly, but he didn't actually chunder.

30 minutes now to landing and the official end of our holiday.

What a great adventure we've had and after everything the Williams and Banning families are still on friendly terms!

We now just have to remember that:
a) You can't just cross the street at any time and expect the traffic to go around you
b) You cannot bargain the price down in Woolworths
c) You can drink the tap water
d) You can safely eat lettuce
e) You will have to make your own dinner
f) You say thankyou not gha man
g) 20,000 is a lot of money
h) I don't have to be up to midnight blogging every night
i) drive on the left and remember your lane discipline
j) remember to use your seat belts

Looks a bit cloudy in Brisbane - we would have been able to see our house if it hadn't been so cloudy.

The holiday is officially over at 9.35 am. Boo!

Bicycles and paddy fields

Another early start for our last big day in Vietnam. Hanh (sorry, spelt her name wrong before) picked us up at 8 am to take us off to the Mekong delta.

It was an 80km drive to the harbour where we boarded a motor boat to take us down the river. That's about an hour and a half's drive

Hanh entertained us with more snippets of information.

There's not enough schools in Vietnam, so children have two school shifts. The first shift is 7am to 11.30am. They then have lunch and in the afternoon have additional tutoring if the family can afford it. At night they do about two hours homework.  During the holidays and at weekends they do part time work selling at markets or to tourists, or helping out in the family business in order to earn money to pay for their education. Are you listening kids?

We were regaling our experience with the drunk Russian the other night; apparently Russian tourists quite often don't pay for their booze bill at their hotel because they run out of money. They can't even afford a taxi to the airport. They also have a habit of ignoring the tour guides when they go out on tours and return back to the bus later than they should. In these cases the guides are quite within their rights to abandon them in middle of nowhere if they don't meet the bus!

Chinese tourists are up there with Russians when it comes to bad behaviour. Apparently they are excessively noisy late at night.  The tour organisers make sure they are quartered in China town where they are much more at home and can be as noisy as they like to all hours of the night. Sleep is very important to the Vietnamese because they get so little of it. The average Vietnamese day goes from 5am to 11pm, including children. They have a siesta at lunch, which begins at 11am. There's an old Vietnamese saying they use for bad tourists - "A monkey with a crown it's still a monkey". I guess "you can't polish a turd" doesn't translate.

On a sadder note she was telling us of the times after the reunification. She was from the hills of Dalat about 300km from Saigon. Her family had a large house and were quite wealthy farmers with a lot of land. All of their land was confiscated and their house taken over for visiting northerners. Her father and uncles were sent to re-education camps where they died being "re-educated", or tortured as end call it in the west. All of the children from their village were taken away to a new village some distance away from the old one to be re-educated without the corrupting influence of their parents.  Her family managed to recover her back to the mountains where she lived with relatives. Whilst this was good, she got persecuted by her school teacher who was not as smart as her. Teaching qualifications in the north are much easier to come by - she had actually been to school for longer than her teacher.

Part of the grand communist plan was to make sure that there was even distribution of rice. The effect of this was that there was no incentive for farmers to grow any more rice than they needed to live. Any that they grew beyond what they needed for themselves was taken away to be distributed. This resulted in lack of food for everyone and people resorted to eating sweet potato and other root vegetables. In 1986 they changed the rules so farmers we're able to keep any excess and sell it. Within two years Vietnam was exporting rice again.

We got to the harbour where we donned our conical grass peasant hats and boarded our boat. This was a canopied motor boat with a row of garden chairs down each side and a couple of banana chairs at the back. Quite sophisticated really. We had a coconut juice drink just after boarding. Ruby had a competition with herself over who could get the most waves from passing boats.

Our first stop was at a brick makers. Whilst that sounds pretty boring, it was actually quite interesting. They make the bricks the old fashioned way in massive brick kilns.  The clay for the bricks comes from the rice paddies and each brick is hand made using a very basic clay squeezing machine - a bit like play dough. The only fuel they have available is rice husks which they feed slowly into a furnace at the base of the kiln. The ash from the husks is sold back to the rice farmers for fertiliser.

Next stop after turning off the main river was a coconut processor. The side rivers were more like the type you see in an Oliver Stone movie, lined with water coconut palms (those are different from normal coconut palms). Callum was first off the boat and slid straight into a pile of gunk, dirtying his new Arsenal shirt. The nice man got him to strip off his shirt so he could wash it off. Callum's florescent body garnered much attention from the workers, most of whom were from the same family. Coconut processing is hard manual labour with each person performing a vital piece of the production chain with some extremely sharp instruments. None of the coconut is wasted. The husks are used for fuel and coconut matting.

Finally we arrived at a rest stop where we had refreshing fruit for morning tea. They had a python there that they we're showing off to the tourists (they keep it for keeping down the rats). Ron and Angela tried on the snake for photos.  At the same place were some women making coconut candy. Again another labour intensive process where the candy is manually cut up and wrapped into small packets. We had to buy some because it tasted so good.

After this we mounted push bikes for a tour of the village. Unfortunately Ruby was a bit too small to ride the bikes that were available, so she doubled up behind Jonah, Ron or Kyra, depending on who was feeling most confident at the time.  I'm happy to say the proverb is true. Riding a bike really is like riding a bike. I haven't ridden any distance for many years and I managed to stay upright. I don't remember them being so wobbly though; I don't think that was me but it's hard to tell. There was one minor panic point where my hat fell in front of my face and I had to stop blindly.

We pushed on through the village cutting through paddies and back yards down a narrow path used by other scooters and native cyclists. At one point we startled some feral scooters feeding of the desiccated corpses of some abandoned Russians.

We stopped for a breather at a small house where they were weaving various mats. Angela and Kyra bought a rather nice picnic rug made of woven grass. Don't know whether we'll get that through customs but it's worth a try.

The stakes were raised at the next stage of the route because we had muddy water on both sides of the path; there was no room for error going around the 90° corners. It had to happen eventually and it was Jonah, with Ruby on the back that ran off the path and narrowly missed going head first into the water.

Shortly after that Callum's hat fell over his face and he shot off the side of the path into the bushes - fortunately there was no water at that point and his pride was hurt more than anything.

We finally dismounted at our lunch spot and had a beautiful lunch of spring rolls and lemongrass chicken before heading back to port. The trip finished just in time because the heavens opened for a torrential rain storm as we were driving back to the hotel.

After a short break Kyra, Angela and Ron went back to Ginkgo again to get even more tees (yes we really do like their gear).

On their way back they found a cheap restaurant a few doors up from the hotel that we went to for dinner. Unfortunately that was a complete disaster. The food was shocking. And they tried to give us warm beer. Nobody could understand a word of english and all of the kids were complaining that their food was horrible. After much discussion with the waitress we thought she said she would settle for 10k dong a head, so we dropped the money on the table and left, only to be chased down the road by a pack of anxious waiters demanding more money. We got one of them to go back to our hotel where we asked the receptionist to explain that we didn't want to pay because the food was so bad. Unfortunately there's no such thing as consumer rights in Vietnam. We had to fork out for the $30 bill.

It's a real shame that after three weeks of fabulous food we were let down on our last night. We had to go back to the markets to get the kids a pork baguette each as they were still hungry.

On the plus side, Jonah finally found a shirt he liked in the markets!

It's our last day tomorrow as we're off to the airport and back to Brisbane at about 4pm.

I think there's more shopping planned for tomorrow and a longer look around the day markets.

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

Thursday

Late breakfast and late start today. The plan today was to visit the Ho Chi Min City Museum and the Reunification Palace, which is where the North-South war ended when the north's tanks barged down the gates of the presidential palace effectively turning Vietnam into a single nation.

A soon a we stepped out of the cool hotel atrium, we knew it was going to be a long hot day. It was about 36C and 90% humid. Angela wasn't feeling to good to start with (another dose of food poisoning), but as we set off through the city she was feeling a lot worse.

First off the agenda, was a visit to the memorial of the self immolating buddhist monk, who's main claim to fame in the west was that he was on the cover of a Rage Against The Machine album.
He was protesting about the massacre and imprisonment of buddhist monks by the new communist government from the north. He chose the busiest intersection in Saigon and sat in the middle meditating while a second monk doused him in fuel and set light to him.
It was such a horrific thing to do that it propelled the nation into stopping the persecution of religious sects.

It was a reasonable walk through hot noisy streets to get there and we were followed all the way by a cute girl, probably Callum's age. We couldn't decide whether she was just curious, or whether she was looking for a pocket to pick, but she realised we were taking notice of her and she disappeared after that.

The memorial was pretty impressive, and was on the intersection where the act took place. It was hardly a peaceful place to have a memorial with the traffic roaring away in the background, but it did seem fitting considering. Apparently the monk's remains were cremated (a little ironic) after his heart had been removed to a local temple. This apparently assures him everlasting life.

Next stop was the Reunification Palace, but on arrival we found it was closed for lunch. Lunch seems to begin at 11am here and runs until 1.30 pm for most government run museums etc.  Sounds just like government departments at home.

Instead, we trudged on to the HCM museum which didn't close for lunch for some mysterious reason. We had real trouble explaining to the ticket woman that there were only five people in the Williams family, so we ended up paying for Christopher as well; it was just easier to sort it out between us than explain.

Museums, apparently, are THE place to get married. The building was quite nice albeit a little tatty around the edges. For the puposes of the wedding, they had wheeled a beautiful old citroen out from under the cover at the back of the building, so the happy couple could have their photos taken in front of it. It was a bit tatty on the inside and could have done with a polish, but I'm sure they can photoshop that in.

The other thing you do at museums, is have fashion shoots. There were two gorgeous but vacant looking girls posing against the architecture. Apparently purple ugg boots, black mini skirts with zips down the sides and puffy yellow blouses with wide brimmed floppy hats are the next big thing in Vietnam.

What you don't have in museums in Vietnam is a lot of interesting old stuff. It seemed to be a collection of slightly related things that someone had decided probably shouldn't be thrown away or sold on at the night markets. 
There were four large rooms over two levels containing left over stuff from factories, temples and a closed down craft centre. Oh and more left over stuff from the various wars. Oh and a room full of old money.

If I was a school kid in Vietnam, I would be dreading the visit to the HCM museum, knowing full well that it would be impossible to come up with an interesting trip report.

What I didn't understand was why there were massive 3" thick steel doors between all of the rooms. I'm of the opinion that if someone in authority thought it was only worth showing in a museum, then it's very unlikely that someone else would ever consider it worth stealing.

By this time Angela had hit the wall and needed the support of an air conditioned toilet. We went back to the hotel, which was fortunately quite close to have a half hour's AC comfort before heading out to lunch, which Angela skipped.

We decided to give the Reunification Palace a miss, fearing another museum cop out.

On our way out in the morning we had passed the first pie shop we've seen in Vietnam. This particular pie shop is either a tentative foot in the asian market for Brumbies, or it's a knock off copy (called Crumbs). Either way, the kids were all desperate for an Australian beef pie and they weren't disappointed.
We went to the day markets for adult lunch where Kyra and Ron opted for the pho. I wasn't really hungry - the heat has that effect on me. I did manage to get a cool beer in though.

We then went off shoe shopping (again), which was partially successful.  Kyra and I then went off to hunt for the Saigon Ginkgo outlet, while the others went back to AC comfort. We were out to buy some more tees and shorts which were a bargain compared to home. It started raining on the way there which cooled things down a little, but just like Brisbane ten minutes after it stopped raining things were twice as unpleasant as before. We snuck in a coffee before heading back to the hotel.

Back to the night markets for dinner and we were a lot more restrained this time, with the total cost being about $5 a head.

Looking forward to our Mekong delta tour tomorrow, but are dreading the heat. Angela's feeling a lot better this evening, so hopefully all should be good for our final big adventure off the beaten track.

Cu Chi reprise

This is by way of an addendum to yesterday's post, where I was tired and left a bunch of stuff out that I forgot and I really think you should know. That and the fact that my fellow travellers are getting really picky if I miss stuff out.

1. Ho Chi Min city is only called that by the Northerners (who apparently speak with a funny accent just like in good old blighty. It all just sounds foreign to me. I certainly haven't noticed any Vietnamese with yorkshire accents). The Southerners have always called it Saigon, so I was correct to use that in my posts, all thanks to lazy swyping.

2. On the way to Cu Chi you pass through hundreds of acres of rubber tree plantations. These are relatively new, about 20-30 years old. The reason they are no longer growing rice is that the ground is so polluted with agent orange that they cannot safely do so. Rubber trees are one plant that seems resistant to dioxins and of course you don't eat it, you turn it into tyres.  Each morning, usually before sunrise, they visit every tree in the plantation and cut the trunk in two places to harvest two small cups of rubber sap a day from each tree. Massively labour intensive, but still economically viable, which goes to show just how cheap labour is over here.

3. One of the other sights we had at Cu Chi was the manufacturing of rice paper. Apparently they did a lot if this in the tunnels because it was an easy portable form of food that doesn't go off.  They would eat it like we do biscuits.  The rice is ground into rice flour then mixed with water and ladelled onto a waffle plate type of thing for a few seconds. And you know that pattern you get on the dried rice paper circles? That's because the cake of rice is then turned out onto woven bamboo screens so they can be sun dried. Now you know.

4. One of the other fun things we got to do was to fire off a few rounds of AK 47 ammo.  Callum, Christopher and Ruby were really looking forward to this, but they weren't allowed to take part.  It was a surprisingly noisy affair and everyone had ear defenders on. Jonah had his CoD moment firing a real gun for the first time.  They used to allow hand guns as well, but a Korean tourist committed suicide one year, so they had to stop doing that. The rifles and machine guns they had here were strapped loosely to a wooden frame, which reduced the kickback somewhat.
One side effect of the firing range was that while we wandered around the site of the tunnels, you had this constant chatter of gun fire in the background. It certainly added to the atmosphere of the place with the sound of gun fire resounding through the jungle.

5. Last, but not least, a blog post wouldn't be complete without another dig at the Russians.  This time it was a horrendously drunk young guy dressed in tight yellow shorts and singlet.  He wasn't as fat as his presumed father who could obviously take his drink better. He was just dozing off as his wife went through the market stalls. The son fell off a stool he was sitting on somehow managing to lose a thong, which probably flew into the air onto the top of a nearby stall.
We were then treated to the scene of the father trying to drag his lump of a son off the floor and make him stand still, which was nigh impossible. He staggered around looking for his lost thong before (we presume), his father sent him back to the hotel for another drink to calm his nerves. Lopsided wearing one thong and clutching a small plastic bag containing some trinket he'd bought from a vendor somewhere, he staggered off back through the night markets.
The kids of course, thought all if this was fascinating and almost lost interest in the fake soccer strips we were trying to buy.

There endeth the addendum. Now all I've got to do is today's, which was a little slower.

Cu Chi

Woohoo, bacon for breakfast! It was wrapped in little parcels, however, so it wasn't real bacon.

Another early start to catch the bus to Cu Chi where the Viet Cong had their headquarters in the underground tunnels around Saigon.

We turned up at the front desk promptly at 8am to catch the bus only to find that the receptionist had not actually booked the trip for us. A quick exchange of dong later and we were booked in and waiting for the bus to arrive.

Our fantastic tour guide, Han, had excellent English and filled us in on much that we had been questioning during the trip our of the city to Cu Chi.

To our delight, she agreed with our conclusions about Russians - the Vietnamese think they are rude, fat, arrogant and smelly. There was an enclave north of Saigon that they had set side for them, but someone started flying them from Moscow to Nha Trang, which is traditionally a Vietnamese holiday spot.

The Vietnamese are born to ride scooters. Their first scooter trip is as a three day old baby clutched to the chest of the mother as she rides home from the hospital. The top 3% of the population are the wealthiest and are the ones who own cars. It's very hard to break into that top 3% because there's a lot of corruption in government and you have to know the right people to get the well paid jobs.

As a tour guide, she pays $150 per month for renting a room in the city (no kitchen and a shared bathroom).That's half her salary. If you're single, you have just a coffee for breakfast and eat dinner from street vendors for about $3.

It's very hard to buy houses; mortgages are hard to get without security. Most people live with three generations in one house. Only younger people from outside the city rent rooms. To buy a house you need gold. They buy piles of $2,000 gold ingots from the banks to exchange the money.

The tour around the Cu Chi tunnels was fascinating. The ingenuity of the tunnelers to hide their presence from the US soldiers was amazing. As well as the hidden entrances above ground, they had numerous tunnels opening under water in the Mekong river that were used as entrances and a means of disposing of the soil dug out. In other places soil would be disposed of in the numerous bomb craters. Air breather tubes were made from bamboo and hidden in tree stumps. These you could hardly see. They made fake ones that were far more obvious and some were mined to kill the troops who examined them. In all the tunnels stretch from the Cambodian border to Saigon, total length is about 250 km. 

The tunnels themselves were tiny. They were dug out of the clay by hand using small hoes. None of them go in straight lines, they meander to offer protection from bombs and make invasion more difficult.  Only the kids went down them, we didn't fit. And these tunnels had been widened by 50% for the tourists. The photo of Jonah in the hidden exit gives you some idea of the size, but again this exit has been enlarged.  These hidden trap doors were about 25 cm x 15 cm.  They were deliberately small to prevent access by the broad shouldered Americans. The entrance tunnels were about 30 cm wide, quite often with smaller choke points where any invading soldiers could be ambushed.
There were also many different and vicious traps laid down both in the tunnels and above ground. These mostly consisted of barbed nails of various designs whose intent was to impale and maim, not to kill. The American troops would then attempt to help their stricken comrade and get ambushed by the VC. Interesting to note that there was nothing in the museum yesterday that mentioned these brutal inhumane traps.

There were generally three levels of tunnels. The top level was where most of the living was done, but these were the least safe. The tunnels had trap doors to the lower levels that could be closed to prevent chemical weapon attacks. They even had special bomb shelters with triangular roofs accessed from the lowest level.

It must have been a horrible place to eke out an existence, but that's exactly what 16,000 people did during the war. The fact is, there was no choice. You lived this way or you died.

Han was such a good guide that we booked her for our trip to the Mekong delta on Friday. The hotel apparently gets a 40% cut of the tour fee, which is a little excessive; booking direct costs us less and we get a much more interesting tour off the beaten track.

Went into the night markets for dinner. The night markets don't start setting up until 6.30 pm. It takes less than half an hour to set up a fully functioning kitchen complete with wood fired barbecues and a dining room with tablecloths and cutlery. We had far too much food to eat and surprisingly it was more expensive than the restaurant the previous night.

Off to see some more museums tomorrow - completing the walking tour we started yesterday. And I think there's even more shopping planned.

S-S-S-S-S-Saigon, Saigon, S-S-S-S-S-Saigon, Saigon

Tuesday

Where would we be without Paul Hardcastle.

Breakfast in Saigon was a little disappointing. So far I've managed to keep my bowels mostly in check with a good old fried egg and bacon baguette every morning.  The Lavender Hotel in Saigon only has omelettes for eggs and no bacon.  Yes, I know it's not very adventurous, but after 46 years I know what works for me.  Don't get me wrong, it was still very nice, but in my book, you only eat fried rice in the morning when you have a bad hangover. And even then it's warmed up, not cooked fresh.

So we headed of for a city walking tour at 9.30 much to the disgust of Jonah who insisted he was still in bed at 9am (when he was in fact tucking into pancakes). Go teenage late nights. "I couldn't sleep", well no kidding, if you're sitting on your gayPod until 11.30 at might you won't be able to go to sleep!

And I'm pleased to say within 50m of the hotel was a man stacking far too many glass jars onto the back of his scooter. Our faith in the optimism of the Vietnamese scooterati has been restored.

First stop was the art museum. As you know, art museums are very careful about how they present their art and protect it, with low UV lighting and climate controlled air conditioning. Let me go on the record now, that's a load of bollocks. The Fine Art Museum of Ho Chi Min city is in a fine old solid building with wide open doors and windows and where the lights were working, they weren't low UV.  It was quite cool and dark on the South side (mainly due to a power outage thanks to renovations) and flash photography made up for the lack of light (like that can ever really harm a painting).  But on the sunny North side where the sun was streaming through the doors and windows, the pictures were quite clear to see.
It was quite pleasant to stand in the humid roar of traffic and contemplate the beauty of the years presented before us.

Outside the builders were carefully working on the scaffolding re-rendering the building, wearing helmets, safety boots and harnesses. Bollocks to that too. They were bare foot, hanging off the rails like it was some big climbing frame in the schoolyard (but 10m in the air), in t-shirts and shorts, waving at the gaping tourists below.

From there we went to grab a drink and ice cream from Xcream, where they had Larue export beer and New Zealand ice cream. And a price for the cool freshener towels that we all thought were complimentary. Hey ho, we won't fall go that one again!

We carried on with the tour which headed towards the hotel where Angela's rellos were staying so we dropped in to say goodbye. We came out of that with a chocolate cake beating mouldy fruit, but it was still edible, apparently (an unwanted 40th birthday present).

Ruby ceremoniously picked up the cake with a glint in her eye and we headed off for some lunch, which was just a couple of blocks away. 

Blocks in Saigon, however, are much bigger than others we've come across in Vietnam. Several hours later we rocked up to Thai Express. Yes, we were still in Vietnam, but we fancied a change and it was the first reasonable looking place we came across. Not only that, but they had some beautifully chilled towels to freshen up with. And yes, we are slow learners, because we had to end up paying for those too.
Lunch was a little more than we wanted to pay, but it was good food and still way cheaper than home. The chocolate cake was tried, but was deemed to be an unhealthy option. We left it on the table for the staff to dispose of which confused them no end. Maybe they thought it was a tip. That'll teach them to charge us for towels.

After lunch we cut our walk short and took a taxi to the War Remnants Museum, which we figured may be a little more interesting for the kids to see than yet more streets.

What a fascinatingly horrific place to visit. It told of the war crimes and brutality committed by the American soldiers in the Vietnam war with no holds barred. There were parts we couldn't let the kids in to see, they were so photographically graphic. The terror and plain viciousness reigned down on the Vietnamese people by the US was both unbridled and excessive. Vietnam is still paying for it today with unexploded ordinance and birth defects due to dioxins left over from the chemical warfare and deforestation. 
This was, however, a very one sided view of the Vietnam war.  There's no mention of the brutal acts of the Viet Cong against US personnel, nor of the wholesale slaughter of South Vietnamese citizens who didn't fit in with the communist ideals, after the war.

I guess we really expect better from the most powerful nation in the world, which purports to uphold freedom and democracy for all, and are more forgiving of a third world country that really "doesn't know any better". 
In the end, of course, there are no winners; just innocent families on both sides paying the price for a bad shake of the dice in an all too real game of Risk.

We spent a good two hours looking around the museum before heading back to the hotel, humbled, teary and feeling a little bit dirty.

We assembled at the Bannings for pre-dinner drinks, which we decided would continue until the kids knocked on the door. Finally the knock came and we shouted "Go Away!" as all good parents would. There came a second knock and Ron checked through the spyhole. He assumed it was Ruby because he couldn't see anyone and he put on the door chain and opened the door a couple of inches to make fun of her. Much to his embarrassment it was the maid providing a torch for tomorrow's trip to the Cu Chu tunnels and asking if he needed more towels. Why four people should need protecting from a tiny maid bearing a torch and some towels, is a question likely to confuse her for weeks.

We went back to Mon Hue again for dinner, this time with the Bannings. All the kids went for the beef noodle soup - we truly have an iPho generation. Food was excellent again.

Off to see the Cu Chu tunnels tomorrow morning, which were built to hide the Vietnamese from the US bombing during the war.

Nha Trangski to Saigon

Monday

Another transit day. Got to kill a few hours before heading back down the winding coast road to Cam Ranh airport and off to Ho Chi Min city (which from hereon in is referred to as Saigon, because it's easier to type).

Ron and Angela took Christopher off on a trip to The Big Budda That Is Visible From The Hotel.  Being later risers and far less organised, the Williams's stayed behind to pack bags and go to the supermarket for lunch to eat at the airport. I stayed out of that because I was suffering from Sheraton belly. All down, fortunately. 

The hotel couldn't believe that we wanted only one taxi to the airport, but we knew we could fit everything in, and indeed we did, albeit with a little less comfort. Fortunately the driver was not as suicidal as our previous one and it was almost a pleasant ride.

We sat on the floor under the stairs to the departure gates and ate lunch. This was so we could still keep our water to drink.

Managed to play Confuse a Hostie to great effect when boarding. She asked Callum and Ruby where they were from and how old they were; as I went past I said "and I'm from Australia too and I'm 46!" She looked at me with a worried grin on her face.

We had commented at breakfast on the total absence of Russians (we even had proper muzak instead of Russian muzak), but never fear they appeared on the plane just in front of us in a cloud of cigarette stench, backward baseball caps and too short shorts. Interestingly, there was a new variation of badly bleached blonde bimbo with real eye brows.

So we arrived at Saigon after a very short flight. The taxi boss lady took one look at us demanding an eight seater taxi and then walked off to talk to someone she could help. We ended up with two taxis; Callum went with the Bannings and we left them in a cloud of dust, trying to squeeze their baggage into the taxi.

Saigon has twice as many scooters as Hanoi. Here, however, the streets (and pavements) are wider and they seem to have a mostly cars lane and a mostly scooters lane. Buses just go down the middle with their horns blaring. To complicate things, school had just finished spilling thousands of scooter riding kids onto the roads. Somehow the Bannings made it to the hotel before we did.

Scooter riders don't seem to have the same blatant disregard for maximum laden weight on the scooters here. It could be that the cops apply the rules more diligently, but we shall see, time will tell.

The hotel is quite pleasant and unlike Hanoi, this hotel has a fire escape. It's very lavendery (the hotel that is, not the fire escape). Very. It's everywhere. Bathrooms, paintings decals, bedrooms, not the toilet paper though. I've checked that already.

I was a bit insulted when I was the last one in the lift and it complained the lift was overloaded, but I'm guessing it's built for Vietnamese (11 people / 750kg). Lucky there's no Russians here.

The Bannings went out for a night on the town with Angela's cousin who happens to be in town at the same time as us. I know not what they do.

The Williams's ventured out to find a restaurant recommended by the hotel receptionist, but we got about a block away before finding Mon Hue where the food looked colourful and was certainly cheap; what's more it was full of locals.

It turned out to be one of the best meals we've had in Vietnam (see photos). It was kind of like Vietnamese tapas. Hue style rice with babies claims had me a bit worried at first, but it all turned out good in the end. They had lots of small dishes a well as a few mains. There seems to be quite a few of the same restaurant around, so it could well be a franchise, but nothing like the quality we'd get at home from franchise food outlets. Callum had an enormous bowl of beef and noodle soup which had a beautiful flavour and he managed to eat practically all of it, hardly complaining at all.

Total cost was $30 including drinks, which is an absolute bargain given the quality.

Tomorrow we're doing the Lonely Planet walking tour of Saigon, so a nice close restaurant for dinner would go down well...hmmn let me think...