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...