Tomorrow I leave Vietnam so I though it was about time I got round to writing about my last three weeks here. I’m going to start at the beginning; our arrival in Saigon – a city that certainly didn’t live up to expectations and was possibly more busy, dirty and smoggy than the other big Asian cities we’ve visited, but without the numerous interesting tourist attractions to make it worth while putting up with constantly dodging badly driven motorbikes and breathing in an unrelenting thick smog!

After a terrible, squashed, uncomfortable mini-bus journey from Phnom Penh and a two hour wait at the border we arrived in Ho Chi Minh city or Saigon, Vietnam already tired and irritated.

Luckily we found nice accommodation in the middle of the backpackers area without too many problems. The accommodation, as we had been told, was more expensive then Cambodia but with a lot more amenities. For the first time since leaving Korea we had a hot shower, air conditioning and a fridge!

By the time we’d settled in it was early evening and chucking down. We wondered a little way down the bustling main street having to walk mainly in the road because the pavement was covered in street sellers and parked motorbikes, and found a nice looking bar for dinner. This bar turned out to be the westerners hang out and, as we later discovered, was a lot more expensive than other places in the area. But the food was good and it only a few doors down from the hotel.

Our second day in Saigon we spent the morning lazing in the room. Emily and I caught up on our diaries whilst Kat spent the whole time inseparable form the new Harry Potter book which, after searching in vain in Cambodia, she finally managed to procure before we’d even found accommodation in Saigon the previous evening.

That afternoon we wondered around the Ben Thanh market where there is supposed to be a fairly gruesome ‘wet’ market although we never managed to find it. However the dried prawns and fish we did pass gave of a fairly pungent and not partially pleasant aroma. We stuck mainly to the souvenir area and it was not long before I’d bought a pretty traditional Vietnamese lacquer-ware and eggshell picture for just $10, we saw the same picture in a factory a few days later for $25!

That evening we went to a cafe up the road from our hotel called Bobby Brewers. This was a very western looking establishment with prices to match. However upstairs they had a cinema showing some of the latest films for free providing you purchased a drink. This was to become a regular evening hang out whilst in Saigon.

On our second full day in Saigon we awoke to rain drumming against the windows and after sitting around for ages not wanting to go out into the miserable weather we eventually decided it was a good day for visiting museums.

The rain eased and we walked the short distance to the Fine Arts Museum which was housed in what once would have been a beautiful French colonial building. However now it would have benefit greatly from a bit of floor polishing and a lick of paint.

Inside some of the art was interesting, the Vietnamese traditionally use egg shell and a number of different textures in their artwork. However most of the upstairs was given over to an exhibition by an artist called Kim Batch. All her work was watercolour on silk, she had the odd interesting painting but most of it was incredibly tedious, with such inspired names as ‘Flowers on a chair’!

Our next stop of the day was an antiques street Kat really wanted to see. Confidently Kat announced she loved antiques shops, to which Emily and I exchanged worried glances knowing the shops would probably be cluttered with junk. After getting lost we eventually found the street just yards from the Fine Arts Museum we’d just left; it was exactly what Emily and I had been expecting – a row of shops full of stuff that looked like junk. Kat seemed suprised at this, clearly when she announced she loved antiques shops she had no idea what they entailed.

Our final stop of the day was the history museum. This had promise but in reality was a bit crap. The small amount of information there was was badly written at best and incomprehendable at worse. We wondered around giving most of the exhibits just a cursory glance. The one interesting exhibit was an incredibly well preserved mummy found in a tomb whilst digging the foundations for an apartment block in Saigon. She had been found accompanied by information claiming she was once a member of the royal family and a Buddhist nun. The mummy was in a glass case and made very eerie viewing. Most of her hair had fallen out but what there was left was long and grey, her fingernails were also long and her yellow skin stretched tightly over her bones.

We left the museum in search of food but thanks to my terrible map reading (although it’s better than both Kat and Emily’s) we ended up going the wrong way along the street. As we walked the street got busier and busier, motorbikes swarmed from all directions making crossing the road almost impossible and we hadn’t seen another person with white skin for ages! Eventually we managed to flag down a taxi to take us back to the backpacker area where we grabbed some food then settled down for the evening watching a film on the comfy sofa in Bobby Brewers, before heading home to bed.

* Posted by j150vsc on 28/08/2007.