Day 11, 29th January

Woke up at 6am this morning as booked on the sleeping bus for Saigon (HCMC) at 7:30. Had our free brekkie and were waiting patiently in the hotel lobby.....as you can imagine the buses here are never really on time and at 9am had still not arrived we had been discussing yesterday how much a flight would be instead since it only takes an hour to fly instead of the 22-26 hours on the bus. Not knowing we had to fly from Denang we couldn't find a price. Reception rang an agency and told us there was a flight available tonight at 22:50 for $45 each. We mulled this over but in the mean time we were told the bus was 5 mins away. Waiting on the curb with our bags the bus rolled up full of people looking absolultly hanging we both took one look shook our heads and said shall we fly. Lol think we are not exactly hardened travellers just yet!!!

After paying for our flight and taxi to the airport with the hotel we popped into the town for lunch and a last wonder along the river. Back to the hotel lobby after to wait for our taxi pick up at 7 pm making the most of the free internet to up load my pic's.

Taxi driver arrived a little early and after checking we had everything we were on our way to the airport the driver seemed friendly pointing out places of interest along the way....this soon changed when he stopped the car about 5 mins away from the airport saying he had no money and we had to pay 15,000 VND to get into the car park the atmosphere was getting a bit hairy as he started to shout at us he was just a foreign driver and didn't understand (of course i shouted back). We tried to get him to call the hotel which he wouldn't do because he knew he was trying to con money out of us for something we'd already paid!!! Mel saw an aeroplane so we made him get our bags out of the car and walked not to far to the actual terminal. There was no way we were paying him anymore money!

Checked in but flight was delayed until 23:30.

Day 12, 30th January

Arrived Ho Chi Minh City at around 1:30 this morning. Grabbed a taxi and were on our way to the hotel we had looked at previously although we hadn't booked a room there was availability and had a 24 hour reception. When we got there shutters were down on most of the buildings so thought it was closed.....(we later found out that most of the hotels do this but there are people sleeping on z beds to let you in you just have to bang on the shutters or ring the bell lol). The road we were on had lots of bars and people so didn't take us long to find two helpfull drunk guys who said there hotel was up the road and we could see if they had a room....unfortunatly there was no room at the inn wondered not too much further to another, this hotel was a mistake we had to pay $20 a night and for a room with no window it smelt horrible and after finding ants in the bed didn't sleep too well!!

We skipped the breakfast included chucked on our clothes from the night before and set off looking for a new hotel for the next two nights. After talking to a couple they recommended one but that was full, went in to a few before picking the Pheonix 74 deciding factor was that we had a window and that the room looked much better than the others (although oddly the toilet is in the shower....lol) and at $15 a better deal than the last.

Decided to go for a look around the city we had been walking for about 15 mins when a guy on a motorbike pulled up along side us and tried to mug Mel for her handbag luckily the guy in our hotel warned us before we left to make sure our bags were across us and as she had hold of it the guy rode off without it!! Rather traumatic but turned out ok in the end!!!!!

Went to the Ben Than market where we both bought new bags lol and ended up at the Saigon Skydeck a new office building that has on floor 52 a viewing platform over the whole city! An amazing view and so many buildings due to the population being 85 million.

We walked back to a bar near our hotel where they had a rooftop bbq area we sipped Daquiri's and had a guy cook our food on a skillet in front of us. We both went for something a liitle different wild pig it was really yummy. Met a guy from Canada called George. Ended up in the bar downstairs where we also met a Swedish guy who's english was nearly better than ours. Soon realised it was 3 am and thought it was bed time!!!