First stop in Vietnam was Chau Doc, a quaint little seaside town with a rather unhealthy obsession with motorbikes. Every other shop is a bike shop, how any of them make any business I have no idea! I read before getting here that Vietnamese people don't like westerners and are generally rude to them and try to rip them off... which might be the case for the rest of the country (yes I'm just gonna stereotype them all!) but couldn't be further from the truth here, I think this might be the most friendly place so far!

We set off on another cyclo tour as soon as we got there, except this time we sat behind the bike bit so we were a bit higher up which made us stand out a bit more... as you could tell from the fact that pretty much every building had someone waving at us or a kid screaming "HELAAW" as we passed... I felt like the queen. We were ambushed by a little mob of kids when we got off and we all prepared ourselves to reject whatever bracelets they were trying to sell, but nope they just wanted to say hi and pose for the camera! Such a change from Cambodia (their kids were excellent salespeople!)! Anyway the happiness of the kids here was pretty infectious and I enjoyed this cyclo tour a lot more, even when I found out the Canadians had taken motorbikes up to see the sunset instead (intrepid wouldn't let us do that cos people would complain, ugh). Apart from that there wasn't much to do though, me and Janice (one of the Canadians) went for a stroll around town which was nice but it was a pretty chilled stop overall, I really liked it actually.

Next morning was the bus to Ho Chi Minh city (AKA Saigon), a slightly less chilled place to say the least! The thing people go on about most about Saigon is the traffic, and with good reason. There are millions and millions of motorbikes all weaving in and out of each other, and all rules of the road like zebra crossings, indicators, traffic lights, the line in the middle of the road... even pavements, are mere suggestions! Crossing the road is a barrel of laughs.

We were going to be swapping groups here as half of them had only booked for Cambodia, and only Di and Michelle were staying on, so it was our last night as a group. We didn't really make much of it though, the Canadians went home after dinner and the rest of us hung out at a bar for a while attempting to take pictures of smoke coming out of our noses using a shisha... I completely failed at this resulting in millions of photos of me looking retarded and feeling a bit like I'd pass out from all the inhaling... oh what fun. The others went home after that but I really wanted to go out and maybe actually meet some people so me and Tim our tour guide headed out together instead. We went to this bar with a vietnamese band playing where I did some emotional singing to Linkin Park to a bemused looking Tim, chatted to a Vietnamese couple for a bit, then ran into the 'intrepid basic' group who Tim knew the tour leader of. This is the tour I SHOULD have booked onto, seeing as they were all about my age and staying in cheap hostels, my favourite. We followed them to a bar where we drank one bucket and then everything after that is a bit of a blur. I suppose it had been a while!

Next day was our day off cos the next tour didn't start till the day after. I did a bit of exploring around Saigon but there's not a massive amount to see. Everyone says the post office is worth a visit so I trotted over there only to find a slightly more fancy but generally pretty normal post office... wahey! Walked around some parks until the hangover kicked in and I crawled back into bed! We met our new group at 6pm... or when I say group I mean we met the two people who were joining us: an Aussie woman and her elderly mother... making a group of four aussie women who are all much older than I am, and me. Great. It's been pretty clear from the start that I would have been better off planning this myself but this new twist is just depressing, five people isn't even a tour! Been pretty much sulking with myself for this decision since then but I can't be bothered ranting about it now so I'll save it for tomorrow when I'll hopefully be making my escape!