Date: 5th June 2011

Place: Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon

Weather: sunny but also hard rain at one point

We were woken up at about 5am today to go to the border. I had an omelette at a café just outside it since I had no energy at all. The border crossing wasn't too painful and actually fairly quick! We then had another 4 hour ish journey to HCMC.

When we got there we knew we wanted to go to My My Guesthouse because we had heard great reviews about it. Since we had asked the guide on the bus where it was we knew it was close but didn't know which direction. As they do the taxi drivers bombarded us as soon as we got off the bus and since we knew where we were staying we said My My Guesthouse to try to get them off us since we knew it was close. Well the taxi driver claimed it was a 15 minute drive away when it was actually over the road and down an alley!

We found that out later though and ended up staying just around the corner at a place called Kims place which the taxi driver also told us was 10 minutes away and it was over the road. Thankfully we knew he was lying! Whilst we waited for the room to be prepared for all of us we had a wonder around the city.

Because we arrived fairly late we couldn't do anything today because all the tours start at 8am. So whilst the girls went to have some beauty treatments done Carm and I went for some lunch and a coffee. We both tried Vietnamese coffee and it was really nice! Made with sweet milk so I didn't even need sugar J The rest of the day we spent going from tourist place to tourist place bartering them down on deals for lots of trips and a bus pass. I think we managed to save us all $5 which is a lot of money out here!

I tried to sleep later then since I hadn't much on the bus, but since I had had that coffee I just couldn't. I read and read because that normally sends me to sleep so quickly but it just didn't work! So I got up later and got ready for dinner. I have a cold now and something wrong with my stomach I think…but not quite sure. It cant decide if its hungry or super super full. So after dinner I went to bed fairly early but it turned out my mum was online so I spoke to her on skype for the first time in almost 2 months which was sooo nice J.

Just before I crashed out Carm and the girls came back. Apparently Carm had just seen someone have a drive by robbery where they grabbed a girls bag from their motor bike. She held onto it and got herself all grazed from being dragged along. That sort of thing is really common here and I heard about it already, and pick pocketing is bad too so I have got into the habit of keeping my money in my bra. Its pretty handy!!