Date: 7th June 2011

Place: Ho Chi Minh City

Weather: really hot again

We were going to leave today but we heard that a load of people were meant to be checking into the guesthouse so we thought we would stick around to see if we could meet some new people. We had a bit of a lie in but got up just in time for breakfast. Thomas joined us today and we decided to go for an explore of the city on foot. We went to a park where the reunification palace was. The park was really nice and we had a good walk around there looking at all of the flowers. The palace wasn't very impressive though it just looked a bit like a school.

After that we went to have a look for the Notre Dame Cathedral. Since Vietnam used to have a lot of French in it they built the cathedral to look the same. That was a bit more impressive. The best part though was going for a coffee next to it. I had a frappucino style thing that was lovely and cold. I didn't realise until I was drinking it though just how expensive it was! It was 70,000 dong which is about $3.50 and the equivalent of 3 meals!!

Once we had finished there we left Thomas so that he could go to the War Museum whilst I went with Carm to the market. It had some really nice bits in it like all fancy jewellery and nice bags. Thankfully I didn't have much money on me so I wasn't tempted to buy anything. On the way out though we took the wrong street on the roundabout and ended up going in the opposite direction of our guesthouse. We were lost for hours when the market was literally 5 minutes from where we wanted to be. Still we can now say we have seen most of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh).

We went out for Sushi that night in the really nice area of Saigon. It's next to the river and actually looks like a city with sky scrapers and everything! The Sushi place was really posh and so tasty! At the end of our meal a Vietnamese guy came over to us and asked if he could talk English with us so he could practise. We said of course and he bought his brother over as well who couldn't speak any English. They gave us some of their rice wine which is absolutely disgusting and so hot!

The Vietnamese guy we were talking too was hilarious. He always did a funny smile after saying something and would constantly go hmmm with a weird expression. Its hard to explain on here. We also found out that his brother is a billionaire and is practically famous in Vietnam. He owns a real estate company and has a private car and driver and was covered in gold.

They showed us where a cool club was called Gossip. Ive never seen anything like it! It's where the celebs of Vietnam go because it is expensive in their terms to get in (about £4). Our friends camera got confiscated because youre not allowed to take pictures. They all knew the Vietnamese guy as soon as he came in and sorted us all out with fruit platters and drinks that they refill for you as soon as you take a sip. It was funny walking in though because they were playing a remixed version of happy birthday!

We stayed there and danced for a while, their dancing was really funny. After they did a sort of raffle thing there where people could win loads of money the guys said to us they were going for dinner now. This was at about 2am! They took us to a posh restaurant where we had wine and noodles. It was the poshest after night out food I had ever had. At the end of the night I couldn't believe it had all happened. We joked saying we thought they were the mafia because the billionaire always had three men around him that were all covered in gold as well and had Gucci covers for their phones and everything. A crazy night out!