See Saigon from the back of a motorbike. It’s the only way, I assure you. But strangely enough, even with the bikers calling out to you every step of the way through the town, I don’t think I saw even one other Westerner riding one. It really is a shame too, because, as my dear Jules will strongly agree, motorcyles are such a BLAST. (Happy Birthday to Julie!)

I arrived in Saigon,(*ahem* Ho Chi Minh City) found myself a cool little hotel and settled in. Quick note, I have yet to find a real, honest to goodness hostel in Asia. Everything I believe will be a hostel turns out to be a hotel. Sad! My first day out in the city I decided to grab myself a motorbike driver and have him cart me around the city (Angkor Wat style) all day long, thus saving myself the hassel of public transportation. I think if that service is avaliable in every city, I might just continue, because it was a complete success. I managed to see a Vietnamese History Museum, a War Museum (five stars, it was incredible, incredibly depressing as well), a couple of pagodas and some other religious buildings in the area before heading home.

Day number two in Saigon I signed up to take a mini tour out to see the Chao Dai temple some 100 km away, and the CuChi Tunnels. The temple was quite cool looking, and home to one of the more bizarre religions I’ve encountered. It’s a mix of Buddhism, Taoism, Confusism and Catholicism. They worship all of those, and if I understood our guide correctly, Victor Hugo is one of their Saints. I just don’t get it. But we did get to hang out and hear some of the service, a lot of singing and chanting that I of course did not understand, but in that temple it was quite cool, and everyone was in their colorful garb. It was quite a sight.

The next stop was at the CuChi Tunnels. I don’t really feel like going into too many details, so I’ll just say its basically where a bunch of Vietnamese CuChi Guerillas lived during the war, and when there was danger they would crawl into these tunnels that they had carved into the ground. Us visitors got to crawl through them and I thought I was going to suffocate and die a claustrophobic death. Well, not really, but the walls were quite close, and instead of being cool, as I had expected underground tunnels to be, it was very warm. But maybe it was just close proximity to all the other guests. The tunnel we went through was even built double sized, just for visitors to see. My shoulders and hips would have doomed me to a very dark end in one of the original tunnels, if I’d even got that far in to begin with. 

Our guide was really fun too. He speaks really good English and has obviously been practicing with travellers for quite some time, because when we had a long-ish bus ride ahead of us, he told we should “take a nap, get 40 winks, have a kip!” Then when we were slow he told us to “hurry up! Shake a leg! Get a wriggle on!” (That last one is an Aussie one apparently.)

Then at our lunch break I had another perfect example of something that the Vietnamese do that I haven’t found in other places. It happened the first day, when that lady helped me with my food then fed it to me, but it has happened on a lower scale more and more. When my food arrived, a guy standing nearby saw that I had rice and pointed out the soy sauce to me. I said thanks and proceded to eat without it. He repeated that there was soysauce and set it in front of me. I repeated my thanks. When I still wasn’t using it, he picked up the bottle, and was about to dump it all over my food before I caught him first. Its like, if you’re not doing it their way, you’re doing it the wrong way, and they are just confused if you don’t find their way necessary. Interesting.

Moving on. I took a night train out of Saigon last night, meeting two very sweet Vietnamese twins on the way, and am now in Nha Trang on the coast. And I’m going Scuba diving tomorrow! Though it just won't be the same without Marilyn and Rick....