I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday evening after 12 hours of travelling. The border control at Ha Tien was a weird experience as the group of people in the minibus went through together and our passports were stamped without them even confirming we were who our passports say we are. Probably for this reason, my passport was wrongly stamped and I do not have 30 days in Vietnam. My visa was not supposed to expire until the 12th of March and I had planned to fly to Bangkok on the 8th, but I now have to have left by the 4th. This is really quite unfortunate and very annoying as the visa is quite expensive, and it means that I've had to cut Vinh Long out of my travels and will have to take a day or two off somewhere else.

The bus station is quite a few kilometres out of the city centre so I was crowded by moto drivers wanting to drive me in for extortionate amounts. During some of the toilet stops I'd got talking to a couple of Irish backpackers and I knew they'd have to take a taxi as they had massive backpacks (I am travelling very light with just a daysack and a handbag) so I shared a taxi with them and it split the cost considerably. We got dropped off in the main backpacker area and found a guesthouse quickly. One of the biggest downsides about travelling on my own is that I have no one to split room costs with - the Irish couple got a double room for $12 but for a single I had to pay $10. My room is definitely the nicest I've had since I've been travelling though. It's on the 5th floor which is a bit of a pain, but it's got a balcony with views over the city and I have AC and hot water which is such a luxury!

Yesterday I was up early and started walking around the city. I walked to the large Ben Thah Market and then decided to take a cyclo to a few various places. During this time I saw the Municipal Theatre, the People's Committee Building, Notre Dame Cathedral, and I had the Rex and Continental Hotels pointed out to me, both of which are apparantly old and famous from when the Americans where stationed in Vietnam. The most interesting part of the day was the War Remnants Museum which is all about the Vietnamese War. As I was walking around the various rooms I thanked God that I have no American heritage because it really puts them to shame, and I heard many American tourists gasp in shock when they read some of the information. There are boards describing the horrific acts that American GIs are accussed of, including one by the ex-senator Bob Kerry in which he is described as murdering a whole family. Another room is dedicated to Agent Orange, mainly its use in Vietnam and the effects of it upon society. It devastated the land and thousands of people are living with the side effects as it continues to be passed down genetically through families.

Next my cyclo driver dropped me off at the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City and said he had to leave to go to another job. I took out the money that I had agreed to pay him at the start of the ride, but he tried to charge over 10 times as much per hour which was a total scam! I suppose I've been lucky so far not to have been scammed or robbed, so it was bound to happen sooner or later. All the way through the second museum I was so angry at myself for letting it happen that I wasn't really able to take much of the information on the exhibits in, but it didn't really seem to be very interesting. There was quite a mix of information, from pottery in Vietnam during the Bronze age to the type of soil in the city.

By this stage of the day I felt like I'd had rather a lot of culture so I walked into the shopping part of the city and went to a Vietnamese restaurant for beef pho (noodle soup to you and me). Traditionally this is what they have for breakfast, eating it with chopsticks which I found rather hard. I had a look in a few shopping centres, and on the top floor of a designer one along with stores such as Jimmy Choo and Just Cavelli I found a Debenhams!! It was pretty small, and because the Vietnamese are so tiny the clothes size range was very limited, but it was so unexpected to see it so far from home!!

The traffic in HCMC is crazy, more so than anywhere else I've ever been! Similar to in Cambodia, they have pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, but no one seems to know what they are for, and standing waiting for the traffic to cease is futile. Over the past couple of days I developed a strategy which has worked quite well so far; find a local crossing the road and keep close while they cross!

This morning I got a moto to Cholon, HCMC's China Town. I was expecting it to be like the London version, and so I was very dissappointed when I found it to be just a few busy streets selling red lanterns and not much else. I walked around for a bit but it was really boring so I got a moto back into the main centre and wandered around the shops for a while. I found a cinema showing the recently released English language films for only $3 so I went to a showing earlier this evening, and it was only after coming out of the packed room of young couples that I realised it was Valentine's Day!