So arrived into Vietnam as planned around midday on the 5th. Did my first land crossing, which I've wanted to do for ages, totally different experience to just flying into a country. In terms of land crossings, it was very safe and straight forward. Lots of getting on and off the bus but other than that, it was nice and smooth.

Was a long journey, and in total took 8 hours to get to Ho Chi Minh City. Sat next to a nice Vietnamese girl, who gave me her number and said she would show me round, totally got rejected from her though as got no reply haha.

Checked into The Hideout Hostel Saigon, it's an amazing hostel. Basic, but has a chill out room, good wifi, good en suites in the dorms and a great bar next door, so it is really sociable. It's also in the main backpacker part of district 1. In a 10 bedded dorm and immediately got chatting to three English girls, two of which were traveling together. I've ended up spending my whole time with them while here in Ho Chi Minh.

The city itself is hectic, it has 5 million motorbikes so the traffic is mad. You can hardly walk on the pavements from all bikes lined up, and when the traffic is bad they just drive on them as well. It's a fairly nice city though, lots of well maintained parks and the streets aren't as dirty as I'd imagined them to be. Lots of high-rise office and apartment buildings, very fancy. Still lots being built though. I have been heard a lot of stories of people on motorbikes riding past and snatching your bag. The first evening I was walking about so on edge. Relaxed a lot more now though, you just have to be careful. Other than that everyone is very friendly, someone even helped me with my money when I handed over way too much, it's hard getting use to all this different currency all the time.

At night, there's quite a night life with all the restaurants and bars. It's got it's fair share of girls sat outside bars as well. Not sure why I was so surprised to see that, as I have seen the musical Miss Saigon.

For our first day Charlotte, Emma, Michelle and I all went to see Cu Chi Tunnels, which were used by the Vietnamese army to hide during the French and American war. It was pretty cool to be able to go through some of the tunnels, but other than that the whole place felt very set up and wasn't very informative. The war museum we went to in the afternoon was much better in terms of information, got to see some of the real tanks and planes used in the war, and some pretty graphic photos taken. Some were very upsetting.

As the museum was in the centre we were able to walk back to our hostel which was nice, especially as if I was on my own, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

We went out for dinner and I tired my first Vietnamese meal, banh xeo. Luckily some Vietnamese people were also dining and helped show us how to eat it. I had duck with bean spout things which come in a pancake like thing. You rip bits off and wrap it in lettuce and other leaf things and then dip into a fish sauce. Well I only tried the fish sauce once, vile!!!! The rest of it was ok though.

Yesterday we went to the Mekong river. Not going to lie, wasn't as good as I excepted, water looked pretty dirty. But the day in a whole was good, went to the coconut candy workshop, and a bee keeping farm. Brought some fab peanut and honey bites, and the girls held a massive snake, not my cup of tea. We then took a ride in a traditional boat through the small islets under a green canopy of water coconut trees. That was my favourite part of the day as we all got to wear the Vietnamese hats called Nòn Là. They are great and everyone really does wear them here.

That evening evening we went to a posh roof top bar called Air 360. It had only been opened 2 weeks. I enjoyed a Saigon Sun cocktail while enjoying the magnificent views of the city 21 floors high.

Today was our last day and wanted to just chill. Went to one of the parks and found out you can't sit on the grass or even lie down anywhere. So we found a pretty sweet roof top pool instead to relax by for the rest of the afternoon and I even squeezed in a gym session. Found dinner at a street stall which cost us 60p for some noodles, which we had in the park.

It's been a great few days which has definitely been made by meeting the girls, nice to have some female company again. But it's time to move on again, heading north in the morning.

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