The flight back to Saigon was comfortable. Business class no less and about the only time we can afford to fly that way. We were the only ones in the front of the plane. It was all very lah-dee-dah with material placemats, personal service and plenty of legroom. Sue commented that she could get used to that but Vietnam would be about the only place we could afford it.

The Liberty Central in Saigon is literally a stones throw from the Bin Tanh markets and is very comfortable. Brekkie buffet was pretty good too. Steve was perusing the selection when he hears "Steve!". Ginning at him from across the counter was Tom, a mate from BJJ. He says "Dad, look who it is". Toms dad is Guy and the builder that did our loungeroom renovations a couple of years ago. Turns out they've been in Vietnam about the same time as us and flying back to Aus the same day. What are the odds. We swapped stories about our adventures. They beat our one about the bloke with the fridge on the back of the bike..... they spotted a dolphin! We'd been told they eat anything that moves and they weren't wrong.

We returned to the markets to pick up a few last minute things we didn't want to drag around the country, namely conical hats and other bits & pieces. This time we returned as seasoned hagglers so there was no more paying top dollar anymore. Our rule of thumb is halve what they say and haggle upwards from there. If they insist on high prices, smile, shake your head and start to walk away. 9 times out of 10 you'll get close to your opening bid. Another thing they noticed is they won't let you out of their sight if they smell a sale. We were short on cash so Steve had to go to the ATM. The lady insisted that Sue stay in her shop.
Daniel & Steve joked on the way back that mum had probably been talked into spending more. Sure enough there was one more thing added to the list. Apparently there could have been much more but Sue stood her ground.

One thing we won't miss in Vietnam is the need to drink only from commercially sealed plastic water bottles. Its really awful but unless you want to spend over 50% of your holiday in the hotel on the dunny, there's not much choice. We boiled the kettle a few times to get us by but the amount of plastic being used by tourists in countries like this must be staggering. We saw lots of people collecting up huge big bags of these so I guess they must make a little money taking them in for recycling?

We saw a lot more people begging in the streets today and not just the shabby homeless people. Lots of people were severely disfigured with scarring from horrendous burns. We gave one lady on the street a small donation.

On our first visit to Saigon we stopped into a wooden boat shop. They had an amazing display, right from tiny little ones in bottles up to massive things about a metre long and with amazingly intricate detail.
We'd been quoted about $100 for a relatively basic one on our last visit and the bloke remembered us. We'd told him we'd be back in 10 days and he was pleased we'd kept our word. The thing was, we'd seen very similar models in Hoi An for $65 so we were going to have to haggle hard to get a low price. After much debate we managed to get the price we wanted but he made us swear to secrecy when recommending our friends. If anyone asks... we paid $100.

Five minutes before the driver turned up to take us to the airport, Steve noticed that the conical hats we'd bought were full of tiny little bugs! Get that past customs? No way Jose! We decided to try to at least make an attempt to fumigate them so after much discussion with the driver, the porter and the hotel receptionist, we managed to explain that we needed the driver to stop somewhere on the way to buy bug spray to spray the hats. A massive can of Raid was acquired for $3 and we meticulously sprayed out the hats and the boat box to make sure we weren't bringing any greeblies back.

Flight to Singapore was ok - only 2 hrs. Once in Singapore we dawdled a bit but too much and ended up having to haul arse to get to our gate. As we boarded the place we realised that this was one of the A380 Airbus. The really super-duper big ones. Its huge! We were seated about in line with the trailing edge of the wing and once we were up in the air, we couldn't see the ground over the leading edge. It seems quieter too. The flight was about 7 hours so we watched some movies and managed to doze off.

Overall this was a fantastic trip and we've already made plans to return. The food was fantastic and every day something crazy happened. The Vietnamese people are lovely and had very little issue getting around. We'd highly recommend this country for anyone planning a trip.