The group was heading out to the Cu Chi tunnels today so we did our own thing that morning. We wandered through the back streets behind the hotel and found a place for coffee. We decided that the Bahn Mi from the previous day was so good that we needed to go back. Once again, the queue was out the door. It was well worth the wait and we enjoyed another helping.

We walked across the road and cut through a nearby park on the way to the War Remnants Museum. There were lots of people enjoying the space doing Tai Chi, jogging or just generally relaxing in the park. The noise was significantly lower in the park, as was the temperature. The garden caretakers had sprinklers running and it was significantly cooler.

Entry into the museum went fairly smoothly and this time we opted for the audio tour. Each display was numbered and the audio recording went into a lot of detail about the history of Vietnam up to and beyond the war. It wasn't only the USA in that war; Australia, NZ, South Korea and the Philippines all committed troops and resources. Although we had been through the museum before, the suffering was still gut-wretching to see.

We received a message from Chenda that they were back from Cu Chi and there were a few people heading over to the Ben Thanh Street Food Market so we got a Grab across. There were a variety of food stalls here with lots of different cuisines. The most bizzarre was bear meat skewers. Sue reckons it was a mistranslation but it probably was actual bear meat. Freddy pointed out that its quite dangerous for humans to eat it due to parasites. We gave that a big miss.

After a short rest at the hotel, we headed out to the Sky Bar down the road. It was very fancy with staff welcoming us into the building as well as when we got out of the elevator. The views were spectacular.... but so were the prices of the drinks. They may have been the most expensive on the whole trip at $400K each ($24 AUD). It was very windy so all the photo's had us looking very wind-swept.

We ventured off to a local restaurant that Chenda had booked for us. It boasted home-style Vietnamese food and was very nice. We met one of the new travellers joining us for the Cambodian leg of the tour. Adam was a school teacher from the US and was very excited to be joining the tour.

We were a fairly rowdy lot and the resturant was small. Johnathan had been doing some usual light-hearted "Aussie sledging" throughout the dinner and Steve & Sue were giving as much back to him. We noticed 2 women giving us the stink-eye from across the table, and when we all got up to leave, they confronted Johnathan about his Aussie-bashing. He put out his hand to greet them and they refused to take it. We did our best to settle the situation, explaining that we were all friends and there wasn't any malice in the exchanges. They seemed to settle after that and parted on good terms.

We found our way back to Lost In Saigon and sat outside this time. The bar staff explained to Adam that the girls across the road enticing patrons into their various establishments were all trans. We were skeptical that this was true, but we weren't really taken aback. Whether they were or not was inconsequential; the girls all looked extremely beautiful regardless.