We are waiting on the bus to leave a bus station near a new Japenese built bridge which links the Ho Chi Minh side of the Mekong to this Can Tho side of the river. We are towards the back of the bus and I'm stuck next to a local man who is wriggling around and contesting the no man's land leg space between us. His current tactic is to adopt the birth- giving woman / leaping frog pose and to slowly extend the pincer movement until my legs are pushed into the aisle. He's an expert! It's been a few days since I last wrote. Hopefully, the next three hours or so on the bus back to Ho Chi Minh City will give me the opportunity to catch up on this blog. We shall see whether the man will the limited leg length but thrusting leg span will allow me enough space to do so. Oops! A large mound in the road just gave me the chance to manouevre my arms a little sideways to reclaim a few lost centimetres in the battleground. Ugh! He's just splattered a fair percentage of a violent sneeze onto the adjacent window. I will now restrict my gaze to the right! And now, the bus conductor....remember those!....has volumed up to maximum the syrupy stuff thats spouting out of the speakers above my head. A duet by Cliff Richards and Daniel O'Donnell singing about their love for each other would be less challenging to listen to! Anyway, I'll start here with the second half of Monday's activities (4th July) in Ho Chi Minh. We awoke slightly reticent from our afternoon naps but in time to meet three students in their early twenties who were waiting for us at 5 p.m. astride their motorbikes outside the fancily frontaged Edenstar Hotel. We had booked with the Free Guided Tours company for their evening food tour.......riding pillion on these students' motorbikes. Katy, Bill and Lang were to be our guides. As smily and sweet-natured as they come but they quickly exposed us to the non-virtual Mario-Cart world that are the streets of Saigon as they zipped and zapped us away to our first eating spot. No animals were harmed on this occasion and we arrived exhilarated at the fairly close to death experiences we witnessed on the back of the motorbikes. Perhaps I exaggerate a liittle? Caitlin though was smiling like a teenager with free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert and was demanding good reasons from Alyson.... she knows better than to debate such issues with me....why she should not have a scooter to skate back and to from school. Mm! The first location to sample the local food was The Saigon Vegan which is an unpretentious gem. Lovely unpronounceable food but delicious. Ginger, lemongrass, rice and tofu there in abundance. We paid most of the bill and should have paid for it all but were a little slow out of the blocks with recognising the difference between a 5000 and a 500000 dong note. We're Vietnamese millionaires with just the few notes in our wallets here. Onwards then with the lovely threesome tearing towards the Saigon Post Office and The Catholic Cathedral with the increasingly over-confident passengers beaming like we do when we've just come off some hair-raising ride at a location such as Alton Towers. Before attempts at humour arise in the minds of those who are aware that my days of possessing flowing fair locks of hair have long gone, let me say myself that the experience of raising my hair is literally not within my gift these days! We also stopped near the Saigon Opera House where we bought various exotic fruit flavoured milk teas from a scrum of sellers who attracted scores of youngsters to purchase at the same time. Unusual, but tasty. I tend to avoid ice in my drinks on my travels to distant climes but there is option here. Ice is king! Hopefully, irregular but frequent visits to the nearest ablution zone will not be the result! The highlight of this tour was not the food nor the sights nor the motorbike escapades. They were all amazing but they are insignificant to sharing time with Katy, Lang and Bill. They answer every question patiently and honestly and generously shared their life stories with us. And they were so interested in our lives and so eager to learn about Caitlin's life. Totally uncynical like the nicest Disney characters come to life. The three are intelligent students who volunteer their services as guides for free in order to practise their English and in Bill's case to give him relevant experience when is looking for a job as a tourist guide. Katy and Lang are hoping to work in banks or finance in the near but, as they said, good jobs are very difficult to get without having an influential contact in your prospective place of employment. Education, and in particular good education, is very expensive and although life is far from easy for these three we come to find out in the Mekong Delta that life is much harsher and poverty much more substantial for those who live in the countryside. There is no National Health Service and many families cannot afford good educaion, or any education, for their offspring. And most people who work here, work all day eevery day without any holidays. How lucky we are! The evening with our wonderful and, to ge honest, our safe-driving hosts went too quickly. I think we'd like to it again! At the end we paid our very small bill to cover petrol costs and passed on what we know realise was a pitifully meagre tip. A poor excuse to say that we were unsure of the procedure. We will try to make sure that we are more thoughtful about this in the coming weeks.