Thursday, 21st July 2016

An early up and away this morning as we had to catch the eight o' clock Giant Ibis to Ho Chi Minh City. My last chance to have yogurt and passion fruit for breakfast in Cambodia. A new favourite!

Embarassingly for him more than us, our disappearing taxi driver from a few days ago turns up before we leave the hotel. He makes some feeble excuses for his non-return on the day and we smile weakly.

Anyway, we leave Phnom Penh at eight prepared for a long journey. Apparently, trips timetabled as seven hours can in reality be hours longer. But this wasn't! Traffic was quite light and we arrived in seven hours spot on!

Crossing the border from Cambodia to Vietnam was more or less hassle free. We had the multi-entry visa stamps in our passports which were checked by the official on the bus before we were allowed to travel and we moved into Vietnam with the minimum of fuss. A five star recommendation from us to Giant Ibis and the chocolate croissants provided gratis.

A phone call to Alyson's mobile as we were passing through passport control and heaving our backpacks on to the scanning machine caused us some panic though. It was our hotel from Phnom Penh. I had minimal idea about what was being said as there was considerable background noise and the hotel messenger's sing-song pronunciation of the English language was more than difficult to interpret. I had to hand the phone to our bus official who informed us that we had left an i-phone charger cable behind which they would be willing to send on to our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. Back on the wi-fi friendly bus, I emailed the hotel to say that it could be donated to future visitors to the hotel who needed an i-phone charger.

Leaving Cambodia reminded me of our arrival two weeks earlier through passport control. The three of us went to separate booths and we were guided by the officials on the finger printing process. Right fingers were pressed down onto the scanner followed next by the right thumb. The same then with the left hand. Caitlin was struggling however to understand. She did the right fingers correctly but was under the false impression that with that the procedure had been completed. She failed to understand the motives of the official when he continued to speak to her. The words "right thumb down" when said in a Cambodian accent do not always sound like the words "right thumb down" when said in a Welsh accent. Caitlin looked confused at him. His only option was to indicate thumbs visually. To which Caitlin responded with a cheerful two thumbs up and a cheesy smile as though she was responding positively to the man's attempt to develop a fleeting friendship with her. Eventually, she twigged and departed from her new friend clearly cringing at the event in which she had participated.

We hailed a Vinasun taxi with little problem when our bus had docked into its final resting place although we had to stride past a handful of over-eager taxi drivers mingling with us as we withdrew our luggage from the hold of the bus. Trips in the reputable taxis are on the clock in Ho Chi Minh City and you pay what you see. It's always wise to avoid going with a taxi driver who approaches you! That's my theory anyway as it's so easy to be scammed if your wits are not about you! That's why we walked several paces away from the bus and flagged down a Vinasun taxi.

At fourish, we were unwinding in our nice room in the Alcove Hotel. We chose this following excellent reviews on tripadvisor and because it was not too far from the airport. A nice hotel but perhaps so highly rated as they offer guests a lucky draw as an incentive to write a tripadvisor report. Caitlin wrote the report and ended up with something or other as a gift! It'll probably end up at the back of some drawer at home!

There are many positives about the Alcove. It has a lovely ambiance and an appealing roof top restaurant and when there were problems in the room, and there were, service was excellent. The disgustingly blocked toilet was unblocked with haste by the smiling odd-job man who also turned up to unlock the room safe which refused to respond positively to our number combinations on two separate occasions. No bad things to say about the hotel but on reflection we would have chosen to stay at the EdenStar again. Excellent breakfast buffets there together with a lovely roof town swimming pool and it being a few steps into the heart of the city. It deserved, in my opinion, to have as high a rating at least as the Alcove.

Before heading off into the city, we played pool in the roof top restaurant on a somewhat beaten up table with cues that needed chalk on the tips, that is if they had tips in the first place. We also chatted to a New Zealand family who raved about their adventures in Laos. They spent their time off the well beaten paths and their enthusiasm started me thinking about Laos as a future destination. Maybe in a year or two!

We were dropped off by taxi to take up our reservation at the Hum vegetarian restaurant which we had booked a few hours earlier. Unfortunately, the chefs seems to do something to tofu that I don't like and the tofu / bean curd curry was quite disappointing. Brilliant tempura starter, drinks and desserts though. Here we asked if Caitlin's camera had been handed in two weeks ago and got an apologetic negative response. And here we wrote postcards which we should have written two weeks ago.

The customs of Saigon, so unfamiliar and foreign at start of holiday, seemed quite familiar and even mundane by now. Motorbikers trooping down pavements? So what! Walking across the streets as and endless stream of motorbikes hurtle towards you? Easy!

After the meal, we walked a familiar route towards the Post Office and found a yellow post box with two openings - "saigon" above one and "the provinces" above the other. Uncertainly, Alyson advised by me chose "provinces". Another tourist guided by our confidence followed suit only for me to discover some moments later that there was a tourist yellow post box several yards behind us. Never mind! (They did arrive!)

Caitlin, by this stage, was feeling very unwell. Stomach cramps? She was in danger of embarassing herself in public! We hailed a taxi with some vigour and Caitlin was more pleased than usual to arrive back fairly swiftly at our hotel room which had an en-suite attached.

Friday, 22nd July 2016

Our final day!

We were in no rush today and we breakfasted at a slightly later hour than usual in the roof top restaurant. A pleasant breakfast but with a more restricted choice than offered in the Edenstar. Understandably so as this is a smaller hotel.

The hotel again phone for a taxi for us. They are amazingly cheap. Two to three pounds for the twenty minute drive across town in heavy traffic. And the driver was very grateful for us rounding up the payment, adding another 10000 dong, so he got around a 50 pence tip!

The plan was to be dropped off by the Opera House and then wandering down the streets there so that Caitlin could buy last minute presents and souvenirs. Within an hour or two she had her t shirts and pencil case and we were done with the shopping.

Onwards past hawkers with fans which fluttered towards our faces as though that might be an incentive for us to make a purchase, onwards past fried worms stalls, past trip sellers and past sauna sisters and onwards into a shop which displayed a shiny red Vespa. An interested Caitlin was intrigued to know how much this attractive beast would cost her. 78 million dong. Is that around £2500?

As the rains began to fall, we headed for an air-conditioned cinema visit and joined the locals to watch BFG. Amazing special effects! How do they translate Roald Dahl's invented words into Vietnamese I wonder? What is "snozzcumber" in Vietnamese? Anyway, we enjoyed our time in the plush seats with unnecessarily ample leg room. Fascinating to see what tickles the local viewers. They giggled and guffawed uproariously with delight at the flatulating corgis and the flatulating Queen scene.

I didn't like sitting next to an unimpressive, middle-aged, dodgy-ish North American man who was accompanied by a much younger Vietnamese woman. He just seemed alarmingly over-framed next to his slight-figured companion. Occasionally on the streets of several Far Eastern cities, you cross paths with these types of men, men who would struggle to attract any sensible female in their homeland but who seem here to be able to buy time with affectionate partners who smile sadly and with obvious insincerity when with these creepy, overconfident dollar-wielding foreigners. What an unappealing man he was! A sandals in socks, bloated-belly, unfitting-teeshirted man.

Caitlin, still aware of last night's dodgy stomach, was keener for us to make tracks to a safe, familiar type food restaurant. Alyson had been charged with getting us to a highly recommended (by tripadvisor) pizza restaurant somewhere near to the Genghis Khan statue. However, Alyson's research skills on this instance did not impress us as she was leading us quite aimlessly in the blistering heat in the general direction of the restaurant without knowing specifically where it was. We had to give up!

We made instead for a pizza joint a little behind the Opera House which we went to at the beginning of our holiday. We were smiled at by door openers, stair monitors, attentive water fillers, et al. Fragile Caitlin forced herself to take her more than her fair share of the complementary flat breads and dips before opting for the pesto pasta while I ate a simple but lovely margarita pizza. I can't recall what Alyson had though.

Enough time after tyhe meal to pop into a small mini-market for Caitlin to buy large packets of green tea flavoured kitkats which she intended to try out on her friends back home...they were revolting!..before zooming back to reach our hotel at sixish. Zooming? Not quite, as our taxi was traffic-jammed amongst the hordes of homeward bound traffic. We sat stationary for quite some time as more daring mopedians and scooterists threatened innocent pedestrians by seizing the pavements as their right of way.

Back at the hotel, we needed to shower off the day's dust and dirt and do our last minute reshufflings of the contents of our backpacks....and suitcase in the case of Alyson. This done, we said our goodbyes to the staff of the Alcove and took the short journey to the airport. The taxi driver received an excessively generous tip from us as we were out of smaller denominations!

We were on the plane a little before midnight. Our trip was at and end!