I <3 Saigon.

What a great city! After the serene beach life (interspersed with the nightlife) in Mui Ne I was feeling a bit apprehensive about heading to a big city and was yearning to stay on the beach. But Ho Chi Minh City turned out to be just fantastic.

I didn't love Hanoi, finding it chaotic and unfriendly, but Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it seems to be known still to most people, is very different. It's HUGE for a start, a vast, sprawling metropolis that seems to hum with life (oh, and the noise of 5 million motorbikes). We stayed in a lovely little guesthouse down an alleyway; typically Vietnamese the building is just one narrow room wide, but goes a long way back, and the entire extended family all live and work there together. Arriving early in the morning we signed up to a tour and headed to the Cu Chi tunnels; a network of underground tunnels where the Viet Cong hid during the war to escape detection by the Americans.

The tunnels were fascinating, and despite my claustrophobic misgivings I crawled down into one for a closer look... and down and down I went, like Alice down the rabbit hole. It was hot and dark, and with people behind me the thought that there was no going back made me feel quite panicky - how on earth 16,000 Viet Cong stayed down there for 20 years I really don't know. But I'm quite proud of myself for doing it nonetheless.

We joined the other guests and the family at the guesthouse for dinner one night, and had another lovely encounter the next with Rhona; a friend of Scott's who is working in Ho Chi Minh as a teacher. Some last minute arrangement changes made for a mad dash across town in a taxi, with Cords, Kelly and Joe in tow - we joked that to the Vietnamese they (tall and blonde all three) looked like 3 Viking warriors with a small child in tow! Rhona took us to a gorgeous roof-top bar overlooking the smart area of the city, a place we would never have come across otherwise and it was a real treat as we've been spending our time in the backpacker bars. We went on to a little Vietnamese restaurant serving everything with crab... crab fried rice, deep fried crab, tamarind crab, crab spring rolls... delicious! Hearing Rhona talk about the city made me fall in love with it a little bit more, I'd definitely like to come back.

A strict timelimit on our Vietnamese visas (30 days only) meant that time in Saigon was precious, and I felt it was time to learn about the culture of the country I've just spent the past 3 weeks in. Not sure the War Museum was the best place to start; as depressing and bleak as you'd imagine I won't go into detail on the images we saw. But the Reunification Palace was a gorgeous ode to Seventies design; now barely used as the capital city is way North in Hanoi, it has remained intact - barrel-shaped bar and all. The Museum of Fine Arts was recommended by the lovely Janie in our guesthouse, and whilst the art itself is nothing to blog home about the building was just stunning. French-inspired colonial style, with a faded grandeur about it the building was designed to allow the air to flow freely throughout so it is always cool even in the baking sunshine.

I've discovered throughout this trip that I am inescapably and resolutely English, I love to talk about the weather, apologise all the time, chaotic traffic upsets me, will join a queue without question, manners are very important to me and the Asian lack of respect for personal space bugs me on a daily basis. My tailor in Hoi An kept hugging me, people fascinated by pale skin and blonde hair have stroked my face on the street, and women in markets shove me out of the way. But sweetly, small children dare each other to run up and touch me, ever so briefly, so show how brave they are for touching a blonde Westerner.

Saigon, of everywhere I've been in Vietnam, is the most Western by far. There are shops galore, signs are written in English, there is advertising other than the propaganda posters. I felt quite at home! Everyone we met was polite and helpful, and there were English-language bookshops everywhere which thrilled me. My bartering is getting better, I got two books for the equivalent of about £1.40. I've been constantly on the look-out for good books as I'm going through them at a startling rate, and felt it was appropriate to read up on Vietnam so it was well-timed to get 'The Girl in the Picture' and 'Between Heaven and Earth'. Cheerful reading...

Some things that made me particularly like Saigon: incredibly friendly cyclo drivers who want to practice their English, tiny alleyways leading through the grid system of blocks of buildings, which never lead where you think they will but always have food available, green spaces with badminton courts that actually get used, booksellers galore, yummy food, the best tour guide ever who told me all about Vietnamese culture, and a warm climate.

There are so many things to comment on in Saigon, I feel as though I have sensory overload. The most obvious is the motorbike phenomena. Scooters and motorbikes transport entire families, whole businesses, livestock and all manner of other oddities. Yesterday I watched in amazement as a chap in the centre of Saigon transported 15-foot long scaffolding through the packed roads in rush hour. The girls wear face masks and long gloves to protect from the sun, but with miniskirts and high heels. Family is important here, and older people are respected and revered, whilst children are just idolised - family photos of smiling tots peer out from every glass surface, stuck up in pride of place (or to the side of a fruit cart in some cases). For such a gorgeous country, Vietnam is pretty dirty - rubbish piles up along the sides of the road in rural areas, people spit on the streets and drop litter, and any waste is disposed of in the nearest river. What a shame. It seems that the Vietnamese will never be short of jobs, as it appears to take at least 6 people to complete the simplest of tasks; making a sandwich, changing a lock, opening a door for you, fetching the bill; I know they're just being friendly and helpful to Westerners but it's very confusing how they manage to keep their jobs at all when it seems to mostly consist of sitting around watching. Can't really comment on that though as travellers mostly spend our time sitting on the beach, in buses, and in bars, not doing very much.

I have to leave Vietnam on the 1st December so to squeeze in one more destination I'm headed much farther South, past the Mekong Delta area to the island of Phu Quoc. It's very near Cambodia, and is meant to be beautiful and still reasonably unspoilt... fingers crossed I can get my tan started there!

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