We were rudely awakened by this dreadful Vietnamese guitar music on the train this morning. It was ages before we realised there was a switch to turn it off, and longer before we saw that it was 4am not 5am, so thought we had another hour in bed. So we went back to bed, as in, we lay down rather than sat up, and then promptly arrived. So had a mad scramble again to shove things into bags and get off the train.

There were a few cabs waiting around the station, all of which tried to rip us off big time, but after a while they cottoned on to the fact that it was our custom on the meter, or no custom at all - so grumpily agreed. We headed back to the street where we'd stayed last time, with the view to hanging out in the hostel we went to before, perhaps half-inching some breakfast and waiting for Ian to open shop so we could dump our bags with her before having the morning in the city again before a flight to Saigon at half 3.

This plan was a success, and we got our free breakfast, and some internet time, and some reading time, and lots of coffee and by 6am we were wide awake and actually having a good time. Ian opened shortly afterwards, or at least her dad did, in his PJs, and we got rid of our bags before trotting off.

We had breakfast in a little Vietnamese cafe where the toilets were 3 floors up, and egg with bread and lots more caffeine. The plan was then to look round some of the art shops in the city, as Hanoi was selling a particular style of Vietnamese art which we all quite liked, and had seen around but not been able to buy any of. It's quite colourful and bright, with big chunks of thick oil paint sloshed on to form the base of the painting, but then often detailed with really fine lines of thin oils over and around the thicker bits - hard to explain, but I really liked it and bought some. Traditionally they paint on silk stretched over a wooden frame, but that was not happy hour price, but the equivalent on canvas was happy hour price, good for me good for her, she made me good price, maximum offer. Lovely.

After this we meandered back to Ian's place and picked up our bags and ordered a cab. The trip to the airport was slow as usual, but the check-in was super-fast and then we hung around in the departure lounge for no time at all before being shuffled onto our plane. the flight was 2 hours I think, I slept through it all.

We arrived in Saigon and our bags were the first off, we jumped in a cab and headed back to the same hostel we'd stayed in last time, the Orient. Lydia was in a foul mood in the cab.

We dumped our stuff in our rooms and headed out to find Kim again, our friendly travel agent in district one. But Kim's sister's friend's friend was useless and told us there was no way we could get to Phu Quoc via the Mekong Delta as we had hoped to.

So then we discussed this Delta malarkey. Everyone we'd met who'd done the delta tours said they were really nothing to bother about, that you were shuffled around like a number from tourist shop to tourist shop, with quick bus journeys through the delta itself before another souvenir shop and more tacky fake tourist setups. With no good feedback about it, and with no particular interest in the delta especially, and with no time to tour it ourselves, we decided to skip it out. And I'm very glad we did.

The ferries to Phu Quoc island were all booked up and the busses over to the port were following suit. Flights however remained cheap, so we booked flights over the day after the following day, and back on the Monday morning.

After this we went out for dinner at our usual hot spot, the Ngog restaurant and then a beer or two after that in GO2 before a relatively early night ready for our last full day in Saigon tomorrow.