Our bus was at 8am this morning. We chose two seats right at the front of the bus but a bunch of rude loud sweaty and smelly French school teenagers thought differently about everyone that had booked in advance to choose their seats! They wanted to sit everywhere and anywhere. So annoying, and the teachers are just ignorant aswell. They had the rucksacks out in the aisle so when it was time to get off for a break and to get to the border I just stood on them because they weren't moving them and I wasn't going to play nicely by moving them or trying to step over them!

The overall ride wasn't too awful, they played Spider-Man movie and we had wifi; the borders were empty because of the new year so we went through really quickly considering we had to get off to get our departure of Cambodia stamp, back on the bus to drive to the border of Vietnam and carry our luggage through scanners and climb back aboard.

We arrived at Ho Chi Minh around 3pm and the bus stop was on the same road as our hotel, 'Hoang Phi Hotel' so that was handy!

Ho Chi Minh is busy and at the moment the majority or people here have left the city or are staying inside, the majority of shops and markets are closed as well because it's Chinese New Year and that lasts for about 4-5 days so considering the biggest percentage of the population aren't on the roads and it's still busy and loud with the air full of constant beeping it must be horrendous when the city is in normal flow!

All the buildings are built wall to wall and the width of most apartment blocks and shops are probably around 4-5 metres, they are so small! Buildings have been built on top of one another and attached to other buildings, you can see the two separate walls because you can see the 10cm gap between each building.

It's a lot more westernised than I thought, there are lots of international food companies and they have an absolute humungous Starbucks; their cars and mopeds, the roads are really well maintained and they even have regular dustbin men!

It's quite a pretty city amongst the pollution, 12 million mopeds and dirty looking apartment buildings stacked up on top of one another. There are parks and lots of trees and pretty riverside walks.

We are staying in the centre of Ho Chi Minh, District 1. The main road here opposite to a pretty park where they play some game with a sort of shuttle c*** but kicking it with their feet (that was pretty awesome to watch, me and Scott bought one and attempted it... It didn't go all to plan! These people made it look easy and it was so difficult! Their hand-eye coordination must be incredible!) Ours is obviously awful!

The Main Street and is lined with travel agents and hotels, travel agents everywhere! The competition must be massive because on just one block I think we counted at least 30 travel agents!! then you take a right down to the street behind and everywhere down there is lined with travel agents, hotels and minimarts! The street behind with little alleys going from it in different directions is full with bars, bistros, restaurants, street stalls and shops. There is such a good atmosphere in the day and the evening. Prices are cheap and there are hundreds of westerners! That probably takes the authenticity away from the city but it's welcoming for our first stop in Vietnam!

We got told, well attempted to be told by a silly girl from America (if I hadn't have tried so hard to bite my tongue i think I might have just ended up screaming at her... Multiple times! This was at EVP and she thought she was 'cultured' and knew the way of the world because she lived in Hanoi for a year. Wanted to get ruby the elephant to give a few trunk slaps! Phwoar I don't know how I didn't!!) anyways, she said that the people weren't very friendly and they just want your money and a load of bullcrap basically that we could have proved completely wrong on if I hadn't been so stupid to keep my mouth shut in case I pulled her hair out or screamed at her and if we had wifi to show her she talks through her BUM. (Not until we got back into Sen Monorom town that we all realised that none of us couldn't stand how rude and ignorant and NONE CULTURED she actually was.

So she was wrong, because all the Vietnamese people we have met are super friendly and yes there is poverty and people obviously want your money; what Asian country doesn't have poverty with people who need and want money!? There isn't half as much poverty in Saigon as there is in Phnom Penh!

So far so good here in Saigon!