ended yesterday with our flight to Kuala Lumpur and then onto Ho Chi Minh city - and did we get a real shock to the system after friendly, helpful, generally English speaking, easy to navigate Malaysia.
Getting into the airport we had to arrange our visas as soon as we landed - they have a really crap system here where you have to apply for visas in advance and we tried to do it at the embassy in Kuala Lumpur but it was absolutely heaving with people (a bit like Vietnam itself actually) so we had to go through an online company that arranges a pre approval letter for you (for a fee of course) you then take that letter to a desk on arrival in Vietnam, fill out a form, pay even more money (of course) and then get your visa.
To be honest, that was the most straightforward thing we did yesterday - leaving the airport we were bombarded by taxi drivers offering a ride into town and that's when it is good to have done a bit of pre-arrival reading. The guy was wanting to charge us 500,000 Dong (15 quid) to get to our hostel - we had read in the book that it should cost 80, 000 Dong. Unfortunately our book is 5 years old so we knew the prices would be off but they are so off that when we finally got the guy to drop his price we didn't believe him when he said we couldn't get it cheaper than 150,000 Dong. Turns out I think he was right with 150,000 but anyway, never wanting to make things easy for ourselves we decided to take the public bus.
Well, the driver either didn't want to speak to us or he couldn't and there was a crazy old lady trying to get us onto the bus telling us the bus definitely went where we wanted to go even though I don't think she understood - but we just had no clue what was going on. We were looking for help.......
Thankfully another old lady appeared and she was fluent in French so with a little bit of standard grade and some je ne sais quoi we were able to tell her that we were Scottish and we wanted to get to a certain hotel - so she took control, had an argument with the driver who still wanted to over charge us, she eventually paid for our bus trip (refusing anything in return) and when she left the bus she got another family to help us. The other family took a team approach (a bit like family fortunes when they confer for the chance to steal the game) and between them they got us off at the right stop.
From there we had to cross one of the busiest roads in Ho Chi Minh with all of our bags - now crossing the road in Ho Chi Minh is all about blind confidence, in fact it would probably be safer if you did just close your eyes and go. The rule here is that you just walk, slowly, and let the traffic avoid you. Not the easiest to convince your brain this is a good strategy when there are 300 motorbikes travelling in both directions - imagine the game Frogger with motorbikes and you're getting close.
once we were across the road it was a 10 minute walk to our hostel - and it was down some very very interesting local streets, This place really is fascinating. There were three highlights of the walk:
1) A woman on a moped with two children under the age of five hanging onto her feet.
2) All the young children running around the street saying "hello" just because it is funny to say this to westerners.
3) A man on his moped tapping his young child on the shoulder telling him to look at us whilst having a good chuckle to himself.
So, in the end we got there safe and sound and seem to have found one of the more reputable establishments (no available room "extras for example). It's a place however that sounds like it would offer other services, Madam Lois's or something (it's actually called Miss Lui's - which is what a lot of people do here.)
before I go I should make mention of the fact that we went out last night to watch the world cup final at 2am. But because of the time difference it was really 3am for our bodies. We just about managed to stay awake, helped ably by Canadian Kurt who lives here and was able to answer all our drunken questions such as "Dollar or Dong", "Saigon or Ho Chi Minh" and "What are the top five survival tips for Ho Chi Minh" (the best of which was when you are crossing the road never ever take a step back)
We are ruined today - we didn't get to bed until 5.30 and we just had to get up for breakfast (it's included in the price) for 9.30 so we haven't managed to do much today I'm afraid. Just about time to go back out though and get some more noodles methinks.....
Bye for now.
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