Goodbye Annoying Hanoi! – By Leigh

We accidently both typed up today so I'm afraid there are two versions!  Mine first…

Not too much very interesting to talk about here.  But we were both happy to be moving on from Hanoi, it is a really buzzy, busy, crowded dusty/dirty and noisy city.

The journey to the airport was nice, I had my music on and just sat back, relaxed and looked at the interesting stuff happening outside again.  We took the scenic route as opposed to the busy slightly dangerous highway, which suited us.

The flight to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) was with Vietnam airways.  We knew the temperature would be increasing from 10 – 15 c to about 30 c, but we’ve heard different reports about the city.  some saying worse than Hanoi, others better.  We found it much better.  It actually had a park that we sat in for a bit watching the locals doing Tai Chi and jogging.  The traffic was roughly 30% less I guess.  Had we come here first we would have felt culture shock still, but after Hanoi it feels easy.

We had an initial meeting with our group for the ‘Road to Angkor’ tour which starts tomorrow and takes us through Cambodia.  They are Julian, Renee and Zak.  Julian is from New Zealand and is in a band called Crop-duster, Renee and Zak are on their honeymoon, from Melbourne, Australia.  All seem nice.

Our guide is Cambodian and called Bouna.  He is a wealth of information and talks for ages.  Seems really nice as well.  I cant understand about 20%  of what he says at the moment but hopefully I’ll be able to tune into him better with some practice.

We all went out for dinner and I had Pizza, which I had been craving for all day.  It was FANTASTIC!  Anna had Mexican burritos!

Anna’s Version of events! – By Anna

Today was an early start after another restless night. I woke again in the middle of the night so went downstairs to use the internet and while I was sat in the hotels foyer, I was met by a rather un intimidated rat. It scurried towards me but thankfully took more interest in the water feature in the window.

We were picked up early (meant to be 8am but as seemed to be usual, the driver was there half an hour early). We took a more scenic trip to the airport which was much more pleasant taking in more of the countryside and getting to see more of the daily life for people.

The flight to Saigon took around two hours and was in all a good experience. They had a daily newspaper in English and was astonished to read that Hanoi was voted in the top 10 for clean cites in Vietnam. Even the journalist was dismayed.

We landed in Saigon and the first thing that struck us was the temperature difference. It was very hot and humid which was a pleasant change to the coldness of Hanoi. However we both needed a of change of clothes to something more suitable for the climate. We checked into our hotel for the night and our first point of call was the bank to get out dollars for the trip across Cambodia to Bangkok. Luckily it was only a couple of blocks away but they were incredibly thorough checking who we were. It took about half an hour and I was only expecting it to take about 1 minutes. After this we headed in the opposite direction to the park which was just up the road from our hotel. The park was a welcome relief from the hustle of the city although it was surrounded by busy roads. There were lots of people walking, doing tai chi and jogging. It seems this was the place to be to exercise.

Saigon seemed to us to be a much quieter and clearer town to Hanoi. There seemed to be less mopeds on the road and people paid attention to traffic lights. People also seemed a bit healthier and better off than in the north.

We met out group and tour guide at 6pm. Our guide is called Bouna and is from Cambodia and there were three other people on the tour. An Australian couple called Zach and Renee and a guy from New Zealand called Julian. We got a quick run down of the itinerary, what to expect and then arranged to meet for dinner. Bouna took us to a restaurant in a very touristy district where you could get anything on the menu which was great as Leigh was craving Pizza.

After this we headed back to the hotel as we had a 7.30am collection from the hotel.