Day 36 until 38: Goodnight Saigon (25 until 27 Dec 2008)

Last stop in Vietnam: Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City. HCMC is huge city of about 8 million habitants, and far more progressed than Hanoi in the North, regardless the strict communistic regime that was applied by the bureaucratic North as from 1975. The streets are full with scooters, still, but more and more cars tend to appear. The streets are broader, more open, and you have real pedestrian walkways which are not always fully parked with scooters like in Hanoi. However, if they are not full of scooters, than the motorized Viets used them to drive on, so the poor pedestrian still faces as survival hike when walking through the city. Western marks and goods are available (Esprit, D&G, Gucci, Shiseido,..) though not for the common Viet who earns a couple of million Dong a month (1 Mio Dong is about 40 EURO).

Basically we did not do a lot in HCMC. Main objective was to shop in the different markets to collect some souvenirs, to stroll around the city and to visit the war museum. The first 2 things were accomplished more or less: we had to look quite some time before we found what we were looking for in the shops and on the markets. Secondly it was very hot and humid, worse than in Bangkok (we agreed both on that). And on the last evening August developed a fever, we did not make it to the war museum on the last day. The only thing we did was to bring all goods, we wanted to send to Europe, to the main post office. The employee who helped us in the post office sais that he would pack all goods for us, we did not have to worry about boxes or tape. Turned out that they asked unofficially 100.000 Dong for this 'service' after the fact was done. Vietnam...

We enjoyed for the last time the fine Vietnamese cuisine in 'Lac Thien', related to the restaurant with the same name that we have been to in Hue. The restaurants are established by a deaf-mute family. The restaurant in HCMC is founded by one of the daughters. It is very odd, but she understood us much better than any other Viet, even than the ones that speak relatively fluently English. The numbers of times we got a wrong dish served... regardless speaking slowly, pointing at the words and the pictures....

In the evening we took the flight to Adelaide, with a stop in Singapore. We had a pretty good view of the town when we were heading off: a remarkably colourful sight, with a lot of neon lights, a little bit Las Vegas style. Goodnight Saigon!