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Day Fifty
Muine to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
Not such an early rise today as we didn't have much to do apart from grabbing breakfast, hitting the beach for a bit & then waiting around for the bus to turn up to take us to Vietnam's capital.
We packed our things so we were all ready for check out time. We headed out of the bungalow & back to our favourite little cafe where we have eaten every single meal whilst being in Muine. After breakfast we vacated the room & left our things at the reception bar area whilst we went over to check the beach out properly.
We only had to cross over the road to get to the beach which was easy enough. Oh my God, the beach was beautiful apart from the water not looking too great. As it is the China Sea it is a bit grey with touches of blue but its still nice enought to go in if you wanted to. The sand was a lovely white colour & your feet just sank right in to the red hot grains. The sun was blazing & there was no escaping the heat. To feel the golden sun warming our skin was what we had been waiting for.
Looking around the beach there was quite a lot of people soaking up the rays. There was plenty of people swimming & messing around in the sea as well as lots of kite surfers. Muine is the kite surfing place where everybody comes to have a go & mess around in the water. We sat on the sand & watched the kite surfers in the water for a while. To be honest it looked quite hard to do.
We had been sat there for about an hour when a lady selling fruit from the big baskets that where hanging off her shoulders on a length of bamboo was asking us to buy from her. I couldn't believe my eyes when I turned to look up at her. This lady was on a scorching hot beach full clothed in long trousers, a long sleeved top, a big coat, socks with sandels, a hat with a face mask but best of all she was wearing gloves too. She must have been absolutely roasting. It became even more apparent to us that in South East Asia women do not want tanned skin what so ever. They wil do anything in their power to hide their skin from the sun. We had seen women dressed like this before but never like this. It was to the extreme & on the hottest beach ever - we were shocked!!!
It was time for us to say goodbye to the beach & then head back to the Mellow Bungalows to collect our things for the bus. We said our goodbyes to the staff & off we trotted down the big main road in the red hot sun with our bags on our backs. Luckily for us the bus office where we to get our bus from was not too far down the road so we didn't have to struggle far. In the bus office we handed in our tickets & we got told to sit & wait as the bus was due at 1.30pm. The arrival time came & went, then we where told that the bus was running late & that it should be due at 2pm instead, so we sat & waited. As the weather was getting hotter & hotter we decided to go & look for some ice-cream. We had been told that there was a shop down the way that sold ice-cream so I went to look. Success! I returned to the bus office cafe with two cornetto's (yummy yum yum!).
The ice-cream didn't last long. We were trying to demolish it quickly & it was melting all over us but it was delicious. 2pm came & then went & we were told that the bus was coming shortly. I was getting highly annoyed because they should know where about the bus is & when it was due to arrive. I would have been more happier if they told us the truth & said that the bus was going to arrive 2 hours late but they never.
Instead of sitting there getting more & more annoyed as another bus arrived (which wasn't ours) we decided to go & get more ice-cream. With that demolished too all we could do again was sit & wait. This was getting beyond a joke now! There was no way that we where getting to Saigon before 9pm so our plans of actually getting out & about around the capital later today was gone. Yipee, it was nearly 3pm & the bus finally arrived so we loaded our bags & we jumped on the bus.
We were told that it was going to take about 6 hours to get to Saigon (HCMC) so we settled down & tried to relax for the journey. As Andy listened to music on his IPod I began writing & catching up with the blogs that I had missed. The bus had stopped in a little service station where you could go the loo & grab some food. We grabbed some crisps as a snack & we decided that we would grab some proper tea when we reached Saigon. Back on the bus we settled down for the second part of the trip.
Finally the bus had arrived in Saigon & we could see all the bright lights & the busy city moterbikes whizzing past the bus. We had finally stopped at the T M Brothers Cafe in the city centre & we grabbed our bags & stood to one side whilst we got our bearings ready to find the hotel. It wasn't long before a big bruiser of a woman approached us from around the back of the bus & started shouting the hotel name at us. She waved her hand at us so that we would follow her, so we did.
As she marched down the busy street we lagged behind her looking at each other a bit dubiously. We turned in to a dark alley way further up the road & we could see the hotel sign illuminated in the dark. We went in to the hotel to be greeted by the hotel manager lady. She seemed a bit strange from the off & she was asking us about staying in the hotel. When booking the hotel we had read on the Internet that the lady was crazy & to expect the unexpected when staying here. We told her over & over that we had made a booking over the phone last night to her but she was clueless. Anyway she said that she had a room for us for tonight but after tonight we would have to change rooms in the morning. We agreed that it would be ok so we gave her our passports & we went to the room.
The room was right on the top floor. Why do we keep getting the room which is the furthest away or on the top floor. There is only so much our backs can take climbing lots of stairs with 20kg on our backs. In the room it was clean enough but it looked a little dated & there was 3 beds in the room, 2 singles & 1 double - we thought to ourselves that it would just be our luck that other people would be joining us for the night even though we had booked a private room. We freshened ourselves up a little so we could head out in to the busy city to find some food.
We grabbed a map from the reception desk when we then got talking to another English lad who has arived a few days earlier. He began telling us that he had explored the city & there was some nice places to go & see. We stood & chatted for 20 minutes before we said our goodbyes to head out on to the street. Whilst we where in Muine we had already decided that if we had arrived in enough time that we would go & visit Ben Tre Market, which is the famous market in Saigon. As it wasn't too late we thought we would go for a walk & see if it was still open.
I grabbed the map & started to head us down some long busy roads which was full of local people & lots of street cafes to eat at. Walking down the streets the food cooking smelt delicous, even more so that we hadn't had anything proper to eat since breakfast. Re-looking at the map Andy had realised that I was heading us in the complete opposite direction to the market so we had to turn around & head back in the direction we came. It was then agreed that I should stay away from the map navigation - well just for tonight anyway.
We walked down more & more busy streets with no real clue of where we where but everything always looks different in the dark & it would be great to see what it all looked like in the day light. We reached a park area on the map which meant that we were close to the market area. Around the park there were lots of food stalls & vendors selling all kinds. As we continued to walk past we saw the Vietnamese version of an ice-cream man. There was people on bikes with a little box on the back of the bike & there was a little merry tune blearing out of the front of the bicycle - it was great to see but we were unsure how the ice-cream was kept cold without electricty or an engine.
We had finally reached the market & there was a big massive area which was lined with stalls. There was a big massive building to the side but as it was late we gathered that it was closed. We had also read that when it gets late the market stalls do move outside. The stalls were selling all kinds of goodies from jewellery, souveniors to any fake t-shirts, clothing, bags or shoes that you could ever possible want. We had a little mooch around before we seen a place on the street to eat. We looked at the menu which was in English which was good enough for us so we sat down to eat. We ordered vermacelli & it was bloody lovely & went down a treat.
After another quick nose around the market we decided that it would be a good idea to try & head back towards the hotel. It was getting really late & we wanted to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels tomorrow which would mean an early start. We headed back the way we came so that we didn't get lost. Back in the hotel we asked the crazy lady about getting transport to the Cu Chi Tunnels tomorrow & she confirmed that we could go. She advised us that it would be $5 each & we needed to be in reception for 8am.
Back in the hotel room we climbed in to bed. Serious sleep was in order ready for a long day of sight seeing tomorrow. We get to see Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in the daylight tomorrow for the 1st time......................
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