[i]Given the midnight departure from Melb and the catch up with the in-laws at the Saigon end, it's been close to 40 hours since we have had any decent sleep. Worse still, the tickle in my throat that the good Dr in Melb assured me was nothing, has now developed into a raging chainsawing infection and I've lost my voice. Fortunately eating is not proving beyond me and the food thus far has been great.

[b]Melb - Saigon[/b][i]
The SIngapore Airlines flight from Melb abruptly turned the cabin lights on and started descending 5 hours into the 7 hour flight and shortly after the Capt announced that there was a fuel leak and that one of the engines had been shut down. As a result we were diverted to Bali while they inspected the plane. A replacement plane was found, but by that stage we had missed the connecting flight in Singapore and had to wait another four hours there where it was Curry Laska all round for breakfast served by a woman as mad as a cut snake in the Chen Fu Ji noodle house at Changi airport.

At Changi the boys spent much of the time running up and down the lengthy travelators in the wrong direction much to the dismay of a few Changi Airport staff. I explained to one that, after a long period of inaction on board they needed the exercise, they didn't seem to understand however that a responsible adult might also need such an outlet.

The customs in Saigon very much reminded me of Havana, staffed by uniformed, officious and none too friendly staff. You gotta love those communists.

We were met at the airport by about a doz of the in-laws, all very friendly and no doubt wondering about this Western Barbarian and offspring they've been hearing about for the past 10 years. All very nice people, which I've discovered the past couple of days appears to be a trait very common to the Vietnamese. They all love Francis and James, normally it's you as the tourist who needs to ask permission of the locals to take photos but here they're coming and asking for photos with the boys.

Of course the first thing the boys did once through customs here was pull out their Nintendo DS's and resumed some form of wifi battle. I've said to them to leave them alone and take in the wonders of a new country and culture, but Donkey Kong (or whatever they're playing these days) takes precedence.[/i]

[b]Saigon Roads[/b][/i]
[i]Grabbed a taxi from the airport into the city, and what an eye opener! This truly is the city of the motorbike with literally millions of the things flying all over the place in what I could only describe at the time as UFC. Rather than spelling out the achronym I'll simply say the first word stands for Utter, and you'll work out the rest.

Could not help but think of this being a classic complex adaptive system. All of the agents (and there are a lot of 'em) cars, buses, motorbikes, cyclos, etc acting independently and yet somehow in concert with all other agents around them. Road rules as we know them are out the window. There is just this crazy seething mass of vehicles that somehow avoid collisions and get from A to B via means beyond the understanding of the western mind. Of course there are some rules of thumb, one of which is to "beep your horn repeatedly" those around you know where you are and "anything goes" seems to be another.

Experiencing this, I was reminded of Dave Snowden's description of traffic, when you are in and part of it there seems to be no discernible pattern and what you have to do is look down upon it from a distance to see patterns emerge. (Well, I've also looked down on this traffic from a 9th floor window and no patterns have become apparent yet - UFC.)

Even now as I type on the 9th floor of a hotel, the dominating sound is the cacophony of horns coming from below.[/i]