We arrived in Veitnam airport and tried to get money out of a cash machine but didn't have a clue about the currency, Dong. When we walked out of the airport we were immediately harrassed by taxi drivers. In the end we agreed to get in a taxi to a bank, so we followed this guy to his taxi which didn't have any taxi light or company name on so me and Shevs were abit wary. We asked him for his badge and he showed us so we agreed 200 000 dong each and set off out of the airport. The sight was amazing! Lights everywhere! Huge flashing signs on many highrise buildings. When we got onto the road the amount of motorbikes are actually unbelievable! There are about 3/4 lanes of one way traffic but no one sticks to the lanes! The are just weaving in and out of each other, just inches away and beeping their horns every 2 seconds. It was a white nuckle ride in the taxi, just hoping no onr crashed! We saw a couple get knocked off their bike and the woman had a small baby in her arms! We were so shocked but they were ok. No one got off their bikes to help though! The fact no one was phased by them just showed how many accidents there must have been, but our taxi driver said we was a good driver and "no die" (reassuring...) We made it to the bank and said to each other, as we drew out 4 million 800 thousand dong, that we were now actual millionaires! Obviously it's not worth much compared to our currency though. So the taxi driver dropped us at our hotel which we had found inmy guide book. We were shown a room and unpacked. The roads are still stupidly busy even in the area out of the centre with rediculous electricity cables! They look like thousands of tangled noodles!!
As it was late when we arrived, we decided to go and get food so the woman in the hotel recommended the next street and also advised us to keep hold of our bags and for me to take my necklace off as people on the bikes will swipe them off you are you cross the road! So we sat at this restaurant and noticed there was an upstairs so we went went up. Across the road there were restaurants 3/4 stories high and then we noticed ours had another floor too! Looking around the street there were just shacks upon flats upon restaurants upon shops! It really was an amazing place! As we walked down the street we saw people making a living in every nook and cranny! Selling everything you could think of. One guy even had a shop on the back of his bicycle! After our food we went looking in all the shops and decided on having a drink at a bar. We were handed a 2 for 1 voucher for a place called Buffalo and decided there. The music was booming downstairs and when we ordered our drinks she said the 2 for 1 was only on the roof bar. So being hte cheapos we are we climbed up about 5 floors to the roof. After Aqua- Barbie Girl had played and we looked around to find that there were only 2 other girls but about 10 lads all in pairs at tables, it dawned on us that we must have been in a gay bar! So after a while of cheesy songs a guy called Harry from Brighton came over and asked if we wanted a game of cards. Wo, bored as we were, we said yes. Then his friend, James came back from somwhere and we just had to ask if they were gay. It was a no. So we played a drinking game that the guys had made up and the after a while Ring of Fire. This kept us going all night as it was so funny when we had to do press ups and go behind the bar etc. Somehow, it got to 2am and the staff were sat waiting for us to leave as we were the last in there. So we parted ways and headed back to our hotel. We got back to find the shutters down over the entrance! Standing outside annoyed and drunk we thought it was best to go and find somewhere else to stay for the night. We paid 200 000 dong (12 dollars) to stay at this place and we went straight to sleep.
Next day we woke up early and went for breakfast back at our original hotel and found out that they closed at midnight! So we had a curfew that night. Brilliant. That day we took our clothes to a laundrette and decided to go and visit Ho Chi Minh museum so after aimlessly walking around a huge market place for a while, we got talked into getting a tuktuk ride there. We got in one each and my guy was the cheeriest guy ever, his English was great and he was very talkative. So they took us to Districy 1 (from District 4) which was alot differen to District 4. There were no tourists and all the locals were amazed to see us there, waving at us as we went past. They stopped off at a little cafe and we ordered iced tea. The locals in there were saying how beautiful our skin was and actually said Siobhan has a nice nose!! We paid for our drinks and by the looks of it their's too but we weren't too bothered as the deserved it after pedling all that way. So they dropped us off at the museum and said they would wait for us. The museum was all about what Ho Chi Minh did for Vietnam during the war and about his life and death which was really interesting. We got back in the tuktuks after and assumed that they were just taking us back to District 4 but without warning we had turned up at the Imperial War Museum. We weren't comlaining as we really wanted to go here too. So once again, they said they would wait for us. We went looking around the museum and as we didn't know anything about the war between Veitnam and America we were horrified at some of the imgaes we saw there. Just brutal pictures of how the Americans slaughtered the Vietnamese people, even women and children. When we were finished they said they were taking us back, Shevs and I had already agreed to give them 200 000 dong each as they said we could choose a price. The guy dropped me off first as we got split up in the traffic and I gave him the money to which he said was not enough and showed me a piece of paper for the company he worked for which said 1 hour= 500 000 dong! At first I said no you said we could choose what we gave you. Then he carried on saying no more as he only gets a percentage of what we give him. So being stupid and naive i gave him 500 000 then he said he had been with us for 4 hours so wanted more. I gave him 200 000 which was literally everything I had in my purse even though he wanted 2 million dong. So Shevs got dropped of and I walked over and she had given the guy 200 000 dong and he was also protesting. She was adament that she wasn't giving him any more and we told them to share what I had given them and after more arguing we walked away. They didn't follow. I was completely gutted that I had given that much away and we put it down to another disaster day! We walked around the streets and went into a tour guide organiser and organised to go to the Mekong Delta for 2 days 1 night and also booked a coach to Mui Ne for the day we returned.

The nexy day we had to wake early, had our breakfast and waited for our coach to arrive. After a long coach ride we made it to a hotel and had to give our passports in to get a room. We got given a room on the top floor and got all the way to our room up the stairs, opened the door, collapsed on the bed in the nice airconditioned room and the phone started ringing! We were bewlidered as to why it was ringing, Shevs answered it and they told us to come back down! So when we got back down they said that we had booked on a homr stay instead of the hotel, which we vaguley remembered doing. So the two of us and another couple got in an organised taxi through small streets littered with shacks.We arrived at the edge of the river and there was a small boat waiting to take us down the river. It was a nice little ride but the furhter we went along we saw shacks along the river and people washing in the river! I said goodbye to aircon and we arrived at the side of the river where there were about 10 bamboo and straw shacks. they were pretty nice compared to the rest we'd seen. We were shown a bungalow to set our stuff down and were told dinner would be ready in an hour. So we went for a strole down down the dirt path where the locals lived and were all very friendly saying hello and waving as we went past. After an hour we went for dinner at Hung's house (the owner of the house) where there was a table of 4 set up for us around the side and a woman brought out spring roll paper and filling and set us to work making our own spring rolls which was fun. We had a huge feast that night that none of us could finish. The other two, Christie and Brett from Canada were really nice and we chatted all night until we got tired and went to bed. Throughtout the whole night we were woken up by motorboats going past on the river sounding as though they were going to crash through our shack at any minute. Plus the thousands of insects and scurrying geckos we could hear didn't help either! It was an experience but 1 night was definately enough!

Next morning we had to get up early to go to the market for our breakfast so we got a boat over to the other side of the river and there were markets selling allsorts. The guy we came with bought soem rolls for our breakfast, we went back, had them and then had to pack up our stuff to meet back with the rest of the big group. Hung brought us down the river where we climbed from his boat to the bigger tourist boat and we set off drifting through the floating markets where people were just selling goods from their boats. There was even a small boat that came to drift alongside ours with a mother using her child to try and sell us drinks or friut! After that we were taken to see where rice paper was made, then the fruit gardens where there was a monkey bridge (a bamboo stick) which we could walk along and finally to see where rice was made as Vietnam are the 2nd largest exports of rice in the world (Thailand being the 1st) Arriving back on land we went to a restaurant for food then loaded back on the bus to head back to Saigon. We arrived back and had a few hours to kill before our bus to Mui Ne. After running a few errands our bus arrived, late, but still arrived and we set off to Mui Ne.