We're at Saigon airport now, waiting for our flight to Hong Kong. Yesterday morning we went out early birding again. It had been raining in the night and the birds were quite active, but it was difficult to identify that many. We got a good look at a hoopoe and an Asian barred owlet along the roadside. Came back to the Ven Ven for breakfast. Then we mooched around the hotel grounds until 12.00, packing bags and so on. We travelled with the proprietress to the town of Bin Lau on the edge of Saigon. She was going to visit her new grand-daughter, and her driver then took us on into Central Saigon through dense traffic.

We stayed the night at the Hoang Phong Hotel again. Saigon had had rain in the morning and the air was a little bit fresher, but that's relative. We had a late lunch of seafood roll and coconut loaf at a bakery just around the corner from the hotel. We walked along the park alongside Pham Ngu Lau which is the only way to make any progress in this crazy motorbike infested city, and continued past the cental market, fighting our way through the maelstroms of traffic, and into the smart bit of town where all the expensive hotels are. Looked at the beautiful French colonial Hotel de Ville and Opera House, then wandered down to the Saigon River. We sat drinking iced coffee and lemon tea at a waterside cafe, watching ridiculous tourist cruise boats coming up the river, designed like pagodas with dragon prows. As the sun set hundreds of bats appeared from somewhere and went skimming over the surface of the river. We fought our way back to Pham Ngu Lau through the traffic and the bright lights of the night-time city. A big fruit bag was swishing around a tree in one of the main shopping streets, diving within inches of our heads.

Very unadventurously we ate at the Zen Vegetarian once more. The service is Cuban-style there - very sulky and couldn't-care-less - but the food's pretty good.

This morning after breakfast we walked out in the same direction again, and spent the morning in the fine arts gallery. Some interesting Vietnamese takes on modern art in there - they do a lot of lacquer paintings on wood, but not the most inspired artists I've ever seen. A lot of it was politically correct pictures relating to the american war.

Then we bummed about wasting time, drinking ice coffee, looking at the market again and having lunch once more at the Zen. Robbie thought her zucchini was a bit rotten. This is reckoned to be the best vegetarian in town by Lonely Planet...

It was steaming hot by now, and we sat in the shade in the Pham Ngu Lau park watching people working-out on bizarre public exercise machines. They've got a mechanical walking contraption, presumably because it's not possible to actually walk very far in this city. We picked up our bags from the hotel at 4pm and Sagotours provided us with a taxi to the airport. The staff there and at the hotel all remembered us straight away which is nice. At breakfast the girl even remembered that Robbie doesn't have sausage in her omelette.

So that's it then. I leave Vietnam wearier but wiser. I've liked the people, and Cat Tien was fantastic, but I have that despairing feeling that often accompanies me home from foreign trips, a hopeless feeling that this planet is rapidly being buried under piles of rubbish and concrete, the natural world is getting damaged beyond repair, and that the burgeoning human population is soon going to choke all life from the earth. Sweet dreams everybody.