Well. We have arrived.

After many months of planning then quitting my job and having a leaving party then moving to Brisbane then getting a job then quitting that job then having a leaving party then leaving then getting to Melbourne and having another leaving party, its finally happened.

The last few days in Melbourne have been great. It was nice to have a few days grace after the manic packing spree to relax before leaving. We didn’t do too much in those days except for leaving drinks on Friday at the Espy. Cheers to you all for showing it up, it was a great turn out. Sorry we couldn’t stay longer, but we had to get up and leave for the airport.

We flew 6 hours from Melbourne to Darwin then 5 from Darwin to Ho Chí Minh with Jetstar. Its the first time I’ve flown with Jetstar, and to be honest, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. They were great, besides the fact that the staff didn’t particularly give a shit. But thats what you get with a budget airline.

We landed last night at about 10:30pm local time, and after being stuck on the runway because they had no where to put our plane, we got off and the plane and went through customs. It was a bit weird there. There were lots of people and no one said a word. It was quieter then a library.

Completing that, we headed through to grab our bags and then out into the 10 million degree / 5000 percent humidity taxi rank. After a quick breather, we jumped into a cab on the way to our Hotel (hostel? I don’t know, I think they’re all the same here).

Thats where the fun started. I was aware of the scooter mayhem that awaited us before we arrived, but holy shit, its another world entirely to be in the middle of it. We spent most of the time on the horn (its more a ‘coming through’ warning then aggression), while dodging bikes and avoiding trucks that were dodging us. We managed to communicate our hotel, Saigon Sports Hotel 1 (or is it 3 or 5, meh), and also managed to negotiate the fee to be on the meter. To the drivers credit, he weaved through the traffic and took us exactly to our door.

Our first experience in dealing with the local currency while not being able to talk the same language started here. Our trip fee was along the lines of VND 120 000 with a fee of VND 50 000 for the taxi parking. That brought us to VND 170 000 which is give or take $10, but our driver wasn’t happy with that. We had the ‘you have no idea what your doing’ tax imposed on us and he started trying to take the fee up to VND 300 000 and beyond, telling us that it was because of the taxi parking fee.

This is where I started to get lost. I entered the country with 1.5 million Dong. I had no idea what was worth what but its all in the thousands. But fortunate for us Tim and Ruth have been-there-done-that and took up the fight for us. Tim told him it was too much (which I’m starting to see is what you generally the done thing for non-locals) and the argument started. After much debate and not backing down (and already paying double our fee) the driver gave up and let us go with what we had paid. We took off down the street looking for our place only to realise we had started at the right place to start off with and went back.

By this point I was pretty exhausted. I was hungover from the night before, hadn’t had much sleep and had been flying for over 10 hours. It was also past midnight back home so I was probably jet lagged. Ignoring all this, we checked in, put our bags down and went down the road to the swanky expensive bar (think $2 for a beer instead of $1.50) and settled in for a little bit of food and a few drinks. We were there till about 2am and decided it was time for sleep.

The beds over here are harder then a wooden floor. My back has been reminding me of this all day. We decided to leave the door to our very tiny balcony (with an awesome view mind you) open to let the breeze through, however we discovered at about 5 am this was a stupid idea because the air-con was venting all its hot air back in through the door and defeated the purpose. We rectified the problem and the aircon is doing is job and keeping us cool.

That brings us through to today.

We woke up at about 9:30, met up downstairs for our complimentary breakfast then took off into the street. Its a very different world in the day, but equally as mad. There are shops everywhere and if the shop isnt in a building, its on the street. Its awesome. There is shit happening everywhere and horns going wild and I love it. You have plenty of opportunity to trip over a bin/piece of concrete/rat/box. Scooters are everywhere. Every flat surface is fair game. You head in the direction you want, regardless what side of the road your on and if in doubt use the footpath. Its ok though, they’ll let you know they are coming with their horn. You adapt very quickly to it.

The heat is still a killer. I’ve been living in my own little sweaty ass crack land since I landed, regardless of how many times I’ve showered. Hug anyone?

Anyway, after breakfast we took off down the road to have a can of coke at a little corner bar to discuss our plans over the next few days. One of the things you learn very quickly is to say no to people trying to sell you things. Me, being the nice person that I am, give (gave) people too much attention and that made shaking off the local person selling sunnies a bit of an ordeal. I’ve since learned the errors of my ways.

After our can of coke, we came back and booked our next few days. We are going to head up the Mekong on a boat for a day, stay at a homestay then head back again for another night here then hopefully head out to the tunnels. With our bookings made we went on our way to lunch at a nice cook your own bbq place (I’m sure I’ll be paying for that tomorrow).

Finishing that (which was great food mind you) we went through one of the local markets to see what the deal was. You can get your hands on quality ripoffs of anything you could possibly want. The catch is everyone wants to sell you something. People litereally hang off your arms trying to sell you something you don’t need, which is somewhat entertaining.

After surfacing the other side, we then made our way across town to the Reunification Palace which was quite an interesting place to visit. We had our own tour guide, and although it was very scripted, it was still informative.

After, we walked home via a Buddhist temple (which resulted into another money argument) and that leads us to now.

I’m sitting at home in the aircon, taking it easy drinking a 333 beer before we head out later to get food and watch the world cup. I hear they are football mad here, so that should be fun.

As I do not have a mobile number here, I will generally only be accessible via email or skype. We have free wifi here, so that should make me contactable for the next few days. It turns out facebook is banned in Vietnam, however the iphone app lets me through, so I have limited facebook access as well.

Hope all is well back home and I’ll keep you up to date as I travel.

Photos are to come soon as I don’t have the time to do them right now. As you can understand there is beer to be drunk and football to watch. They will be up soon I promise

In the mean time, here is the view from our hotel