Friday 29th February 2008

We woke up at about 7am this morning, because the guest house which we're booked into for tonight said that we could come round for breakfast this morning. We checked out of our place and crossed over the busy road before dumping our bags and tucking in to our egg sarnies.

After breakfast we went for a wander to try and get our bearings. On first impressions (well, in the light anyway), are that Vietnam seems very cool! There are millions of motorbikes on the roads - each carrying anything from 1-4 people! We've also learnt that the rules of the road are: The vehicle with the loudest horn rules and ignore everything else ever learned about driving - plus, ANYTHING goes At one point we saw a man riding along on his motorbike, with a huge tower fridge-freezer strapped to the back! After much traffic dodging, we made it to the Ben Thanh Markets, which was definitely a new experience. No sooner had we walked through the doors, we were grabbed by small Vietnamese women, trying to sell us something - some even separated me from Nikki and started asking me if I was happy?

This afternoon, we hung around the area of our guest house before catching the bus out to the airport. After paying 200,000VD for a taxi last night, we were much happier to pay only 3,000VD each this time. We got to the airport nice and early and had a coffee and slice of cake while we waited for Mum and Keith to arrive from Hong Kong. They didn't take long to come through customs and when they did we were waiting right outside the doors for them. They didn't see us at first, but as soon as they did my Mum did a cute little skip before running over (in tears of course). We found a cheaper taxi and soon had them back to the Luan Vu guest house to check in. We didn't stay in long, we soon were back at the small bar where we drank last night and the beer was flowing! After a few short hours, we'd drank 17 beers, Mum had had a diet coke and all we'd spent was £2.50!

12.5 pence a beer... I think Keith is gonna like it here!