Our parting view of the sea from the hills above the resort was of a beautiful sunrise, a route that took us past many new resorts and hotels in the process of being built. Like Da Nang further north, this place looks like it will be a Mecca for tourists in a few years. At the airport it was apparent there were many booked onto our flight to Ho Chi Min City, the check in queue was very busy.
We finally dropped off the backpacks and went for a coffee, avoiding the lure of buying frozen squid from the freezer as an after thought.
The flight was only 55 mins, (it alleviated the need to spend another 9 hours on a train) and ensured we arrived in Saigon ( Oops?) in time to dump our bags and get out and about). A taxi was $10 and we were efficiently guided to our driver and soon on our way from the domestic terminal. It was 8.30am and the temperature was hovering at 30 degrees celcius - the "heat" most definitely was "on in Saigon."
Unlike Hanoi where you have a 30 min drive into the city via the motorway and the biggest market garden you'll ever see, The road out of Tan Son Nhat Airport dumps you straight into the jostling, hi-octane traffic of a city definitely on the move. Cars seem to be in the minority as the scooters and motorcycles swarm round you like a squadron of mosquitos - how anyone isn't hit, or worse is beyond me. Still, our driver seems to know what he's doing and soon we are driving along tree lined boulevards and some of the sights we would get to see during the next few days. We were looking out with expectancy at some of the nice hotels that flanked our route further into the city - surely we would be there soon?
Discarding the high rise and glass towers around us (we wouldn't be stopping in anything that opulent) and clocking our first MacDonalds in Vietnam we were driven down a narrow street: Bui Vien. I was scanning for the name of our guesthouse (noticing lots of grungy looking backpackers in the general vicinity) but couldn't see it. Our driver stopped, pointed to an alley and heaved our gear out of the boot of the taxi, the fare was pre-paid so he scarpered off like nobody's business and we were left on the street pondering on where the hell our digs were.
The driver had not made a mistake, it dawned on us the reason we were only paying a fiver a night each was due to the reason the area was predominately backpackers territory. Ok, I know we said before we left England we would be backpacking on a pension and so far on our travels we'd been lucky with our selection of hotels on Booking.com. But, I suppose there comes a time when luck does run out as far as hotel selection is concerned - ours just run out here in Saigon.
We tentatively inched down the alley, a couple of massage parlours dominating the businesses that flanked our progress, surely, as well, nobody would be eating street food down here - they were! We still couldn't find our spot although there were other places refuting to be hotels and we did see other westerners. They were probably looking at us and thinking they looked as shell shocked as us a few days ago.
Eventually Lynn spotted our guesthouse, we were told immediately to take off our shoes and to produce our booking sheet. The details were on my phone, I showed my credentials to the manager, a stern looking woman and we were shown up to our room, or, shoe box as I came to call it. One thing didn't take place though, strangely enough; we weren't asked for our passports. At last, I thought, we are now anonymous from the prying eyes of the communist state - small victories - eh!
The stairs resembled those found in a lighthouse, it was also dark, the stairs were dark, I was wearing sunglasses and...well you can imagine it could have been a recipie for disaster. It nearly was! The room certainly was. If you'd had that proverbial cat, you deffo wouldn't have been able to swing it. the room was a shoebox, the bathroom was a phone box and the balcony was a match box, we did however have a room with a view - the view of everyone else's rooms down the narrow street.
We were left to ourselves, shut the door, dumped the gear on the bed and just laughed - what more could we do as we explored the tiny space to discover no loo roll, no plug in the sink and no peace from the ancient, rattling air con machine. Oh well, at least it wasn't raining.
Our first priority as always on these early morning flights was to find breakfast. I'd clocked a joint called the Champions Sports Bar, jostling for early morning customers with all the other...sports bars. It was, thank the Lord, the first good news of the day. It was clean, the food was decent and the coffee was good, we'd found our new local.
It was over breakfast that we made our first radical decision of the trip. Due to our visa getting close to running out and the fact we had a trip over to Australia to plan and the added time constraint of my sister being away from Bangkok on her Easter break - we decided to miss out Cambodia during this first phase of the journey. That meant we would have to knock a day off Saigon meaning we would need a flight back to Bangkok. Originally we would have been transiting through Cambodia and crossing the border into Thailand by coach.
After breakfast we went next door to a travel agency who could get us a flight out on the Saturday, in the morning at £100 each. I went to the hotel for our passports while Lynn waited on the street. On my return she suggested we get a price quote from the Air Asia office right next to our alleyway , they offered us a flight at £30 less each but on the Friday morning at that price, a no brainier, we booked there and then. (Air Asia are the Easyjet of this region).
Armed with Google Maps on the phone we went for our first wander through Saigon's hot and sultry streets using our new found scooter avoidance skills, honed in after Hanoi, Hoi An and Nha Trang - hit us if you dare pal!
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