Hong Thien Loc Hotel Ho Chi Minh City

... br>4. "Ladies and gentlemen", overused ad infinitum, maybe prefixing every three or four sentences.<br><br>After a whole hour of listening to him talk, non-stop, I was ready to throw myself out the window. Thankfully, he shut up as we arrived at some random touristy craft shop which the company has sneakily but unsurprisingly thrown onto the itinerary. I went to the toilet, wandered down long aisles of ceramic tat, thoroughly disinterested, then left the building. It was ...

... in mind that I lost my exit card and customs declaration, that you are supposed to produce when leaving.....<br><br>They have an expression here in Vietnam - Same same, but different. I think I'm starting to understand what they mean.....:)<br><br>Speak to you again soon<br>Love Karen x<br><br>PS. Oh joy of joys! I've just caught one of the roving newspaper sellers and got myself a Daily Telegraph, hurrah! (the first English newspaper I've had since August) :)<br>

... since then.<br><br>But Saigon, a city of mostly younger generations, has left that part of history behind. To be sure, there are traces of the war in and around the city, but they are mostly for curious tourists. Nonetheless I found myself willingly fell in all those tourist traps: the Reunification Palace (formerly S. Vietnam&#8217;s Presidential Palace &#8211; remember seeing the communist tanks crashing thru the gate on April 30, 1975, the day Saigon surrendered? Today the gate has ...

The Mekong River is one of Asia's most prolific waterways, extending from the Yunnan province of China, through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and emptying into the South China Sea. Parts of the river have an infamous past as a major thoroughfare ...

... on these streets. I haven't died yet, but I will go and buy a Lotto ticket if i leave this place unscathed LOL. <br><br>Talk about CRAZY streets. Everyone rides motorbikes, from babies to koros. And at first glance it is all chaos, but somehow, amongst the craziness.....for the locals......it works. I dunno how, but it does. <br><br>The temperature here is still hot ...

... different time. Before we left we decided we&#8217;d have to go to Cu Chi tunnels. When we arrived we were shown a propaganda video, telling us about how the Vietnamese are so smart and showing us the national heroes who&#8217;d killed so many stupid Americans. The tunnels and grounds around them were pretty impressive albeit creepy; some of the traps they set were horrible, poisoned bamboo stuck in a pit which was then covered over amongst others made me think that if you stepped ...

... path and took detours all the time to get to lush vegetation for a snack. We had a bag of bananas for him, which he woofed down in about 3 minutes, and still kept putting his trunk back over his head into our faces, and blowing hot air all over us demanding more. He sat down at one point which was really scary when you are sitting on a seat on the top, and refused to move until he got more bananas, and did a massive skiddy slide at another time. It was really good fun though and ...

9th July<br>First of all, we'd both like to wholeheartedly apologise for our terrible lack of blogging, we've no excuse other than that we've spent the last week or so mainly lazing around on beaches... it's a tough job... anyway, more of this later.<br><br>We arrived at Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam very excited to discover a new country, unfortunately our enthusiasm was thwarted somewhat by our first encounter with Vietnamese burocracy; we went to cash some ...

... An ex-English teacher turned guide (who wants to improve his English before returning to teach in the better-paid private sector) - he continually used cockney rhyming slang and other English idioms - typical In Asia but still comedy value at times! 30 minutes into our journey, we typically (sticking to the Asian tour practice) stopped off at an arts workshop to view the process of making a picture piece-by-piece with eggshell before inlaying it with mother-of-pearl. Oh - and ...

... on the side of the South Vietnamese, buried before 1975. I&#8217;m<br>pretty sure there are none after 1975 though, because that is when the<br>communists took over and there was no way they&#8217;d sponsor a cemetery for<br>their enemies. My understanding of the details is a little fuzzy<br>through all the translation.<br><br>All in all, we have had a jam-packed first 36 hours, have met tons<br>of family ...