On to Ho Chi Minh City

Tom picked us up right on schedule and in just a few minutes we were dropping down though the pine forests along a scenic, winding highway.  It took about 15 minutes of downhill before we broke out of the mountainous terrain and hit flat country.  Again, flat land means something can grow on it, and here we saw hundreds and hundreds of acres of gladiola fields.  No doubt there are millions of plants.  thirty minutes after leaving the hotel, we arrived at the airport.  Of the four Vietnam airports that we have been in, this is the third brand new terminal building.  About 30 years ago, Vietnam introduced some economic reform measures and since then the economy here has been booming.  We certainly did not expect the country to be as modern looking as it is.
The flight here was short and sweet, we only got up to 16,000 feet and didn't stay there long before we began the descent.  It was clear all the way and I was regretting having my camera stowed away in the overhead bin. 
The driver was waiting for us and we headed to the hotel.  Now I know it's been a couple of weeks since we were in Hanoi, but seriously, was the traffic this chaotic there?  Can only one million more people make this much of a difference (7 mil vs 6 mil).  Anyway, the traffic here is nuts.  It was too early to get our hotel room, so we dropped the luggage, picked up a map, and went for a walk.  It was only a few blocks to the main market area, but this one was pretty much the same as the others.  There is another market area that leans more towards sewing and fabrics, so we debated about whether to try and find it, the streets here are a bit confusing, straight lines don't seem to be a part of the urban planning anywhere in the early city history.  A cyclo driver saw us studying the map and asked where we were trying to go, we said we were just trying to figure how where we were.  However, after some negotiation, we agreed to let them take us to this other market for 150,000 VND.  As we found out, we would never have made it walking.  Here is where we got foolish, rather than just paying them their money, they said they would wait and take us back.  We did some shopping, maybe half an hour and Eileen picked up a few more yards of fabric.

One of the hundreds of fabric shops

 The drivers were right there waiting for us when we were done, and back we came.  They dropped us on a relatively quiet corner about a block away from the hotel, there was the first clue.  I pulled out the money, quite prepared to double up for the return trip, but a new price list appeared, and we now fell under the one hour city tour category on this list, which had a price of 1,500,000 VND per person, which is a ludicrous amount.  Now there happened to be a couple of police close by, but they were nothing more than onlookers, but I was not paying them.  I turned my camera on them and said that I wanted some good pictures of them, one immediately turned away and the other put his hand in front of the lens.  I shot off a few pictures and we walked away.  It was our own fault, we knew better than to hire a cyclo, and yet we did it.  Oh well.
Got to the hotel and the room was ready, complete with a free upgrade to a junior suite, which is indeed sweet.  The Jacuzzi tub in the corner of the main room really sets it off.

Our room in HCMC

We had some lunch at a street side café, then went wandering the area, mainly looking for some rum, which is not a popular beverage here.  Scotch drinkers would have a blast.....Eileen tired of this venture in the heat fairly quickly, so we came back to the hotel.  I returned to the street while she cooled off in the AC.  It took me a little while, but ended up finding a place about two blocks away, just on the opposite side of the street than we had already walked.
At 5:30, we went downstairs and found our motorbike drivers waiting for us at the curb, actually there were four of them, as there was an Aussie couple going on the tour too.  We had a little safety briefing, some passenger rules, and off we went to the first stop, where we hooked up with five others, all Aussies.

My helmet was a little small, so a replacement was found

  I won't go into any long details, but we had three food stops, and two tourist stops, just to give us some digestive time.  Our total trek took 4.5 hours and covered a huge part of HCMC, from the poorest neighbourhoods to some of the high/middle class neighbourhoods.  we beef noodle soup from Hue, grilled okra, grilled goat, quail, shrimp, frog (skin on and skin off), scallops, clams, crab, and probably something I've forgotten, oh yes for the adventurous few a boiled egg with duck embryo.  Maybe on a good day I might have gone there.......

mmmm, frog, skin on.  My driver in the background

We do not have many pictures of the evening, the tour company was taking a lot of photos and they will be emailing them to us in a few days.
Tomorrow we will visit some of the Vietcong tunnels, see some of the local rural life, and do see some of the sights of HCMC.