After breakfast (of which I snobbishly complained to Liam about because we get half of what we normally do with rooms half the price!), we caught the bus to our next destination. The bus was abit better than the last one, and surprise surprise the couple who we were sat to on the last bus were opposite us on this one too! We also saw the German couple from dalat who we said hello to. Turns out they had forgotten their passports in mui ne...after trying to use our phone to no avail they finally found a phone they dialled out and managed to arrange with the hotel to send it to their hotel in saigon.
We stopped a couple of times on the journey which meant we arrived in the city nearly an hour later than planned. We walked for a short while but it turned out we'd walked the wrong way down the right street. We walked abit longer and still wernt sure what we were doing so stopped at a cafe to use the wifi and have a break from the heavy bags. Boy was it expensive! We paid 45,000 dong for a can of coke which is about £1.50....people in the uk may be thinking what are the complaining about? But we usually pay about half that! After Liam going off and trying to find the hotel alone without the bags and me chilling in the cafe listening to gotye, Taylor swift and a bit of Maroon 5 over the speakers we finally got up and made our way.
The hostel is one of the cheapest we found ( on trip advisor as we don't go for anything that hasn't been rated on there), its fairly basic but has everything we need for our stay here. The staff seem nice and we've booked onto a couple of tours and been given advice on where to go with the maps and directions so we should have a good couple of days here.
I've been growing more and more angry at my bra since leaving the uk, to the point of throwing a couple of hissy fits because I'm so uncomfortable! I've tried in several places to find a new one but they're either butt ugly, too small, too expensive, or the shop assistants have NO idea what they're talking about when it comes to sizes...mostly a combination of all of these. You would think a city would have somewhere proper. You'd be wrong. We traipsed across the busy streets to the big shopping centre, no underwear shops, no clothes stores with underwear. After getting through the initial language barrier we finally got told by people in the nice clothes stores where to go to get some. After a bit more walking we got to where they meant and it turned out to be a standard market like you get in Stafford guild hall on the weekends. There were bras but they were for pancake chests. Gutted. Looks like ill have to grit my teeth and wait for oz!
It's so busy here, luckily we're used to just walking out into the road and hoping for the best because otherwise you just wouldn't be moving anywhere here. People even drive on the paths which makes for a slightly stressful but interesting time. There are small parks dotted around which are nice because there are lots of people in them going about their business. The boys are playing with the shuttlecocks kicking them ins circle like football, the girls playing badminton, some people doing tai chi, dancing. Some using the outdoor gym equipment or jogging. There's lots of activity going on everywhere.
The area where the hostel is is pretty seedy to be honest, it's a real "backpacker" area with overpriced stores and people shouting you down and shoving flyers at you every 10 seconds. The lady at the hotel did warn us and directed us to "more Vietnamese" areas where people wernt so in your face and things are cheaper. We found an alright priced place on the way back and had food and drink there, Liam went off to get more cash from the ATM and when he returned he came back with story of how a man had stopped him asking if he wanted a massage. It then turned to " blow job? I take you" ...hmmm interesting. Now that explains the many Vietnamese girls wandering around very skimpily dressed. I've not been a massive fan the whole time of how much more attention Liam gets during conversation with female Vietnamese than me despite me being present....I think the majority must think they can catch him in their net for a green card or something! They do seem to be very attentive to western men. But I'll have to be extra careful with the ones round here who knows what they'd try and get up to! It's now 9pm and I'm actually in bed about to go to sleep, not managed to be in from dinner until past this time for weeks so its good going.liam is watching stuff on his iPad. A semi early get up tomorrow for a day of sight seeing so I'm off to sleep now :)
