OK, this has got to be quick, because this Internet shop will be closing min just a few minutes.
The trip back from Cat Ba Island was a pleasant, lazy way to spend a day.
Once back in Hanoi, we had dinner at an excellent restaurant and then proceeded to the airport, 30 km north of the city, by taxi.
The airport is pretty swish, and the Vietnam Airlines flight was aboard what seemed like an almost new 767, too, so that was quite a change from Lao Aviation.
We arrived 1 hour and 45 minutes later in Ho Chi Minh City. Gone was the coolness of Hanoi and we found ourselves once again in very humid weather, but this time in the torrential rain.
We didn’t arrive until 23:00, so we were a little concerned that we might not be able to find a hotel without the shutter down. After all, the streets of Hanoi are deserted at that time. Not so in Ho Chi Minh City: the hotels were all open and we had no problem finding a room. Indeed, the only problem was in negotiating a fair rate with a taxi driver at the airport, as every bugger in this part of the world wants to rip you off (and who can blame them, since so many tourists are cash laden and just asking to be relieved of their excess money).
We were up very early today to make the most of our time in the city. Gone was the rain, replaced by blazing sunshine and blue skies.
We allowed ourselves to be persuaded to charter a couple of local guys and their motorbikes for a tour of the city. Sarah was very wary of the precarious traffic at first, but this turned out to be an excellent idea, as these guys ferried us all over town for eight hours in total, for the princely sum of $1 per hour. Not bad at all.
We took in the Ho Chi Minh City museum, along with a couple of pagodas, a couple of markets, Chinatown, a great noodle shop for lunch (the real thing — no English on the menus here), the Reunification Palace (formerly the Presidential Palace) and, finally, an ice-cream shop (where I sampled an absolutely dreadful local fruit called durian — I was shocked to discover that Sarah liked it!).
After relaxing at the hotel for a while, we had dinner at an upmarket Vietnamese restaurant, travelling there and back by cyclo (bicycle taxi).
Back on our home street, we’ve just had a relaxing foot massage and now it’s time for bed.
Tomorrow, we’re heading out for a half-day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, which were a huge network of tunnels that allowed the North Vietnamese Army to conduct their operations while the ground and airspace above were unusable. Ingenious. Everywhere you look in this country, you can’t fail to be impressed by the ability of these people to use whatever means are at their disposal to do some very clever things to survive and progress.
After a visit to the American War Crimes museum in the afternoon, that’ll be it for tomorrow. The next day, we set off for a 3 day trip up the Mekong Delta, which should prove to be outstanding. We can’t wait.