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Other entries in Saigon

It's just like Alton Towers

I was up at 9 for breakfast at the coffee shop and went for the baguette with two cheese, thinking I might get a few slices of cheddar, edam, gouda or the likes.  What I got was a baguette with two triangles of laughing cow cheese which tastes the same as the dairylea traingles (basically of poo).  Never again will I order anything that promises cheese again in Vietnam unless it specifies exactly what kind.

After breakfast we got a taxi to Thang's bosses house down a little back alley near a seven storey pagoda that I dont know the name of.  As we walked down the back alleys, I found myself getting a lot of unusual looks from the locals.....I dont think they get many white people walking around here for some reason.  Basically, I was bored shitless here as everyone just spoke in Vietnamese for an hour, but hey, at least I got a free drik out of it.  Thank god it only lasted an hour otherwise I would have been driven crazy.

From here we caught another taxi to Dam Sen.  Now, I didnt have a clue what this was and both Lien and Thang didnt know what the English translation was, but as it turns out is was some kind of theme park with next to no rides.  I think the only reason we went there was so that Thang could go to a particular bank nearby to get some cash his boyfriend had wired him.  We went in anyway as it only cost one dollar each, only to find that the only roller coaster there wasnt working and the park was completely dead.  There were a few people fishing in the lake and a group of kids throwing stones at some gibbons and orangutans with no-one to stop them, but that was about it.  Basically the park was complete crap.  To make matters worse, they had about six elephants shackled by one ankle to a chain no longer than two metres and they looked liek they were going mad, about five bear cubs crammed into two tiny cages (I couldnt tell the exact number as they were so crmaped) and a number of monkeys in tiny cages with metal collars around their necks to restrict their already limited freedom.  All in all, I hated this place!

The only thing worth a look was on the way out there were may sculptures of dragons and other mythical creatures made out of chinese plates, bowls and spoons.  They were worth about five minutes of my time anyway.

When e got back to the centre of backpackersville we went shopping for some fruit for the room until the torrential rains set in again and we had to dart back to the hotel getting completely piss wet through in the process.  When we got back to the room there was a ever growing puddle on the floor by the window and the rain was literally pouring through about three holes at the top of them.  Lien rang reception to sort it out and lay down a towel on the floor as I valiantly tried to plug the hiles with my fingers, only succeeding in getting even wetter in the process.  Eventually the woman came up from reception when they had stopped leaking and cleared up the mess, but it was still raining pretty heavily outside,so I resigned myself to an afternoon spent lounging in the room again.

Luckily, we had got the sports channel back on our television and there was a world football show on which actually had the goals from just about every football league in the world.  Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Korea, China, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi, Australia, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, England, Scotland, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark and so on....I think you get the picture.  This took up about three hours of my life, and eventually I stopped watching when I realised I was watching extended highlights of a game between FC Start and Bodo Glimt!!!  Dawkesy, you would have loved it.

For dinner we went back to the pizza restaurant and I had the all you can eat buffet for two quid, but put in a dismal performance as I only scoffed two plates before thinking I was gonna explode.  I dont think I will ever beat my previous record of eighteen slices of pizza.  Lien declared she hates minestrone soup after one mouthful, so after I have finished we go off looking for crabs at all of the food stalls.  We were usuccessful, so Thang and she had to make do witha massive bag full of snails.....rotten!

We got back to the hotel, watched yet another crappy film and hit the hay ay 11pm.