Saigon

I haven't written since Hoi An!
Now we are in Saigon. We have been here for 4 days and tomorrow we are going to Cambodia!

After Hoi An we went to Nha Trang and stayed there for 2 days and one night! We arrived very early in the morning and found it very difficult to find a room. Many of the hotels were full because of the Vietnamese new year... We met two danish girls and when we finally found a free room we agreed to share a 3 person room... and it was fine :D we spent the morning looking for our bus office to confirm our ticket to Saigon but the office had moved and when we found the right office they said there were no buses going before the 3 of February or something.. we had to get a new ticket.. it has been fun to experience tet but it has also given us a couple of problems.. In my lonely planet there is nothing about problems that can happen close to the new year or that everything becomes more expensive! but oh well there is nothing i can do about it now..
we spent a long time on the beach in Nha Trang and swam too. The danish girls joined us at the beach and we met Katharina who we got to know on our Halong Bay Trip! We all ate lunch together at a small Vietnamese place. It was so good!
We met Katharina later and we agreed that we will travel in Cambodia together! That will be fun!
After having spent a long time on the beach I had become quite sunburned ( it was my own fault!(on my back) so the next day when we took a boat trip to see some islands I swam in a t-shirt :P
The trip had been recommended in the Lonely Planet but the trip in itself was not that interesting! We still had fun though because the twp danish girls went with us!
BUT the minibus that turned out to be a bus was an HOUR late and when we came to the harbour we had to wait for a long time until we could leave (strange) I think there was something to do with the amount of people on the boat.
We were first taken to an island where one could go to an aquarium but we didn't go in and people who went in said it wasn't all that. Next stop was a place to snorkel and the brochure had promised colourful fish and coral but that was BULLSHIT! The coral was grey and I was lucky to see 3 fish.. The lunch was good though and we had a floating bar in the ocean. The next destination was a beach full of tourists and you had to pay to enter! all the places we went there were loads of other boats. But we got to talk to some fun people and we had a great time with the danish girls! (who unfortunately were travelling north and not south..)
We took the night bus from Nha Trang to Saigon and we both slept so much (I guess we have gotten used to this type of transportation!) We arrived early in Saigon in the middle of the backpacker area and went to the hostel that was recommended in Lonely Planet (FULL OF COURSE!) but we found an even cheaper dorm (4 dollars a night) just up the street!
The first day in Saigon we went to the Behn Tahn Market and just walked around a bit! I really like this city!
The second day we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels which were really interesting! The tunnels used to be 30cm x 40cm wide but were of course made larger for the tourists! I crawled in these tunnels 120 metres! It was so warm and really small! amazing how these tunnels were 200km long! we also went to the war remnant museum and I saw lots of pictures that were quite vivid and I can't forget some of the pictures.. Ate a happy menu at an Indian restaurant and it was good! I am amazed of how cheap the food is here! 30 000vnd (1 dollar = 17 500 vnd you do the math :P) and we found this amazing fruit shake place on the street where you can choose what fruits you want and only pay 10 000vnd. Maya and I have had quite a few fruit shakes and these are by far the best ones we have had!
Today we (Maya, Katharina and I) walked around for a while before deciding that we wanted some Vietnamese food for lunch! we all wanted pho but the restaurant we went to first didn't have any left (or something) so we went right across the street (was a small alley) and had pho there! As we were sitting there a Vietnamese guy driving a moto stopped right in front of 2 western guys and a Vietnamese lady and the Vietnamese guy grabbed of beer bottle that the western guys had been drinking and hit one of them in the head with it! I was shocked! It came all of a sudden and nobody was expecting anything like this.. The western guys reacted by saying something like what did you that for? one jumped up and grabbed hold of the Vietnamese man's moto. The aftermath of this fighting was that one of the western guys was bleeding from the head and the other from the leg. The police were contacted and 5 police men had trouble taking the Vietnamese guy into the car! the policemen were all tiny and the Vietnamese guy was HUGE!
The three of us sat there and wondered why that just had happened and a Vietnamese guy told us that the Vietnamese guy who had fought with the westerns was crazy. he had apparently done something similar a couple of months ago. the guy told us that the guy had studied French, German and Spanish at university and that it all went to his head and he went crazy. and apparently he couldn't speak any of those languages anymore. I don't know what to believe but it was kind of the man to explain us why this happened! We thought that the Vietnamese guy maybe didn't like that there was a Vietnamese lady was sitting with 2 western men. But i have no idea maybe he was crazy! A lucky thing was that this episode happened at the restaurant we went to first but didn't have what we wanted for lunch! Phew!

I have enjoyed Vietnam! I found a t-shirt today that summed up what we have had to say no thank you to SO many times:
THANKS
NO MOTOBIKE
NO SHOESHINE
NO MASSA
NO BOOM BOOM
NO GLASSES
...

the boom boom doesn't apply to us girls but I thought it was funny!

Can't wait to see what Cambodia has in store for us!