I feel Cyclo in Saigon

Happy Australia Day!!!!!

Today we had a nice sleep in. After our tour of the Central Highlands it was nice not to have to get up and rush off anywhere. We had a quick breakfast that was included with our room, the Vietnam hotel standard issue, bread, eggs, or noodle soup. We stumbled out onto the hot, humid and hectic Saigon street about 10am. 'Motobike' 'Cyclo'(pronounced sick-lo), 'Marijuana'(pronounced Merry-wanna) is what we heard immediately. SO we got some weed and went back to our room for a session..... Just Kidding, but we did take the Cyclo. The driver Dung (pronounced Yoong) was a 45 year old Saigon master with a list of sites in his pocket and legs of steel. 'Number 1, very strong' he kept saying to us. We believed him and feeling cheap after our expensive luxury tour over the past 4 days we both hopped on to the single seat Cyclo. Kel felt embarrased and we both felt like the big fat westerners, the same people we give shit to when we see them in the Cyclos. After a few minutes we were enjoying ourselves and realised this is the best way to see Saigon. Looking back now it was really quite terrifying at times, cars, motorbikes, and travelling down streets the wrong way. And yes we will do it again.

Our first stop on the Dung tour (no, not crap, that's the Cyclo rider's name remember?) was the Jade Emperor Pagoda. It was nice to walk through even though we had seen a thousand of them before in China. We actually knew what we were looking at though because of the thousand we had seen in China. We almost translated the 12 stages of Hell entirely.

Next stop, The War Remnants Museum. The museum formely known as..... The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. It was almost lunch time and we only managed 1 room of the museum before it closed for 2 hours. We saw the war photography section. It really was a tribute to the photographers of the Vietnamese revolution against the French, and the American war. Although the photographs were shocking and emotional it was nice to read stories of the photographers and what they risked to show the wars to the world. There are a few 'last photos' taken by photographers before they died in war (some only seconds before), and award winning photographs.

Stop 3 The ANZ Bank. You all know what goes on here.

Stop 4 The post office to make calls to our mothers. Hi Mum/Mom. This was actually Dung's idea and really quite thoughtful.

The last stop was the Reunification Palace. This was the headquarters of the South Vietnamese Government until 1975, when Viet Cong tanks crashed through the front gates and took command of the palace and South Vietnam. It really looks like a government building in a park, with sexy 1960s architecture and interior design. We kept expecting to see Dirk Diggler in the formal rooms and Maxwell Smart down in the basement's hallways, but they were not to be found.

** Sidenote - Every museum or tourist attraction in Saigon has an American tank on its grounds.

We walked back to our hotel in the backpacker district, stopping for a litre of bia hoi and decided to go for a massage. We opted for the 'less expensive and for a good cause' treatment. Apparently the Vietnamese Traditional Massage Institute is probably the only place you won't be offered extras apparently. This could be because it at the Ho Chi Minh City Association for the Blind. All of the Masseuses are, yep you guessed it, blind. We payed our money and went into different rooms, Men and Womens. They weren't the best but it still felt great, especially knowing the money went directly to them. Nigels massage was more of a percussion session, and Kels was a session of light pinching and we both had some slapping. Sounds kinky but it wasn't.

Looking for somewhere to eat dinner, Nigel had an impromptu haircut. The haircut was great but the highlights were expensive. $15.

In honour of Australia Day we had a traditional Vietnamese Mexican meal for dinner. The beer budget was blown away after Nige's highlights so we didn't go and seek out the Foster's specials that we knew were happening somewhere. And besides four weeks in Cambodia will be much better than one night out in Saigon.