Ok my last day in Vietnam, and from Saigon I go to Cambodia via boat for three days. Saigon has been amazing. First it's great to be in a city again and especially one where there are so many motorbikes and you can constantly hear the beautiful roar of the engines. For anyone who loves motorbikes, you must have gathered that I do, this is a perfect city. There are thousands of motorbikes everywhere and I suppose after a while the noise might get too much and with the pollution too...well i wouldn't want to live here long term but for a while it's a great city to spend time in and observe how Vietnam lives and breathes.

I spent a few days in the quieter and calmer city of Hoi An, near the coast and it was a great place to chill. Boat rides on the river and french cafes and beautiful french architecture to admire. Old traditional houses and pagodas but the main reason everyone goes there is to get a new wardrobe. I had a beautiful, red, made to measure, winter coat stitched for me in under 10 hours. there are shops everywher, selling the latest styles. You can sit with the latest next catalogue and choose from a range of material, vietnamese silk, thai silk to cotton and linel. This is the perfect place for a foreigner to rent a bike and go around town. the big cities are just to crazy to ride in by yourself. But unfotunately for me the rain and floods meant that I could neither rent a bike nor do much walking around. All I could do was sit in the cafe and watch school children, rubbish collectors and everone else walk, and drive through the floods.

With news of more flood, the town of Hue suffering as badly as the floods in 1999, and a typhoon too, I decided to get as far away from the coast as I could. Most foreigners here seem to travel by bus, cheaper and more convenient as the bus stops at different towns along the coast, but I'm told by the locals that the buses are dangerous bothe because of the crazy driving and also because of the people using them. So I decided for the safer and obviously the nicer option and take the train. Fortunately, my train was neither delayed nor cancelled. loads of other were because of the floods. I was on the hard sleeper again, sharing my cabin with 2 civil engineers travelling on work, a guy going to meet his way to get married, a woman who belonged to the caodai faith, indegenous to vietnam, and another who had just a month ago lost her son in a motorbike accident and me. It was interesting combination and i laernt alot especially as one of the engineers spoke English. It's amazing how sadness makes itself so visible. the woman mourning her son was on a special vegetarian diet. She had given up meat and fish and I'm told that this was quite common in Vietnam. When people wanted to ask god for something they abstained from meat and fish for a while. The train journeys are much more fun here in Vietnam, the people are so much nicer, friendlier and warm but the trains are pretty old. But I shouldn't be complaining, they look old but they are clean (or are they, there was a rat in our cabin) but at least there aren't people spitting all over the place. That is one habit that the chinese really need to ger rid off. I was thoroughly disgusted by it and am so pleased to have gotten away from it. Arriving in Saigon, I took a motorbike to the hotel:) There are no hostels in most of Vietnam, it's so touristic that they have hotels with varying price ranges but not many big hostels which i am so used to. I am staying at Madame Cuc's .."tea, coffee, juice" you get asked everytime you walk in and with breakfast and dinner included for $12 it's a great deal. i love being in the city again but the days here in Saigon have passed really quickly. I haven't done most of the touristic things that are recommended. haven't made it to the war museum or the pagodas but I have had a fascinating time here. I have been able to get out of the touristic area and move around bits of Saigon that few other tourists have experienced. I have spent my time with the Vietnamese buddhist nuns and they have shared their life with me. I have been amazed at their strength in character and a little sadenned by my own materialistic weaknesses. Yesterday I decided to take a motor taki and just ride around and I ended up at a Buddhist university. Here I met nuns and monks and they were happy to see me and one of them who spoke english really well invited me to her home/temple/nunnery the next day. So this morning I went from district 1 to district 12.....a half an hour motorbike ride away...very, very far the locals told me and wondered why I wanted to go there. But I left at 7:30 in the morning which meant I had a ride in the morning rush hour.......