26/11/12 to 04/12/12 . At this point we decided to change our route slightly to avoid days of travelling south for more beaches, to instead head directly to Saigon, or Ho Chi Min City as its now known (the locals still call it Saigon) to visit our friend Pierre. We'd had trouble contacting him due to facebook being blocked in Southern Vietnam. We finally made contact the morning of our flight (thanks to Chris). After the afternoon on the beach we headed back to Danang in the evening to catch our flight.
We landed quite late in the evening, but luckily Pierre lived close to the airport, so it was only a short taxi to his place. The next day we woke up late and spent the afternoon catching up with emails, the blog and doing some washing. We also visited the local Coop supermarket (not sure if it was the same company as in the UK or a commie shop). We stayed locally for a meal with Pierre, or so we thought. This turned out to be just a drink as they were not serving food after 8.30pm I guess. However, this was lost in translation on us and we waited patiently for our meals. An hour and a half later we asked about our meals and we were given the bill for our drinks. Off to KFC. Only this was closed (even at 10pm). Pierre ordered a pizza and we went back to his flat, starving by this point.
The day after we went sightseeing in central Saigon (district 1), where we visited Ben Thanh market, the Fine Arts museum (with Saigon's first ever lift), a building that looked a bit like the Shard, the Committee Buildings (Town Hall), Notre Dame cathedral and the Post Office which was designed by Gustave Eiffel. Somehow we managed to avoid being runover. We then got into a conversation with a Vietnamese guy with a stammer... a couple of hours later and we met Pierre for dinner.
We woke to learn that Spurs had beaten Liverpool 2-1 and Dave was happy. He was even willing to go shopping with Flora for the whole day, visting the Saigon Center, Ben Thanh market again and the Tax Trade Center… Flora's negotiating skills were exploited to the full. That evening Pierre took us out for sushi, which we loved as we were missing Poppyhana on Jamaica Road.
The following day, after posting some souvenirs we'd accumulated so far (and being impressed with the wrapping skills at the post office), we visited the War Remnants Museum. We saw a lot of shocking pictures of the consequences of Agent Orange and the devastation of war, even today, 40 years on. Perhaps sadder is the fact that there will be many more generations who continue to suffer. There was also a great exhibition on the top floor about photographers on the front line. Although the museum was thought provoking, it was of course only one side of the story, and very biased. It focussed purely on American war crimes and referred to the South Vietnamese as 'puppets'. 
In the evening we went to a gig where a band from the Phillipines were playing several old classics (eg. ‘Born to be Wild’) as well as modern pop (‘Moves like Jagger’ and ‘Gangnam Style’). When we arrived an older Vietnamese gentlemen had joined them on stage to belt out some soul numbers. He was pretty good and was alternating verses in English and Vietnamese to keep the mixed crowd happy.
We were supposed to leave the following day, but we stayed one more day to visit Cholon, the Chinese quarter and spend the day with Pierre on his day off. We spent the evening playing cards with Pierre's workmates.
After 4 hours sleep we made our way to the bus station to catch a bus to Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta. We arrived late afternoon and booked ourselves onto a boat tour for the following day before getting a good night's rest. We needed it because we had an early start the next day at 5am for the boat tour.
With just the two of us and the skipper on a traditional Vietnamese boat, we set off to see the sunrise before visiting two floating markets, where traders come and exchange goods on their boats (mostly fruit). We had a boat pull up to ours and offer us a cup of coffee which we absolutely needed. Then the skipper bought us some watermelon and pineapple, and had a smile on his face the whole day. After the markets he took us down some narrow channels lined by palm trees and mangroves. We saw rice noodles being made in a small factory, before we stopped for lunch at a nice spot with gardens where we saw a racoon/squirrel/skunk type animal in a tree. Then we had a snooze in the hammocks before we headed back to Can Tho on the boat.
We were preparing for our last night (and last bus) in Vietnam. Our bus arrived late afternoon to take us to Chau Doc, where we spent the night before taking a boat the next morning into Cambodia.
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