Ho Chi Minh City! More commonly referred to as Saigon, surely this place would be able to offer me some excitement and adventure, yes? Something the other cities I've visited were lacking? It's hard for me to say why exactly, but Vietnam on the whole has been disappointing, and Saigon has got a big job to do if it's going to make me change my opinion.
Unfortunately I've got no pictures for my time in Saigon. Why? 'Cause my camera was stolen, and with it half of all my photos taken so far. But we'll get to that later. First things first; from Hoi An I took the bus to Ho Chi Minh City, a 24-hour bus ride. Of course I could have just taken a flight to Ho Chi Minh City and gotten there in an hour, but I am cheap and wanted to go by train. Except, there are no trains from Hoi An, so I had to default to another sleeper bus. It was hot, crowded, and dirty all over in the bus, and from now on I'm flying everywhere I go.
But I digress. After arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, I did what any backpacker who has no idea what they're doing would do and found myself a hostel. Any self-respecting hostel has trips and advice for local stuff to see and do, it's the backpackers' bible. And so it was that the receptioninst at the hostel gave me a map of central Saigon, with the top 5 of attractions clearly marked. Cool, I thought; this should take me a while to do. So I walked around Saigon visiting these sites, was done by 1pm. Great; Saigon wasn't turning out to be the most exciting place to be. I went to the War Remnants Museum(exhibits of the Vietnam War), the Reunification Palace(last bastion of Southern Vietnam in the fall of Saigon), the Notre-Dame Cathedral(couldn't get in, though), the Post Office(a landmark, but apart from the big portrait of Ho Chi Minh it was nothing special), other things around Saigon.
So that was one day. What to do tomorrow? I thought I'd check out the malls for a change; I'd been travelling from place to place, visiting different sights, and you know what? I got tired of it. I just wanted to relax and have a coffee somewhere. I went off and checked out the most popular malls in Saigon, Diamond Plaza, Vincom Center, Parkson Place, and so on. They're mostly malls for the super-rich, with expensive boutiques and such. Not appropriate for a backpacker like me, I thought. Nice to see, but I did some window-shopping and left for other places to shop. I went to Saigon Square, a mall more appropriate for the budget-minded. It was a free-for-all type of market, with stalls squished all together and vendors hassling you to come to their store, check out their shirts and other trinkets. Typically I hate that kind of in-your-face salesperson and I simply left if someone kept bothering me. No matter, I came away with a new backpack anyway, cost 5$.
I decided to sign up for a 2-day, 1-night trip to the Mekong Delta and which would continue on to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. It's a trip arranged by a tour company, most everything is covered so all I had to do was get up early in the morning to take the shuttle bus. It took several hours to reach the Mekong, after which we sailed down by boat and visited different places along the river; a fish farm, crocodile farm, and a rice plantation where they made rice noodles, rice paper, rice wine, whatever. That was enough for one day, so the tour ended at a hotel for the night. I was a bit hungry so I went out for the bite to eat. I wasn't gone very long so I didn't bother taking my camera with me and left it in my room, only to discover later when I came back that my camera was gone; the hotel staff had stolen it from my room, but how could I prove that? I was leaving the country that day to Cambodia across the border, I didn't have time to do a police report at the station. Most likely the police wouldn't have done anything about it anyway. I'd spoken with other backpackers who were robbed, had their bag snatched by someone on a motorbike, scammed, whatever, and the police response was always the same; "please come back tomorrow, we can't do anything now". Lesson learned, then. Vietnam is not a place I will be coming back to anytime soon. But onward to Cambodia where Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh await.