Recent events.

Ok so I have been a bit lazy with updating lately, but we have had a pretty full on couple of days! in the last post, we were heading off to dalat on the night bus. it was a serious journey (12 hours!) but we managed to sleep most of the way. Luckily we werent near the bathroom this time, but we might as well have been because the b.o coming from the guy below us was actually the scent of death! I spend most of the trip with a packet of chips over my mouth and nose to try and block it out. Ugh im shuddering just thinking about it. Anyway, we got to nha trang and it was underwater like they had predicted. We were congratulating ourselves on deciding to go to dalat until the driver stood up and said that there would be no busses to dalat that day, and he couldn't guarantee there would be one in the next week. With nothing else to do, we decided to get back on the bus-another 12 hours on the dreaded bus! that passed pretty easily though, and pretty uneventfully, and just like that we were in saigon! That night we were so exciting- we went and tried fruit shakes at like, 5 different places to suss out the best ones. We stayed in this horribly dodgey place with cracks in the walls and a rooster literally just outside, weird because we were on the 4th floor...The next day i was feeling a bit sick, so i went back to the (different, obviously) hotel while claire went to see the museum and stuff. Welll, thats what she told me she was doing. He came back to the hotel about 8 hours later looking like she was about to faint. She managed to get so completely lost that she went about 5 ks in the wrong direction and had to get a school girl to tell her she was in district 5. We were staying in district one... That night we met up with some of the other backpackers who we seem to bump into in every town, to this place called le pub. We had a couple of drinks and then this random 34 year old vietnamese guy was trying to impress someone on our table so he bought everyone cocktails (sweet!) and started talking about his job (accounting, not so sweet) Needless to say, we took full advantage of the situation, im not one to say no to free mojitos! After le pub we jumped in a taxi and went to this club called apocolypse now. We had so much fun! It was absolutely packed, and the dancefloor was massive. They played heaps of western music, but i think it as half half tourists and locals. We haven't been out together properly in ages, so it was probably the best night so far :) we got home at around 2, because we had a 6am start the next day. We got out of the taxi and realised that the hotel had locked us out! Freaking tthat we'd have to sleep on the street, claire started frantically ringing the doorbell until this lady opened the door. The poor thing, im not going to lie, she looked like hell. She had about 20% eye openage happening-maximum. Im surprised she even made it to the door. We laughed for about 45 minutes about it when we walked up the millin steps(not exaggerating) to our room. The alarm went off about 3 hours later for us to get up and go to see the cu chi tunnels. It was 2 1/2 hours to get there, but the man driving had attatched this god damn clanging charm to the bus. It was like someone scraping their knife wrong on a plate, or nails on a chalkboard. But LOUD. I thought i was going to have a breakdown halfway there. Wasn't helped by the fact we were pretty hungover. We were tip top by the time we got there and found it really interesting. Our guide was great, and i even jumped in a hole. We got to run through the tunnels, using the local one rather than the tourist one which has (ironically) been widened to accommodate for fat westeners. Go figure. I went first because i couldn't think of anything worse than beingandwiched in ntunel between two slow and sweaty people. I pretty much ran the whle way, but at some point i had to crawl, there were parts in total darkness, and every now and then it just dropped away below you. I freaked at one point when whacked my head on a couple of bats on the roof of the tunnel. Delightful. That night we went for dinner at this place we'd been to the night before. We had come across two restaurants opposite each other, that had exactly the same menu's. This is not uncommon in Vietnam, as it seems that as soon as someone finds success doing something, everyone sets up an identical enterprise right next door. We decided on the on the left, and sat upstairs looking back down on to the street. We ordered soo many fruit shakes (only 50c each!) and the waitress took down our meals. She disappeared downstairs and 10 seconds later we saw her run across the road to the other place. Naturally, we were a little confused as we watched her, but this only intensified as we saw her clip our order to street vendor stall just outside what appeared to be the kitchen. We actually sat and watched our meals being prepared on the street from the second floor of the opposite building. Haha! When the food was ready, the waiters loaded up their arms with plates, crossed the crazy street traffic and came up the stairs! Despite the curious arrangement, the meals were amazing! I got a whole roast pumpkin, with the middle cut out and filled with risotto. Best ever!