Vietnam

Well, I've just arrived in Ho Chi Minh City after much hassle yesterday when I looked at my visa and realised that it started the day after my tour was supposed to!! .. For some reason the embassy back home had messed up, perhaps misread my 7 as a 9, and I had gone about blissfully unaware until I decided that maybe I should go a day early and looked at it.

So after a rushed trip to the embassy in PP, they told me I had to buy a new one for $35 !! I attempted to charm them with some Vietnamese that I had learnt which brought it down to $20. I thought that was probably the best I could do.

On the way here, a girl on my bus was in the same situation and simply bribed the official with $5 at the border! I am fuming that I didn’t think of that myself.

Anyway. I thought that, for a treat I’d spend one night before the trip in a nice hotel, with special treats I haven’t had for the last month like a mirror and hot water; it even has air con, a fridge with stuff like beer and water in it (rather than a rattly, room temperature, slightly smelly box that just pretends to be a fridge and who's only function appears to be to give you a shock when you plug it in like all the only ones I’ve encountered so far, and even they are few and far between) and TV. And Wifi,..oh! Yes!... I feel like a queen in my nice clean room, I can tell you!

My last room (for the last 3 nights) had a light, a bed and a fan, a “bathroom” (toilet cubicle with a shower that simply dribbled slowly down it’s own hose) oh! And a window but it looked out on a wall 2ft away. that was it. Oh and I shared it with a number of biting insect creatures of some description, these may have been bed bugs, or mosquitoes, not sure, and there was no lizard to control them. I had thought these were compulsory accessories, but sadly not. I felt bad that I hadn't said goodbye to Brian, the last gecko that i shared with in Siem Reap, as he'd really done a terrific job, and I never got to tell him.

Anyway, very glad for the investment as I just had a nice shower, felt refreshed, and sorted myself out a little back pack to go for an explore...and its pissing it down outside. Damn. Now, I didn’t mind Phnom Penh in the rain, as it’s small, and I know my way around, and how things work, what to pay fora tuk tuk, etc but here I don’t.

Also where $1 = about 4000 riel in Cambodia, that was easy to work out what you were paying for stuff. Here $1 = about 17,000 dong and I can’t get my tiny brain around this yet. I am going to have to sit here and write out multiples of 17,000 just to get me knowing what I am doing.

Right. Off to find some food.