ho chi minh city

okee dokee...
so we've been in ho chi minh city for about a day and a half now and we leave tomorrow morning for cambodia.

we left nha trang two days ago and were lucky enough to squeeze in a beach day before we left!
there was a typhoon that hit central vietnam this week.
it rained for the first two days we were there and was supposed to continue but the sun managed to stay out long enough to hit the beautiful beach for an afternoon with our friends we keep running into...
we spent the day soaking up the sun, drinkin cheap beer and keeping the little kids from selling stuff to us. this one little girl put a curse on me for not buying a pack of mentos off her...she told me i was going to have ugly babies, IF i would even be able to have babies at all. but if i did they would be ugly as sin.
later on that day we went out for mexican food and then wandered to a bar for bellini's and to watch the manchester united game live (they are HUGE fans to put it mildly).
the next night we were all ready to leave and there was a big misunderstanding at the place where we were meant to catch our bus...the guy in charge told us that the busses weren't running to saigon, but he meant hoi an....
apparently there was crazy flooding...neck high water, so all busses were cancelled.
luckily we had just come from there and missed out on the bad weather...

and now we're in hcmc (saigon) and before we know it we're outta vietnam and into our 9th country of the trip!

so we are staying in a hostel on the 5th floor....but if you wanna get technical (and i do) it's really the 7th floor.
our backpacks were pulled up to our room with a home-made crane thru the home-made sky-light (a hole punched through the roof) and we had to trudge up 16 flights of stairs. retarded...

today we took a taxi to what we thought was dam sen park, but ended up in the wrong part of town, walked around aimlessly for a bit and then hopped on the back of two guys' motorbikes.
OH.
MY.
WORD.
i think my knuckles are still white!
the traffic out here is completely ridiculous, but hey i'm alive so it can't be that bad...???
dam sen park ended up being pretty much an abandoned theme park...it was very odd.
the rides weren't running but there were a handful of people wandering...
they had a bunch of creatures and figures made out of dishes...a bird made of spoons, dragon out of plates...it was pretty neat.
the highlight for me was definitely a swan ride paddle boat on the lake...i've always wanted to ride in a swan, don't know why.

well that's all i got for now...

love from saigon.
fritz.