Missed Saigon (Tuesday 2 March 2010)

Two flights with Cathay (again, really good) via Hong Kong see me back in Saigon, or I suppose more correctly, Ho Chi Minh City. It was strange to be back in the arrivals hall where I waited so long for Ant almost two years ago when his flight was so delayed. It was even warmer now than then, 30 degrees at 6pm. But I knew the score this time and got my taxi ticket at the airport so no hassle. I am only here one night as I move to Mui Ne up the coast tomorrow so decide to stay between the city and the airport in District 3. It might not be the city proper as in District 1 but it sure feels like it. I had forgotten quite how amazing the streams of millions of motorbikes are and the continual cacophony of horns, great fun, there is such a good vibe about the place. I’d missed it! I had booked a new place I had found, a boutique hotel called Ma Maison. They have marketed the place as being in a really non commercial part of the city where you can see everyday urban life lived in the alleys, quite a clever usp I thought to get people away from the centre. They were right! This place was tucked away down a series of alleyways that the taxi got stuck in, but the hotel itself was exquisite. An old Vietnamese house on four storeys, originally French owned, and opened last August. It is owned and managed by a young go ahead Vietnamese girl called Natasha and it took two years to lovingly restore. They did a very good job. Everything is beautiful from the old restored French painted furniture and the marble staircases to the very modern bathrooms. White starched sheets and silent aircon, shuttered windows overlooking the alleys. But city life did carry on outside – sitting in their small garden with a glass of chilled why why, a rather large rat did run over my feet and was burrowing about in the hedge...

I planned to leave at 11am the next day so I would have time to wander around the alleys. It was life in the raw. Tiny houses one on top of the other, rooms open onto the street, mopeds parked in the dark rooms, tiny kids saying hello and touching you, washing festooned on the window grills, old toothless women gossiping away. Tiny people sitting on those tiny red kiddie’s plastic chairs noshing away, it was all there. It was clan and tidy though, apart from the odd drain smell wafting up from beneath your fee (well I guess Mr Ratty has to live somewhere.....). A huge concrete school with kids in their blue uniforms hanging out of the windows shouting “hello” and “what’s your name” dominated one side. And the Vietnamese coffee for breakfast took me straight back to breakfast at the Bich Duyen two years ago.... At the end of the alley ways I hit a main road and took the opportunity for a quick “check eye” and had two pairs of glasses made to measure for £30 in ten minutes – Specsavers eat your heart out! I ended up paying in dollars as I have yet to get to a cash machine, but I realise I am back to being a billionaire, at about 28,000 dong to the pound I have to be careful with those noughts..... but having said that, the way the pound is in freefall at the moment, it may not be such a problem!