Missed Saigon

Two days in busy Ho Chi Minh was the end of our stay in Vietnam. We arrived at 6pm, so booked into a more expensive hotel than usual (20 AUD) so as to avoid roaming the streets at night laden with backpacks. The Boss Hotel was decked out with the largest minibar I have ever seen, including small meals in its menagerie of edibles. Instead of employing the hotel's facilities, we decided to order mexican in. Foreign food is the advantage of capital cities, as we were bored with Vietnamese cuisine, which is basically a watered down version of Chinese. The mexican wasn't very interesting, though – I had been craving a chilli con carne, but had forgotten that noone makes it like my father! This one was watery, with the odd red kidney bean floating around in the non-viscous red-coloured soup.

In the morning, it turned out that the cheaper rooms were only 2 blocks away – silly us! We grabbed a place right next to the mexican restaurant from which we had received a free delivery the night before. That night, we went out to see the Vietnamese theatrical special, water puppets. I had seen them last time that I was in Vietnam, and they were just as great this time, with many different creatures paddling about in the water, as well as smoke and sparklers at the climax. The next day, we ventured onwards to Cambodia.