Time passes and its now 9am. Somehow, I must have missed Khoa. I’ve arranged to meet Beanie again today at 2pm so vege out in the nearby district killing time. Walking back to my hotel, I bump into Const dogg again, the hip hop artist I’d met the other night from Liberia/USA. He tells me he’s going to a BBQ and at this point its nearly time to meet Beanie so we say goodbye.

It starts to rain hot rain. Beanie is late and I go to a nearby shop to kill time. Find photocopies of best selling books for sale. Meant to buy one but forget. Will have to draw out the last chapter of Michael Palins adventures tomorow for the 12 hour bus journey. Hooray!

Beanie comes out of nowhere like a bat out of hell. I jump on the scooter and we’re off again into the busy traffic that menaces Saigon. Destination”? I have no idea but this is nothing new. Beanie intends for us to go shopping and we hit the mall. I’ve never been so claustriphobic in my life and start to feel a bit sick. There are so many people and the corridors are just too narrow. Makes my home town shopping mall look like a ghost town. I buy a bag that has “SAMPLE NOT FOR RESALE” stuck onto it. Looks good and I pay about 13pounds. In the UK it would be over 50. Shopping here, although crowded as hell has its plus points.

A phone rings and Beanie picks it up. Its Lauren, an aspiring fashion designer from New York. Beanie and Lauren have never met face to face and share a mutual friend. Lauren is going to join us for coffee. Today is my last day in Saigon and sadly, I spend it indoors. At least I don’t get lost for a change! Lauren shows up and turns out to be easy going, a little quiet and very interested in the nearby clothes. She stops me in mid-sentence to go and try on a dress. I get revenge by making her look at all 750 pictures I’ve taken so far. Tears are beginning to form in the corners of her eyes so I decide she’s had enough and retire my camera. Thanh, the girl from the other night shows up and joins us at the table. Her phone, has the most bling bling on a phone I’ve ever seen. Its gold plated and apparently cost 700pounds when she bought it two years ago. I swipe it and pretend to put in my pocket. Apparently, I can keep it if I’m prepared to belong to her. My friend Thulasi would be proud, as she has long been trying to pimp me out at McDonalds in Leicester square with only few sucesses, but now I’ve been traded for a 700pound phone. I can’t help but feel quite proud of my achievement.

Beanie and Thanh excuse themselves to go to the toilet. Lauren and I discuss the merits of sportswear v.s active wear. My mind falls asleep and I have to do my best to stop myself falling into my creme caramell. Few shots of coffee and I”m awake again.Until they plan to go shopping….Beanie and Thanh still haven’t returned. Its been half an hour. I know girls take ages but I’m beginning to wonder if they’ve discovered a portal to Narnia in the girls bathroom. Feel jealous and imagine myself playing in snow with woodland animals and then got brought back to reality. Lauren is explaining the benifits of frills in the dress she saw in the corner….

Another 15 minutes passes and the girls still haven’t returned. Lauren suggests we leave. I don’t have the goldplated phone in my possesion yet so persuade her to stay. I’m worried maybe one of them has died fighting with Aslan the lion when they come back to the table holding shopping bags. Apparently there was a sale in La Senza. Lauren is furious…

Dinner is Sushi at an expensive sushi place nearby. The bill comes to $10 a head which although cheap in UK is my daily food budget for SE Asia. Food is great (well it should be for this price) however I struggle to finish. Eventually I cram in the last few grains of rice. Oh my god I’m going to explode. Fortunately, the food stays in my mouth this time.

The Cage is a nearby club which we head to after me gorging on sushi. I think the others need a drink to recover from the monstrosity. Coke is 50 000, more than what I’d normally spend on dinner and I start getting irritated until I realise its a holiday and that I’m spending 150pounds a week on accomodation back in London. 50 000 for a coke aint going to bust me too much.

A waitress comes over and asks me where I’m from. She appears quite friendly and after talking to her Thanh informs me she thinks the waitress may have a crush on me. Thanh however tells me I am infact ugly and asks do I know what my ugliest feature is?

Fortunately, my self esteem is not low enough for me to know the answer so I tell her its my eyes as she can see herself in the reflection. She doesn’t take this well. I move back to talk to Lauren….

The club is still empty at this point and after some diplomatics I manage to keep the group together after a rift starts forming about where we should go. We head for another club which is suitably more packed. Drinks are ludicrously expensive and its Belvedere night. This means there is the amazing deal “Buy one Belvedere get one free!”" Unfortuantly this is well outside my food budget. I realise Im supposed to be leaving in 6hours for Cambodia. I hope I can make it back in time.

Thanh and Beanie depart at this point leaving me with Lauren. Chris, a belgium English teacher has joined us and we form a white section in the sea of asians. I scavenge around and find us a belvedere. Its mostly empty but its a start. Chris tells me its not what you drink here but how much you spend. The more money you waste the better. Contemplate spending the rest of my travel money on a bottle of belvedere but quickly get brought back to reality when I realise I probably don’t have enough… One of Chris’s students when asked about his hobbies apparently answered: I like to count my money in my spare time. Maybe he could get his phone gold plated too?

The club now is too crowded and we try to exit to head to the other club Apocalypse now. This is proving to be more difficult as a fight has broken in the corridor outside the exit to the club. I’m excited at the prospect of fight and get front row view….until a guy runs past me waving a bar stool over his head to smash over someone else. He nearly hits me so I retreat to a safe distance with Chris and Lauren. The fight goes on and unfortuantely its blocking the only exit. Security aren’t capable of dealing with it which is surprising due to the high prices inside the club.

Eventually we find a fire escape to ‘ëscape”‘ the club. When we get to the ground floor however, the fight has spread to the underground car park. We leg it out and enter into the hot night. I got a good picture of the fight but havent got a cable on me now…

Head back from Apoc now some hours later feeling pretty exhausted. I have to leave in 3 hours. Find my hotel and can’t see any prostitues so deem it safe to attempt to enter. Unfortuantely its locked up again. I start knocking. No answer. I start punching the glass. No answer. I start kicking the metal grating. No answer and I hurt my foot. At this point Im getting a little bit scared. I start smashing the glass door against the metal barrier making a hell of a noise. I’m worried that the prostitues will hear the noise and come over to investigate. I guy walks over to me. Wondering if he’ll help me but he’s trying to sell me more drugs. Fuck. I’ll need some by the time this is over…Eventually, somene wakes up and comes to open the door. Except, they’ve lost the keys. 10-15 minutes later they let me in and I run in off the street. Asleep in moments.

Beep-beep-beep. Its time to get up. 3hours is no where near enough sleep. Cambodia time!

This a photo of the night before:

Note, everybody is totally drunk….

As I lay there feeling sorry for myself, I realised if it was an allergic reaction to Mallerone, then I’d have to miss out visiting Cambodia due to the high risk of Malaria present. This also didn’t help me to sleep…

A few painful hours later it was time to get up, and eventually I dragged myself out of bed, albeit at 7AM to go and visit My Son (a temple-no I haven’t had kids in Vietnam). My Son, developed between the 4th century and the 13th century is a complex of temples built by the Champa kingdom. After the fall of the Champa, jungle began to reclaim the site. The temples had already fallen into disrepair by the 1960′s, when the Viet Cong used My Son as a base. Unfortunately, that attracted American bombing, which destroyed or damaged many of the surviving temples. Evidence of the conflict can still be seen around the site. According to my Rough Guide to South East Asia, one should not stray from the paths as landmines still exist further into the jungle.

To arrive at My Son, I travelled by my trusty motorbike I’d hired the day before. The journey was a 40KM drive and what was described as a very simple drive proved to be more difficult. I underestimated the amount of fuel my motorbike consumed when travelling at high speed and as such after a very short time, the needle had hit the red. The lack of petrol stations began to alarm me. My flight was scheduled to depart at 12.25. I realised if I got stranded far away from Hoi An, my base, then there would be no chance of arriving at Saigon later that day. Still, didn’t think about this too much.

The journey there was exhilirating, passing rice paddy fields, small towns and villages, coastal regions, railways and mountains, I saw it all. Unfortuately, due to heavy vehicles travelling in the wrong lanes directly towards me, I had to keep one eye permanently on the road. At one point I found myself sandwiched between to gigantic dumper trucks, the kind you see at quarries. Petrifying! In the UK, they wouldn’t try and overtake every vehicle on the road but here, they have no problems with that. I found a minibus with white people in it, and concluded they must also be going to My Son and so attempted to follow behind that. However, a MASSIVE dumper truck behind me was honking the horn at me and attempting to overtake. I was already doing 80KM/h and decided maybe I should give way…judging that he was a million times larger than me and didn’t seem to care much about my preservation.

Arriving at the temple I realised I’d have to do a whistle stop tour of the place. The other tourists to the place witnessed me sprinting through the jungle to the temple complex through crazy humidity and searing heat. The temples were very impressive and a nice change from all the others I’d seen as due to their remote location, the buildings wern’t crawling with tourists. Practically left the temples by the time the others I’d passed earlier had arrived. I really don’t like seeing things this way but unfortuanately had little other choice.

When I finally arrived back at my scooter, a woman approached me from the cafe and offered me a top up of petrol for the motorbike. She was charging exorbatant prices but I didn’t really have much room to negotiate. Still…in UK money paid less than a pound so no real loss.

Even though my lightning speed of visiting the complex I’d still over-run my time allowed and so had to attempt to get back without any mishaps. Driving fast down the motorway, I realised on the journey here I hadn’t come by motorway. Where was I going? I didn’t know. Looking at my watch I realised I needed to get back in 15 minutes in order to make my flight. Shit…..The needle on the motorbike had long ago entered the red and the motorbike began to splutter and cough. Much like me the night before…A local gave me directions “Hoi An? That way!” He pointed over my shoulder back the way I’d come.

By a miracle I managed to make it back to Hoi An, return the motorbike. The lady off the street I’d hired it from agreed to take me to my hotel for an extra 10 000 DONG. Due to my adventures on the motorway, I’d long missed the share taxi I’d arranged for 10am. It was now 11.15. Asked the girl at my hotel to sort out something for me to get to the airport while I finished packing. The time had now creeped up to 11.30 am. My flight was due to depart in less than an hour…

I fight my way onto the back of a motorbike after agreeing on a price. My 60 litre pack balanced over my shoulders and my day bag balanced on my front. I could feel the back of my ass falling over the end of the bike. Even falling off at low speeds is going to hurt, especially if followed by a dumper truck….

My driver is communicating with the other traffic by morse-code via the use of the horn. I join in by yelping frequently from the back when I think I’m going to fall. I feel my muscles weaking in my legs and my arms. I hope I’ll be able to hold on until the airport… It starts to rain. The driver, reaching for cigarretes in his pocket, gets hit by a sudden gust of wind, drops them all over the road. In the middle of the busy road, he jumps off to pick them up, leaving me on the bike in the middle of the road with traffic approaching, FAST. I pray for my safety.

Eventually, we arrive in Da Nang, the city where the airport is located, and its at this point I realise my driver doesn’t know the way. The time is now 12PM and the flight departs in 25 minutes. According to my ticket, the check in desks close 30minutes before departure, NO REFUNDS! Great…

Arriving at the airport,  I hop off and before I can get away the driver is on me, begging for more money. Think to myself, why agree on a price if you won’t keep to it? And for those of you who are thinking I’m being overly tight here, I’ve given him $9USD, nearly a tenth of their average monthly wage. Sprinting to the terminals, I arrive and find the Jetstar check in desks displaying details for the 13.40 flight. I push past people in the que where I’m informed “Your too late”

Am directed over to more Jet star desks. Think to myself, maybe they want me to buy another ticket? But fortuantely the girl at the desk starts making me a ticket by hand. Leg it through security except this time with the precense of my 60L rucksack, as there was no time to check it in. I jam it through the X-Ray machines. I’m surrounded by signs displaying “MINIMUM HANDLUGGAGE REQUIREMENTS”. No time to read them now, but am sure my bag doesn’t qualify. As I reach the gate everybody is starting to board the aircraft. One more wrong turn and I would have missed the flight. My guardian angel is doing well. I think he needs a pay rise.

I look down on Saigon as we descend through the clouds. Its clearly larger than Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Can’t say its particularly attractive from the air, but I’ve learned not to judge a place by first impressions anymore. The guide book reccomended a place called Yellow House Hotel. Managed to haggle a taxi driver down from 250 000 to 130 000 DONG. They love to take advantage of rich westeners. After arriving at my hotel, he tries to run away without giving me my change. I ask him “What do you think I am?” at which point he laughs and gives me my change. Many other travellers don’t like to haggle. For me it is a neccesity. I’m down to my last $50. This needs to last me another week in Cambodia…..

JOIN CRUSOE FOR MORE  TALES OF HIS ‘RELAXING’ ADVENTURES TOMOROW….

My Son Temples

Walk to My Son