Sunday July 25th: our smelly bus ride to Vietnam :)

Susanne:

Sunday was our last day as a remaining Habitat group of 11 from the previous 14.

We got up early, most of us made a last Tuk Tuk ride to the Russian market to get souvenirs.  Michelle, Chelsea and I were extremely lucky to have Marianne help us out in a big way: we bought an extra suitcase at the market and put all kinds of stuff in it we do not need anymore (med kit, paperwork for Habitat, work clothes etc.) and she is taking it home for us. Marianne: we owe you big time!!! Hope all went well on the way home :)

We had a somewhat rushed team lunch at the French place around the corner before most of us met in the lobby to say Goodbyes`s. With every Habitat trip I have ever been on, Good Bye`s are bitter sweet. I think everyone is in some way anxious to get home to see friends and family, but you really do make some very special relationships on these trips and some people do not live close to one another, so that is the harder part of it sometimes :)

Kate, Pete, Michelle, Chelsea and I all got on a 6 hour bus to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to now start the post Habitat vacation. Well, I won`t bore you with details, but the descriptors of the bus trip should include: all seats were taken and only about 6 of us were ``western`` (as we all called here), so it seemed very busy.  A number of people brought food and fruit on the bus, so that the bus had a bad smell on it and the seats were quite small. I think I did not feel my knee cap for most of the trip and likely tripped 5 or 6 people with my other leg hanging out in the middle aisle. There was a TV screen and some kind of local music was blaring so that we had to put our IPods on pretty loud to tone out the music. Later the music turned into Asian Karaoke songs playing on the screen...wow, a few hours of that can really get to you :)  After about 3 hours or so, we got to the Vietnamese border, had to get off, get on, get off, get on and finally put our luggage through a low cost scanner before going back on the bus. The bus actually left without 2 guys sitting behind us from San Francisco and we started a bit of a frenzy of waving our arms and holding two fingers in the air to alert the driver who did not know he was missing anyone....very reassuring to say the least.  It is all an experience and we had some good laughs about it :)

So all was good. The city is large with close to 6 million people, I think, lots of neon signs, the electric and/or telephone cables seem to all be above land and some are so low that I had to duck my head once or twice on the cross walk below them.  We went out for a bite at Allez Boo's around the corner and tried Vietnamese beer called "Saigon"..not so good.  Singapore's "Tiger" was better.......OK...am very excited about something: did you just notice that I found my quotation marks....been looking for them for 3 weeks now on my laptop which seems to hire certain symbols in weird places: """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""".....ahhhhhhhhhh  :)

Anyhow, turned out the hostel we booked was just around the corner from the bus station and our rooms is decent.  Tomorrow we explore the city a bit.  Not sure how long we're staying yet.

Seems a bit cooler here.  "Cooler" is likely high twenties or low 30's....