TODAY was another day mainly of travelling. We left the hotel too late and had to run for the train, already a much later train than we'd intended to get, but we made it and got to the airport in good time. There was a long queue which took ages for bag check-in but other than that everything went pretty smoothly. J ate his rice and beef patty. I ate my tiramisu-style pancakes and my seafood pot noodle thing that I have been carrying around for some days now. I had forgotten what tiramisu was and was pleasantly surprised.
We slept for most of the 6 hour flight - fun fact the first time I have ever slept through takeoff - and then arrivals took forever but we had a fairytale moment after arrivals when we were trying to find somewhere to change J's remaining Cambodian rials - which we had tried and failed to do multiple times. All of the currency exchanges once again gave us a resounding no (not even a figure of speech here - they were very very keen to emphasise that they wouldn't) until the final one, the last one left to try in the area, accepted, and when asked why noone else would, he said you have to come to the right man and he was the right man. We discovered afterwards that he had used a rate of VND to KHR of about 50% of the market rate. At least it was usable now.
We walked to our luggage storage place where our luggage was all intact and not lost and we also got some free cold green tea which I drank both of and J ordered a 7-up.
After some disagreement I convinced J that we should take the bus to the centre of town instead of ordering a taxi. It was late of course but only 35p for the both of us. We got to see very little of Ho Chi Minh City, partly because of the bus taking so long, and disagreed over whether the experience of taking the bus made up for this or not. But we did see the Notre Dame Saigon, which is very impressive and set in a picturesque square. It isn't as big as the original, of course, though it is covered in scaffolding if not in a very moving way, unlike the original.
We somewhat re-acclimatised to being pedestrians in SEA, though the drivers here seemed to be a lot more persistent than in other parts - usually the rule has seemed to be that everyone goes where they want to go and stops or swerves if they're about to run someone over, but here the onus was very much on the pedestrians not to get run over - the drivers will keep going including through a green-lit pedestrian crossing that you're in the middle of. We also rode the fancy new metro, which currently only has one half-complete line which has taken 20 years to build. Optimistically, however, the signs with maps of the complete system, including 6 metro lines, 2 monorail lines and a tram line, are already up in the stations. The design of everything looks very similar to the Japanese metros which makes sense because the project has Japanese involvement. And of course, we got to wander around and see the streets and the chaotic intersections and the skyscrapers in the background of another Asian city which is always interesting. The centre of HCMC has more colonial architecture compared to the other places that we have been. There were also signs and flags everywhere and a general air of celebration because the 30th April is the 50th anniversary of the capture of the city by North Vietnam. I imagine I'll be writing more about that closer to the date, because we will still be in Vietnam at that point.
We ended up half an hour's drive from the station with half an hour to spare, at rush hour, but after a very stressful taxi ride we arrived at the station with enough time, partially because the drivers can go faster and down more streets than Google maps thinks they can.
Now, I am in a seat in a train sort of reminiscent of the one I rode in Morocco, which I haven't actually posted about yet, but that's partly because that's the only other long distance train in a developing country that I've ridden so far - apart from in Japan all of our long distance travel has been by bus. J is in a bed on a different coach which he barely paid more for because I booked through a different agent that gave a terrible price. But there we are. Goodnight.