Jetlag, pedal power and hallucinations of pickled babies.

I left England, land of the uninspiring everything what I think was this mornimg, although I've had 2 of those in the last 18 hours as I am now in Vietnam and jetlagged out of my skull.

I think that is how, within 1/2 an hour of making it through the 2 hour long queue at Ho Chi Minh airport and not getting tooooo badly ripped off on the taxi on the way to the guest house (the first offer was $15 US to which I laughed and took my bag back - his next offer was $6 US which I couldn't be bothered haggling down), I found myself perched on a cyclo, weaving through insane Vietnamese traffic with scooters and cars galore and looking at pickled babies.

OK, let me start again. After the taxi ride I got to the guest house which is a leetle dodgy but clean and perfectly acceptable (the dodgyness is mostly only cos of the large centre tile in between the beds which is a modern soft-porn picture (didn't know that the porn industry was expanding into tiling but there you go). The bed is clean, it has aircon and a shower/toilet, costs $9US a night and the only gecko i've seen so far was squished in the sliding shower door. More than any girl could possibly want.

Within half an hour of arriving I was walking round the streets. I literally got about 10 metres down the road before Dalat the cyclo driver pounced and charmed me into hiring him for what turned into the afternoon (funny how that happens). Dalat has an entire book of references from clients (of which I am now one) but it was the lady from Timaru who clinched it for me!

We spent three hours (at the princely sum of $2 US an hour) with him pedalling me round HCMC, dropping me off at attractions, waiting for me and carrying on. My role in this was to dutifully go into the attraction I had been dropped at, look at it and resume my task of looking like a tubby jetlagged western idiot in a cyclo. I think I held my end of the bargain up rather well.

It was V. weird going through massive roundabouts with cars and motorbikes flying past and us just sort of cruising - as a normally paranoid backseat driver of the worst kind it was bizarre not to feel scared at all. But if I thought that was weird, the 1st stop was a doozy. Dalat dropped me off at the war remnants museum (formerly known as the american war atrocities museum or some other equally neutral name). The museum starts you off gentle with photos and historical info then gets progressively more stressful and before you know it you walk around a corner and find yourself face to face with 3 jars containing pickled babies with agent orange deformities sort of tucked into a corner of the room. I wondered, nay hoped, that it was the jetlag kicking in early but instead had to get all serious and emotional for a while before hopping back on my magical mystery cyclo tour.

Next stop was the history museum which was presented lots of very funky ancient cambodian carvings and 3 more preserved bodies! I was starting to get worried about the emerging trend but the jade pagoda temple (next on the list) was just amazing - a working inner city temple with people in suits turning up and praying and burning incense, and a huge moat that is chokka full of turtles that people bring to 'set free' - part of the monks' job is to look after them.

After that we were back where we started, except that we stopped at Dalat's local haunt and had a drink on the street on the traditional Vietnamese children's plastic tables with his mate Ton who is a motorbike taxi man and whose services I may well use in the next few days as well. I shared a drink with them (not without noting that my kid's seat had had another one surreptitiously added for strength!), added a glowing reference to Dalat's book (a 3 hour tour for $7 US including drinks and tip!) and staggered back to my funny old hotel, not a bad start to my week in HCMC at all!