Day 2 in Saigon
Today we had breakfast with Andrew, said good by at 10 am and headed to our room to look after some bills online.
We headed out at 11 am and hit the big market. There is so much stuff under one roof, its easy to get lost. Gary bought another watch as he dropped his watch from Hoi An yesterday and smashed the crystal.
We went to the mall for lunch and had chicken skewers with lemonade soda. It was ok.
We went to the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post office. They are right next to each other. The post office was designed by the famous Gustave Eiffel.
We then walked to the Bitexco Tower where we paid to go up to the 49th floor observation deck. Then at 3:20 we got in on the first Heineken tour of the day which was an extra charge as well. We went up to the 60th floor from there we worked down to the 55th.
We had 3 glasses of Heineken beer and they sent us home with a special bottle of our our beer.
We walked by the Elbow-Room Bistro where we had originally thought to go to last night but gave up when we could not get a Grab vehicle after 10 minutes of waiting. Grab remember is the Uber of Asia
We walked home in heavy traffic and made it to the hotel tired and hot. We visited with Anh the young lady at the front desk. She was kind enough to offer us an orange juice when we arrived and happy to practice her English on us. We had a very interesting conversation about the two languages of English and Vietnamese. She has excellent English and has learned it all on her own. She is a smart gal! Her English is as good as we have heard spoken in Vietnam by a local person. We headed to the Jacuzzi for a cooling dip, and then showered to be ready for bed on time.
As we are sitting here updating our blog at 8:30 pm there is loud music playing down the street. Very LOUD! We have a car booked for 10 am to make our flight from Saigon to Phnom Penh 1:10 pm tomorrow.
It was 33 C today but felt like 34C. It’s still 26C. The evenings here are so warm and comfortable. It’s a great time to get out and walk with the other over 8 million people in this city. During the daytime you can see the smog, even smell it. It was clearly visible from the observation deck.
A 2016 statistics record over 2 people per day are killed in traffic accidents. That year saw 4,200 new cars and 9,000 new motorbikes being registered monthly.