Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City) - Australia (Brisbane)

2-4 February 2016
Our hotel is in District 1 (the centre) of Saigon which makes it easy for us to get around on foot. We are here for two full days and without anything in particular which we wanted to see, decided to just wander around the city instead.

Chaos in the busy streets...noise, traffic, heat...locals riding scooters on the pavements, spaghetti electric street wiring...
Ho Chi Minh City at its best.

5-6 February 2016
We flew from Ho Chi Minh City to Brisbane where we will be spending a few days before flying out to Vanuatu for a month. We were only supposed to have been staying for one night, but our flight was cancelled by Virgin Australia, because the Port Vila runway needs repair. The next flight out to Efate is with Air Vanuatu on the 9th.

I like Brisbane. It's a very 'outdoorsy' city. Lots of people around and great shopping. After three months, it's great to be able to communicate in English again without struggling to understand thick Asian accents ('l' and 'r' reversed and silent 's') or speaking pidgin English. In fact, I actually have to re-learn saying a complete grammatical sentence. Great also to be able to recognise everything on a menu and not have to make a point of saying 'little spicy' or 'not spicy' to the waitress.

We spent the day wandering around the shops replenishing basic supplies like body wash, torn backpack...and we also had haircuts! I had three months of split ends I needed to 'clean up'.

7-8 February 2016
Our hotel room last night was like a matchbox, so we moved to another hotel, to a room the size of two matchboxes. The ensuite 'bathroom' of this new one, though, is about the size of a quarter of a matchbox! On the plus side, this hotel is right at the edge of downtown, so we're only a few minutes walk from everything. No taxis, no scooters...no tuk tuks (!)

We walked around the shopping district again and spent more money :). After lunch we took a CityCat Ferry (catamaran) up and down the Brisbane River which flows right through the city. Very comfortable ride for about an hour, and great views of the Downtown Brisbane/Central Business District, and the opposite banks.