I think I'm in love

with my beachside bungalow! I am in Mui Ne now- a three or four hour bus ride away from Saigon. I arrived this afternoon and went straight to the sunloungers on the beach and chilled right out in the hot afternoon sun (OK, I was in the shade but it wouldn't have sounded so good and it was still very hot).

Yesterday I didn't wake up until 11am which was a bit of a shock to the system. I had a plan for the day that included buying a plane ticket to Korea, a bus ticket to Mui Ne and general arsing around doing nothing much. Now I had less time to do all those many(!) tasks in. So I eased myself into it gently by having some lunch and hitting the internet cafe to do a bit of research. After all, there is little point me heading to Korea if no-one is going to be there. My original plan was to go the first week in July, then back to Vietnam for a boatride to Cambodia before flying out to Oz. But Mona is leaving Korea for a month on 19th June so I had to change my plans. Which is why I am flying out of Saigon on Wednesday night- well, Thursday morning more like as the plane is at 1am. Should arrive into Incheon airport just in time to meet James for breakfast on Thursday.

Back to Vietnam the following Tuesday which means that I have several tequila swilling nights ahead of me in Bumpin (oh, light of my life, have you missed me?). The one worrying thing is the short notice for those in Korea. Chatting to Frodo online yesterday and he told me that those guys have Monday off work too so the chances are that they won't get to their computers until Tuesday- when they will get hit by an email telling them I am on my way. It would appear that ESL teachers have an almost religious devotion to not checking their emails (or this blog) over the weekend, for fear all the beer pumps in the town will run dry or some such other superstition. At least I hope that is why they haven't replied yet...!

So after booking both my tickets- to Korea and to Mui Ne- I attempted a walkabout but was quickly lured by another cyclo rider into hopping on the front of his bike and going for a scoot around town. Originally we were supposed to go for an hour but he seemed to have decided that I needed to see something of this city and so I spent the whole of the afternoon being pedalled around. And I have lost all fear of the cyclo in traffic. I have sussed their technique for dealing with the other bikes, scooters, trucks and buses- that is that they ride slowly enough for all the others to stream around them. At a last resort I guess that the hapless passenger is usually between them and the next big crash anyway.

We saw Notre Dame Cathedral (no, not that one, the one in Vietnam), a Chinese temple where someone tried to get me to part with a dollar to release six birds from their tiny cages for good luck (I was afraid that the others birds would resent me for not releasing them and seek me out the moment that they were free to make their displeasure known, probably all over the top of my head) where the heady incense filled air created a different world from the busyness outside.

Then he took me somewhere that I had told myself I wasn't going to go- the War Remanants Museum (formerly the American and Chinese War Crimes Museum). Normally I am all one for soaking up the local history but I had been warned the day before that there were some pickled babies, complete with deformities, in jars there. But once outside I had to go in though I didn't give it my full attention as I played Russion roulette with the rooms and managed to avoid seeing any jars at all. The photos were very harrowing though- corpses and victims of Agent Orange- not to mention the cells that people were kept in terrible conditions for long periods of time. Most of the text was in Vietnamese but really needed no explanation. There was a group of schoolkids merrily looking at photos of disfigured corpses and chatting amongst themselves.

Then we went onto a Vietnamese temple, surrounded by peaceful garden and fish pond. I went inside but my eyes wouldn't adjust to the darkness and I preferred the garden. There was a huge and colourful Buddha nearby and another pagoda. Riding back past the Saigon River I began to wonder if the cyclo driver was ever going to release me or if I was doomed to spend the rest of my life in a rickshaw. After a four hour tour (that guy deserves a medal for pedalling this large foreigner around for all that time, I had seen cyclos with three Vietnamese people in who, I am sure, had a combined weight less than mine) we were back at the hotel.

In the evening I had a couple of Tiger beers and updated my diary between moutfuls in a restaurant. I didn't sleep well last night, about an hour's kip then awake up four and then my body had the check to protest when the alarm went off at six- I had told it that is why we needed to sleep but it wouldn't listen and just wanted to watch more of Animal Planet and Starworld.

Bleary-eyed I made it downstairs with my bag and onto the bus to Mui Ne. It is pretty quiet around here really. My bungalow is lovely, have I already mentioned that, right next to the beach and surrounded by palm trees. I have another big double bed with mosquito net draped around it like the curtains to a princess's bed. Pity I have to be out of it so early tomorrow morning to join the six am tour to the sand dunes. But if it is anything like the photos I saw on the wall in the tour office, it will be worth it.