26th August

We were almost ready to leave... With a bit of a shock we realised that we had done no actual sightseeing in Saigon, apart from the general riding around and glancing at things (when not fully occupied in the task of driving, Mum). So, we consulted the (by now fairly wet) guidebook, and decided to head for the War Remnants Museum. We had come up with a fairly good routine for navigating. Find the destination on the map. See what the road is called. Try and pronounce it. Fail dismally. Say it phonetically, and translate that into something that sounds a bit English! Never fails... So, the Nguyen Thi Minh Khai became the "Tea? Mint Chai"

Well, it worked for us... The museum itself was horrific, though it doesn't look so from the outside. It is surrounded by a ramshackle series of walls and rubble, which sort of add to the whole effect. There are US military vehicles on display outside, including an unexploded bomb which "decimates everything within a 100m radius and severely destroys everything in a 1.6km radius" just sitting in the extremely hot sun. I'm sure they've taken precautions and disarmed it... Venturing inside is like twisting your perception 90 degrees to read about the atrocities America inflicted on the Vietnamese during the war. Propaganda feels like the wrong word to describe it, but it is definitely skewed heavily toward the anti-American. Tale after tale after anecdote after description of massacres and beheadings and mass-graves, and still-shocking black and white photos of troops and their murdered trophies are on display around the walls. You enter with a feeling of intrigue and the further you go round and the more you see the more depressed and sickened you feel. The later exhibits show victims, some second and third generation, of the agent orange / dioxin poisoning. These defy description, and the shrine-like way they are displayed is an uneasy combination of part-homage, part-circus-show is the real legacy of the war.

It wasn't easy to stay, and after viewing the shrine-room we both decided to leave. It was a depressing reminder of recent history that quite literally left a bad taste in my mouth. Affecting.

Back in the sweltering heat, we decided to visit the Reunification Palace to cheer ourselves up (though in Saigon most of the 'sights' are quite heavily swayed in favour of showing the Americans as evil, and therefore likely to be depressing), but were told in broken English that it didn't open until later.

Further depressed, hot and thirsty we honed in on the odd sight of Americana a stone's throw from the museum - we headed to Gloria Jean's cafe, a Starbucks-of-the-East as it were. It was air conditioned, and the 85,000d mango smoothie I wolfed down did wonders for my mood. An excellent rendition of "Livin on a Prayer" gently played in the background and 15 minutes later it was as if the atrocities of war had never happened. Perhaps it was because of the generous smiles of the waitresses, or the giggling (and most probably very rich) schoolgirls, but it is just hard to feel like a war happened here just down the road when you're sitting in a coffee shop.

We took in the Botanic Gardens, which I assumed would be beautifully manicured examples of eastern foliage and fauna, but in actuality was mostly grassed over with extremely wide-leafed grass. There was a reptile house with a bunch of iguanas, turtles and tortoises, and a snake pit with three fully grown boas in it and an extraordinarily anxious rabbit. You could still make out the lumps in all three snakes from their last meal, I'm not sure how long the rabbit had left. We also saw elephants and something that looked like an antelope, but on the whole the atmosphere of the park was not tremendously uplifting.

We had arranged to meet The Uncle at 3pm, so decided to head back down the Tea Mint Chai to get back to the hotel. He took us to get the last of our provisions (why didn't we just do this first, rather than find out the hard way that our gesticulations and broken English agreements are just too incomprehensible?), and we got spanners, screwdrivers, spare spark plugs, a spark plug remover, pliers, a pump, and some spare bulbs for the headlights.

With all the items on our list procured there was nothing left but to head over to the highest point in Saigon - the Sheraton Hotel. We arrived looking fairly smart - on our bikes - and asked the bellboys where we could park. First left, apparently. First left turned out to be a ramp up to a multi-storey car park, and climbing up the steep tunnel created an exhaust-amplifying roar that made me smile from ear to ear. Something about riding a bike inside a building, even to a bike-park, is absolutely thrilling!

We went to the roof terrace bar and saw the sun set across the city. The view was sadly occluded with a gentle fog, but there was such a good impression of the city from the altitude and we saw where we'd been and where we had to go. It was hot, slightly windy, and dizzying when I looked out over the unenclosed veranda. Being all tooled up for the journey north and being able to see where we were going, now we were ready. Ready for the ride north...