Touching moment

After my experience outside of District 1 last week, I decided to stay in District 10 when I flew back to Saigon today. I got a local bus from the airport and walked around looking for a hotel. After a few minutes on a busy main road without seeing one, I decided to stop and find out the Vietnamese for 'hotel'. I then looked up and saw a sign with the same words right in front of me and checked in for one night.

I know I've said it before but it really is amazing how tourists just don't venture in to the other districts. I walked around the streets for hours, saw literally tens of thousands of people and not one of them was a westerner. As a result I stuck out like a sore thumb. People stared at me. The type of staring where people were turning their heads as I walked past them. One guy ran up to me just to shake my hand. Other people wanted to practise their English on me (usually that consisted of just repeating "hello").

I sat outside a small cafe with an iced coffee and a man was putting on his helmet ready to leave. He was looking at me with a big grin on his face. I smiled back but then carried on reading. He continued to watch me and grin. Then he walked over, stroked his cheek and said "You have nice beard!" (the most English I'd heard all day) and then touched my beard! It wasn't as creepy as it might sound,  he was really nice.

My hotel was only about 20 minutes from the superb meal I'd had last week, so I walked there (getting lost on the way - half intentionally) and had a repeat of the delicious bún thịt nướng. I even asked for more of the seriously tasty kebab meat (one of the many parts of the dish).