taking your life in your hands...

arrived safely in Hi Chi Minh City after amazingly quick and easy flights, including 2 amost identical breakfasts!! at the hotel by 11.30am - 4.30am body clock time - for a quck snooze then headed off to find the botanical gardens - which also has a rather sad collection of zoo animals, most of which we hurredly bypassed, looking instead at the orchids and bonsai. I was going to blip this three headed pelican but the defining factor here is the traffic - hundreds of scooters going every which way all at once. my daughter Katie's advice, echoed by the guide book - is just go for it and don't stop. we mastered it rather well we thought!! Katie tells this wonderful story of seeing an American man standing in the middle of the road, traffic weaving all around him shouting ' will ya just take the goddamn photo Marvin' to his pal on the pavement.

back to a rather nice hotel room for a shower and just going off to meet our fellow travellers, a couple from Oz, and our guide. dinner then an early night I think. so far so pretty good!!