onetenchelsea

We're back in Saigon now wrapping up our trip. I just love this city. The rest of the Southeast Asian cities don't even rate compared to it. Coming from Vientiane, Phnom Penh seemed really nice (Vientiane is only about 150,000 people. It also has sewage ditches running along the sides of all the sidewalks with most of the covers missing.) But once we were back in Saigon... man...

Just to try and give you an idea what it's like here, we started out our evening by taking motorbikes to Saigon Square. I'm not a huge fan of cities without public transport, as I'm sure everyone knows, but if you have to have all vehicles, 100 scooters for each car is definitely the ratio you should be going for. If you don't have your own bike, guys sit at all the corners and take you wherever you want for 60 cents. The fact that you are always jumping on and off of motorbikes gives the city such a fast paced feel.

At Saigon Square, we went DVD shopping. We bought boxsets of the complete British version of the Office, the first four seasons of Scrubs, the complete Sex and the City and about ten movies for the equivalent of 75 cents per disc.

After we finished shopping, we went to Jessica's friend My's apartment to go out to dinner with her. We got her motorbike and went for dinner. We had an amazing pork and shrimp wonton soup along with sugar cane juice mixed with strawberries. One of My's friends met us at the restaurant, and he happened to be a hairstylist, so after dinner we went back to his salon to get haircuts.

Now this is the kind of salon where you get served free drinks by girls in miniskirts while the stylists are working on you. I'm thinking it would have been in the $60-$100 range in Boston. The bill? 50,000 Dong. About $3. I seriously don't know how I'm going to get used to spending more than $5 at a time in Boston.

After that, it was back on the motorbikes and off to a super trendy rooftop ice cream shop (by the way, Vietnamese people know the best stuff to put on ice cream. Try coffee poured over vanilla or caramel over vanilla with a shot of rum poured over the top sometime).

We lounged about there for awhile and then it was off to one of Saigon's night markets. This is where all of the trendy kids get their knock off designer clothes in the middle of the night. I'm thinking we need to start a Chelsea Street night market. Anybody with me?

So anyways, we have one more full day in Saigon today. J is off getting a manicure/pedicure for the last time.

I love this city. I love Southeast Asia. I love Vietnam.