Tet Nguyen Dan

Difficult to describe a new city in a few words. First impression: traffic, traffic and more traffic. Hanoi, last year, was nuts, mainly because of the swarms of motorbikes and scooters. Same here, but add cars, taxis and tour buses. Crossing the road is an art form, or a sport. Step out in the road, wave your arms about, gauge whether the next swarm is going to go around you to the left, or the right, or both. Slow down or speed up accordingly. And don't, really don't, assume that whatever side of the road you are walking on will preclude scooters coming at you from the "wrong" direction. Even if you manage to actually walk on the pavement, which is usually covered in parked scooters.

Saigon is a big city broken into 24 Districts although we were never going to explore much outside District 1, the "downtown" district. That is informally broken into two touristy areas, named after the dominant streets (dominant beacuse of the profusion of bars and restaurants, I guess). Our hotel, the Elios, is in the smaller area of De Tham and faces a long strip of gardens. Walking through these was our first introduction to next week's Tet celebrations. Tet is their New Year and the locals celebrate it in a hive of activity. All the available recreational space in the city is filling up with a wonderful profusion of plants, flowers, trees, shrubs, orchids and food vendors. Amazing varieties of colours and species; amazing prices too! But there are so many that even the constant din of the traffic orbiting the park, like indians surrounding the beleagured wagon train, is muted. In the evening, a slow mooch around the back streets of Da Tham reveals small homespun bars on the roadside where you can get a bottle of Saigon beer for 50p and a big bowl of traditional Vietnamese noodles with pork and vegetables for a couple of quid. You can literraly sit there for hours and watch the world revolve around you: there's always something interesting happening right in front of you. No need to explore the city.

For culture, Saigon offers a number of museums but nearly all of them are obsessed on the reunification after the American War. Yesterday we wandered away from De Tham to the large crazy roundabout at the end of the park, skipping through the traffic to the Benh Thanh Market. T'was hot and claustraphobic, made more unpleasant for the aggressiveness of the women forcing sales of stuff you really don't need: this is nothing like the gentle demeanour of the market people in Chiang Rai last week. Escaping that, we followed our tourist map to the huge grounds holding the Reunification Palace, a "whitewashed concrete edifice with all the charm of a municipal library" as the Rough Guide put it. When Linda learned that the "Palace" had replaced a 19th century colonial mansion she refused to pay the entrance fee so we went to look at Notre Dame cathedral instead. On the way we stopped for a drink at the expensive and ultra trendy Windows Cafe to watch the young and beautiful investment bankers and their girlfriends arrive in posh cars to the background thump of club music. There are War Remnants Museums and Ho Chi Minh Museums but you can only take pictures of so many confiscated American tanks and fighter jets. Hey guys, we get the picture: you won!

The second unofficial area of District 1 is centred around the street of Dong Khoi and was the area I first aimed for. Not quite what I expected, though (which was a street full of bars and Happy Hours). The reality is more up-market, predominantly a street of boutiques and jewelry shops with a smattering of bars and restaurants offering "buy three bottles of Sai-Gon beer get one free at 40,000 Dong a piece (about $1.50)). It does come alive after 6 in the evening when they turn on the lights and the whole street is festooned in glowing giant pink flowers and trailing white lights like frozen Christmas raindrops. We managed to find a street bar (whose name I've forgotten) selling alcohol at acceptable prices and sat back to enjoy the ambience. To be honest, we prefer the slightly more down-and-dirty back streets of De Tham, so we will be returning to the Elios when we get back from Phu Quoc.