226 Days in the Nam

5th Oct 2006 - 18th May 2007

At the moment I'm sitting in Saigon as a lot of locals still like to call it, having a few beers at a cafe in the rain. It's the last week of our Vietnamese adventure so we thought this would be a great spot to just relax and just soak up Vietnam. If I had to compare this little spot on the Asian continent to any other place in the world I would have to say it is, or at least will be the next Bali (unfortunatly). I'm sure this place is going to get a lot worse as far as tourist numbers and western influence. Which is a big shame because even though at times it has the dirtyness & tackyness of alot of other Asian cities, it really has a sense of innocence, patriotism & it's just bloody cool.

I had wanted to go to Vietnam for quite a while before this trip, but it's safe to say that I had never in visioned myself living here. Even though I was travelling quite often working for Flight Centre I had a very strong desire to go on another round the world trip but for much longer this time. We (my girlfriend Melinda & I) decided to do TESOL which allows you to work overseas teaching English in about 86 different countries. Having this little piece of paper really opened up a world of opportunities for us as they say.

There were so many options for teaching but we both were very happy with our choice of Vietnam as the first stop. We arrived in to Ho Chi Minh City after spending 5 days in Malaysia just relaxing from our rushed departure out of Australia. As we left the airport we were swamped as usual by everyone offering us the cheapest taxi possible in Vietnam. The first thing that blew me away on the way to our hotel was the amount of motorbikes on the road. I had never been to another country in the world that had motorbikes & push bikes as it's major mode of transport.