We all squeezed into a 4-wheel-drive (4 of us in the back seat) for transfer to the Sinh Open Tour Bus to Saigon. This bus was a little more upmarket than the one we had coming up the mountain - much more legroom, and the air conditioning could be directed at the person who wanted it.
Another slow journey, almost 8 hours and travelling at about 30 -40 kph for much of it.
Lots to experience though:
- Veggies growing
- Coffee beans drying on huge tarps
- Children playing elastics
- More coffee trees with white flowers
- Women in conical hats herding buffalo
- Webbing folding chairs in the cafes
- Our travelling companions sleeping
- Bougainvillaea
- Morning glory
- An orange flowering vine
- A Poster extorting the virtues of green tea at a restroom stop
- Hammocks in cafes
- Driving down the mountain through the jungle (More uncultivated land than we've seen before)
- The heat hitting us when we got out of the bus at lunchtime
- Babies being rocked in hammocks in front of homes
- Big rocks in Định Quán and an extinct volcano
- Houses built around the rocks
- Ceramic tiled front porches
- Floating houses where the people farmed fish (on lakes)
- Rubber trees and the little cups collecting the rubber
- Christian churches
- Two- and three-storey homes with religious statues looking down from the top balcony
- So many chrysanthemums in pots
- Roadside drink stalls with deck chairs and hammocks
- Marble and granite statues on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City
- Wooden houses
We booked a tour to the Mekong with TNK Travel, and Jill and Jennie went off to do a bit more clothes shopping, followed by dinner nearby. Unfortunately, dinner was a bit "ordinary".
Interestingly, we discovered that while Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City back in 1976 after the fall of South Vietnam to the Communists, no one (that we heard anyway) calls it that. It's still Saigon to the locals.
