When we rolled into Saigon (Ho Chi Minh city) it was about 4:30 in the morning. As we worked out where we wanted to go in the lobby we got a really dirty glare from one of the people waiting there, and Jen came back from the washroom with a bit of a story about the people in there… we had to laugh to ourselves a bit.
Finally ready to brave the wall of taxi drivers outside the train station with our destination in mind, we settled with a driver finally and headed off to Pham Ngu Lao which is Saigon’s backpacker’s area. Most places were still closed and one lady tried to sell us a place way up in a building which seemed like one heck of a dump. We checked it out but quickly headed off in a new direction to find something new.
After waking up a few night watchmen to look at rooms, we eventually left Jen with the bags and went on a real hunt. Eventually we found a really nice place over looking the busy alleyways below. We ate some food, and started knocking off our list of things to see in Saigon. The trips to see the Cu Chi tunnels leave early in the morning, but you need 1 day notice, so that was put off until tomorrow. Instead we wandered off to see the War Remnants Museum. It was by far the best museum we went to in Vietnam, some of the stuff was really hard to look at or read though.
The museum was hot and filled with people, so we headed for the first restaurant with AC. After some food we grabbed a taxi to bring us to the water slides. We were pretty excited about it having read about their toilet bowl slide. The taxi only brought us close, we had to wander the rest of our way based on intuition and hope 
Eventually people started making swimming motions and pointing us in the right direction. When we got there it looked almost deserted. Middle of the day, during the week, makes sense, but still made us wonder a little bit. When we got in, we were told to go to the “foreigner bathing area” were we could lock up our stuff separate to the locals and the girls could lay in the sun in their “skimpy” bathing suits (compared to the essentially fully dressed Vietnamese girls.)
The slides here are fast. Fast like you are out of control fast. So much fun! There were some “black hole” type slides, some straight speed slide, zip lines, tube rides, the toilet bowl, one named “a giant slide”, crazy carpet slides… everything. It was all fun, and we escaped essentially unharmed. We met an American/Vietnamese girl who was pretty surprised we found the slides on our own. Then it was time to head back.
Outside the slides we were lucky to find some cabs waiting. We knew the price we paid to get here, and in Vietnam, it is common for metered cab rides to take a lot longer than ones where you decide on a price up front. We did our best to stick to our guns and eventually we convinced the guy, who seemed a fair bit insulted when we said we don’t want to be driven in circles on a meter, to take us back for no more than what we paid to get there. He drove with the meter to show us how honest he was. On the way we really got to like the guy. He knew very little English, but was very happy to be able to communicate with us in any way possible. Then he busted out his music. Karaoke in the local languages is all over, and hard to listen to after a while, so we prepared ourselves for it, but when it came on… we heard Hotel California!
He LOVED north american music apparently. One of his best lines was “I do not know English, but I do know this!” as he busted out his best air guitar. A few more songs, and lots of busy city streets later we rolled up by our hotel. We was a little bit over on the meter, but only asked for the amount we agreed on before. Of course after such an awesome ride we tipped him well, and he again tried to reassure us that his cab company was regulated and didn’t scam tourists.
We changed, washed, ate, wandered around, Amy shopped, we made sure our tunnels and trip to Cambodia were all figured out, had a snack, had a drink, and then around mid night, finally called it a night. Back at the hotel room we watched some TV, and settled in for a few hours of sleep before getting up at 6:30 to be ready to go see the tunnels.
