CITY TOUR

I was awake before 6 am and managed to get a shot of my first Vietnamese sunrise then after a sumptuous breakfast in our hotel we were collected by our driver and guide for a City Tour of Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh.

After negotiating the traffic, our first stop was the War Monuments Museum, where we saw some harrowing photographs of the Vietnam War - I think the photographs of the children were what got to me most. An hour wasn't really long enough to take in all we saw, but we needed to get to our next stop, the Museum of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine, a very interesting building on 6 floors, squeezed in between other houses. We realised that many of the plants in our own garden are obviously used in their traditional medicine and have been for centuries.

The journey itself was quite jaw-dropping because of the volume of cars, scooters and motorbikes on the road - I have to admit that we sat in the back with our eyes closed some of the time! Mr. HCB counted five people, including two children on one scooter, which apparently is illegal, but it doesn't seem to stop them risking life and limb to get to their destination. The thing that we are amazed at is that there appear to be so few accidents. I took the shot of three people on one scooter and when the little boy looked at me, I gave him a “thumbs up” sign, which he then gave back to me.

I told our Guide, Troy, seen walking down Book Street with Mr. HCB, that our driver, Tong, was wonderful and if I were wearing one, I would take my hat off to him - he was quite amused by this expression, and wrote it down so that he could remember it - after I had explained what it meant.

Our next stop should have been the Tortoise Pagoda, but as it was a public holiday, the streets were gridlocked, so we just looked at it as we passed by - we were quite thankful not to stop, because it was very hot by this time.

A trip down Book Street brought us to The Old Post Office that had a fantastic ceiling, which made me think of MShelley, who often takes wonderful photographs of ceilings in stations around the UK.

Then it was on to the Presidential Palace, quite an uninspiring building especially when we thought of our Queen's residence, Buckingham Palace but it was so hot we decided not to go inside but just to take a photograph of that and Notre Dame Cathedral and then head back to our hotel.

In the afternoon, a friend of our son's messaged me to say she was free if we would like to have a coffee with her - so we had a very pleasant and relaxing time in an air-conditioned coffee shop after a hot and busy morning.

Thank you for all your kind comments, stars and hearts for yesterday's photograph. We had a lovely time in the evening with our son and his girlfriend and expect to do the same this evening.