Love love love Saigon! The city has such energy. Last night we were dreaming about spending a month here at some point. How else would we be able to eat at even a fraction of all the delicious sounding restaurants and cafes? Try more exotic pastries? Explore the tiny little alleyways? And venture into a few shops? We still haven’t shed any luggage so shopping is off the agenda.

The food in Vietnam is just amazingly tasty. Nick has been dreaming about the BBQ salt and chilli snapper at Ben Thanh night market since we were here 1.5 years ago so that was our dinner the first night after a visit to what seems to be Saigon’s first trendy boutique brewery, the Pasteur Street Brewing Company.

In fact food was our main activity for these few days in addition to catching up on the blog…

Happy Birthday Nick! Celebrated with a fluffy cake, cocktails overlooking the city from the rooftop bar at Caravelle Hotel and dinner at Hoa Tuc which used to be an opium den back in the days.

We had to get train tickets for Hue and Hanoi and ventured off to the train station. Nick was delighted when the lady serving us, pointed at him ‘You! Old Man Discount!’ And he got 20% off his tickets.

The scenery between Danang and Hue was dramatic as the train snaked its way between mountains and the sea. The last 70km took nearly 3 hours. 20 hours in a train is not that different from flying to Europe really. We had stocked up on sandwiches, delicious pork buns and pot noodles (although the water in the onboard urne wasn’t hot on this trip) but food and drink trolleys go through the train. You get a fully flat bed (even if the mattress is a bit on the firm side) and a power point. If only they could do something about those toilets…
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