South East Asia begins...

It started with an Emirates flight from Dublin to Dubai. Traveling alone has its plus' but also its cons. My first travel neighbour was a intimidating looking 50+ Belfast man, covered in tattoos and reeking of booze. It would be a long 7 and a half flight I thought. Once we got chatting he was actually an alright guy, if not a little difficult to understand. He soon fell asleep though and I was free to watch movies.
 My 9 hour stop over was nothing compared to Belfast Man, who had 24 hours to wait until his flight to Sydney. We went our seperate ways to get lost in what is an impressively large airport. After walking the whole length of Duty Free, I still had 8 hours to kill. So after a well needed salad, I found a wifi signal which took up an impressive 3 hours. The rest I spent trying to sleep on a plastic chair. It was 4am there, but to my body it was only midnight. Unbelievably it was the cold, from the overly air conditioned airport, that kept me awake. Then at 5.45am the call to prayer was played over the intercom, jolting me from a sort of slumber.

Finally flight number two, Dubai to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. It looked like I would be sitting alone, until about 40 minutes into the flight an air host came over and asked me would it be ok if a lady came to sit beside me as she was having trouble with some drunk men in the sits beside her. I said of course. We landed later than schedule at 7.30pm. I mostly slept for the flight but we got chatting after. She was traveling alone also but doing a tour starting from HCMC. She said she had thought about doing it all alone but chickened out and said I was very brave. Brave or Stupid? hmm. She was Polish, but living in Dublin. We decided to share a taxi from the airport. She'd also met a bubbly Thai woman in Dubai airport who was on our flight. She told me she had been stopped in Dubai airport and strip searched and they accused her of being an illegal immigrant. Poor thing, I thought. The three of us stuck together going through emmigrations and then our bags were scanned again on the other side. Thai Woman got pulled aside and asscorted with three guards, along with her bag. After about 10 minutes of waiting and soul searching we decided to go on without her, not knowing just how long she would be, or even if we really trusted that it was just very bad luck that she would get stopped twice in her trip.

Both having heard lots of stories of taxi drivers ripping customers off, especially from the airport into town, we tried our best to get a reliable taxi, with a meter. We got one with a meter, but we still got ripped off. Something I actually didn't realise until the day after, mostly owing to the Vietnamese Dong being the most confusing currency I have ever encountered.

I arrived safely to what I thought would be my hostel. But I was told they were going to put me in their sister hostel, that it was brand new and lovely. I said that was fine. What I didn't realise was that I was expected to hop on the back of a motor bike to get there. And so, within 10 minutes of being in HCMC I broke my 'No Motorbike' rule. The traffic in this city is like nothing I've ever seen. There are few traffic lights, or rules seemingly. Its like a constant game of chicken, whether you're the motorbike or a poor pedestrian battleing several lanes of cars and motor bikes with no decent crossing.

I got there in one piece, in what seems to be a work-in-progress Hotel, which is currently operating as a Hostel. It is nice, clean and new. I crashed at 11pm exhausted with jet lag but excited!