On the first day of the New Year we decided to go for a walk along the Saigon river walking towards a building in the distance which had intrigued us. The walk was hot albeit interesting and when we arrived at our destination it turned out to be a museum m to Ho Chi Minh. We paid to go in and the discovered that it comprised mainly of photocopies of documents which had been laminated and stuck on the wall. That and a couple of his jackets, a pair of spectacles and a typewriter made up what was very clearly a shrine to the great man.
At eleven thirty we were unceremoniously thrown out as the museum shut for lunch and we made our way to the tallest building in the city where went up in the lift to the fifty second floor to what was basically an ice cream bar. The views were great despite a pale fog across the city and Saigon spread out as far as the eye could see. We had lunch in a Pho bar and then had a quiet afternoon, the tour director and I walking along a French styled boulevard looking at the Western shops that are encroaching the city, Chanel, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Rolex etc.
David went to the gym and we all met for an early evening drink before heading back to the restaurant we had been to before for another meal. Before heading off we noticed from the hotel bar that the police had shut the boulevard just around the corner from the hotel. This caused major concern for thousands of motor bikes who wanted to use the road. They discovered that they could drive through a garden and circumnavigate the police barrier. As a result the police closed the garden, at which point the enterprising Vietnamese motor cyclists drove to the other side of the road which was still open and turning right into the traffic flow created a right hand lane which brought them back into the shut road behind the barrier. This was eventually resolved when the police shut the other side of the road, but it made for a great spectator sport. We walked to the restaurant along the boulevard which had been turned into a pedestrian park for the evening and which was being enjoyed by young and old alike. A great way to celebrate the New Year.