We returned to the big city for a day before we headed home. A few food appointments awaited us and a couple more museums to visit. We swapped hotels and stayed at the Duxton. Although it was only two blocks away from where we stayed initially in Saigon it was a world away as far as charm, certainly nice enough but really just a standard business type hotel.
No hotel breakfasts this time around, our first stop was Pho 24, a local chain restaurant that had come highly recommended. It didn't disappoint, it was really, really good.
We spent a large chunk of the day at the Vietnam History Museum which was memorable for things other than what we should remember it for. As soon as we entered the museum we noticed a English language guided tour had just started so we discreetly followed thinking we would get some deeper insight into the exhibits. How wrong were we! The tour guide was so bad, he spent about two minutes in each room and actually contradicted what was written on the exhibits. The classic instance was in relation to a six hundred year old mummy that was on display in a special room. By this time Kelly and I had ditched the guide realising he was useless and we had already been in the mummy room when we saw the tour approaching. The guide didn't even lead the group in the room and simply said "there is some old mummy in that room" and kept the tour moving.
The other funny thing at the museum were the diorama's that were used to illustrate how an ancient war strategy was executed on the battle field. These things looked as though they were a first grade art project - they were so bad. And they were used extensively throughout the entire museum.
The Museum was in a very cool old building and did have some good exhibits but it was two stars out of five at best. I had worked up enough courage by this time to try the street food, in particular there was a local variation of Chinese steamed pork buns that I kept seeing that I had to try. I can't believe I left it until the last day these things (char siu bao they are called) were beautiful.
A few hours chilling in the pool to end the vacation and we were off home and by this time incredibly excited to see Luca and Scout. Awesome holiday and there is so much more to do in Vietnam than what we managed to fit in, having said that I was happy to leave that for another holiday as I wouldn't have changed a thing about this trip.
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