Saigon is a place of contrast, I cannot think I have loved and hated a place so much at the same time. Everyone seems to be trying it on to make an extra buck or two. I have got a hard edge of being very rude to people to stop the conversation going on and on, before the give me money stage. I have twice challenged the locals to if you don't like it let’s go down the police station and discuss it there. One cabbie trying to charge fare five times the fare having switched off the meter and a restaurant owner left with no money after I found a staple in my pizza.

However it is an exciting and vibrant city, and the nightlife is brilliant. The Beer Hoi bars (Vietnamese fresh beer at 60p for 2 liters, rough but drinkable!) around Pham Ngu Lao, the backpacker area, are full of locals and travellers from everywhere. Add the working girls trying to distract the scene into their bars and the lady boys who cruise on bikes, lack of closing time, blinding rock music from every bar. It’s brilliant. Shopping is good and I acquired some tremendous ex-war souvenirs from a dealer at the Dan Sinh Market. Although most of these are fake, one guy, Dung (That’s Dong to you), produced an array of old collectables that no one else had. I would like to believe my Vietcong tea mug from 1968 may just be the real thing! I left the still blooded bayonet.

On the same theme, the War Remnants Museum is especially poignant, with a collection of photos of the war and damage inflicted on the local population by Agent Orange and the My Lai massacre. It’s sobering, but once the story was broken it did play a part in the ending of US involvement in Vietnam.

One wonderful restaurant serves recipes based on Vietnamese street food but presented in a nice, Western environment. Reservations are essential or its join a remarkably well managed queue - a number of people are sent right to the back when they start to push in. On getting to the front I was advised no singles were allowed and I would have to share, consequently ended up with a lovely and embarrassed Vietnamese girl who couldn’t speak English. Amazing how a translation guide can beat a silence. The equally lovely first generation family now based in the US helped out from the next table, and soon a big conversation was in flow. The traffic is manic, you cross at a gentle pace and the bikes go past you on either side, anticipating your next move. You don’t run, or even worse stop dead in your tracks, or you’ll squashed like a bug. The one accident I did see entailed two motos coming together, bringing down the next half dozen behind them. Everyone gets up in the end and dusts themselves off to a cacophony of noise from the traffic now waiting behind.

I book a nice bed seat on the next days bus to Phnom Penh, but this is Vietnam, the ticket is transferred to another company and a very full regular bus departs an hour late with me having paid twice the price for the regular seat now given!