James and Jo’s south east Asia adventure

As jo wanted to visit Chinatown we took a half hour taxi ride to the heart of Chinatown. It was the most chaotic place in Vietnam we’d visited and after 15 minutes of experiencing this in the sweltering heat Jo decided that there were better places to be. So we took another half hour taxi ride mostly back the way we came to the Vietnam history museum. We were on a roll…when we got there we discovered that it was shut on Mondays.

Fortunately the national zoo and botanical gardens were next door, and they were open!

The zoo was incredibly quiet considering entry was about £2 each and there was a broad array of animals, unfortunately most of their conditions probably wouldn’t pass muster in Western and Northern Europe.

Despite our detours around the city there was still time for a couple of hours by the pool before the evening meal. We’d booked a pizza restaurant (yes, I know, Vietnam isn’t exactly famed for their pizza), but it was with a popular chain and supposed to be good. The pizzeria had a high end feel to the place and some interesting toppings. I went for a half and half pizza with chicken teriyaki and garlic beef, it was average and served lukewarm, which I believe was on purpose rather than it just standing around. I had a beer with it advertised as ‘honey wine’, it was a slightly sweet beer and pretty tasty – nicer than the name suggested anyway.