Saigon, Vietnam

We flew out of Siam reap and into Saigon. Its such a contrast, its a huge, chaotic city with motorbikes every where and as all avid Grayhem Greene fans do we tried to find the milk bar, but ended up the the night club Apocolypse Now (very wierd, lots of security guards, no other western women).
Saigon is really dirty, the streets are dusty and the shops are just filthy, there are hardly any footpaths and motor bikes screech by every corner. Its a big city and its exhausting.
We went to the reunification palace, which is really intense, it has a strange video show about how terrible the Americans are, very biased.
We also went to the history museum which was quite interesting. Saigon's got lots to see, but remember, the museems have funny opening hours like 9-11 with a three hour lunch opening again from 2-5.30.
We ended up getting scammed (I blame Paddy for this as I told him it was a scam and he insisted that they were nice guys) by two evil little cyclos who cajoled us into a tour and refused to give us a price up front. I asked several times how much it would be, offered two dollors, and they said "its okay, pay us what you want". At the end of three hours of going to markets and having dinner and seeing two temples they charged us 30 euros each, I through a strop and refused to wish them good luck. I also refused to pay and finally brought them down a little to fifteen quid each after some immature tantrum throwing.
Another piece of advice is that most restaurants change ownership pretty quickly and have a short shelf life. Even with the latest lonely planet we still found that every restaurant we tried to get to had closed down.
For vegetarians I reccommend the fake meat cafes, the stuff they make looks just like meat, but it isn't. They are really run-down looking, but don't let that fool you, the food is great.