Quick Update

Since Pete is now here we are a little more busy, so I might be in quick update mode for a while.

- Checked out the old South Vietnamese White House type building and the American War museum. Will probably write something serious about that later.

- Had a really full afternoon and evening in Saigon yesterday. Highlights below.

- Went to the Dam Sen water park. This place was really fun, normal water park setup like the US, but only 5 bucks to get in. They had about 10 water slides, including one I had never seen before. The new one sent you shooting down a tube at incredible speed and then shot you out into a big toilet bowl kind of thing. After circling the drain as many times as you could go around, you fall out the bottom of the bowl into a pool. The first time I rode it I thought it was the scariest water slide I had ever been on.

- Drank some Bia Hoi, or "fresh beer" on little sidewalk tables. This was in the real neighborhood near the water park, so we did stick out a bit. Bia Hoi is beer that is made fresh without preservatives and delivered to bars that sell it out of a big metal tank. It is sold by the liter and is the worlds cheapest beer at 25 cents per liter. This was our first time having it, and we ended up getting 3 beer mugs filled with ice and an old 2 liter plastic bottle, that looks like something you would use for petrol, filled with Bia Hoi. Mixed with the ice it was pretty good, very light and refreshing.

- Went to this big faux western music bar near the hotel. In this palace of varnished wood walls and giant totem poles they had the most bizarre cover band I have ever seen. It was a long haired guy and two scantily clad girls backed up by a normal set of musicians. The three singers with switch off on who was the lead vocalist and they covered everything from Beyonce to Roxette to Metallica. Really bizarre hearing two Vietnamese singers playing the roles of Beyonce and Jay-Z. They actually were really entertaining.