I woke up but slept in until 7.30 as I felt a big groggy and when I did get up I realised it was down to the air conditioning. I had a shower and packed up then headed to the Ho chi Minh museum picking up an overripe papaya on the way. The museum was 10,000 but was not very good it was more of a shrine to the man and had very little facts or history. There were 2 documents from his early life showing how he became a communist in France and then spoke at a communist meeting, but there were also school groups taking up rooms in the place. I left and crossed back over the river and went to the skytower for a look and the cafe was the only thing open and I planned to have a look and leave but they had a meal of rice vermicelli with tofu for 95k so I got that, used their WiFi and looked at the view. The food was ok but they did add 15% onto the bill afterwards and I'd already posted a glowing review on tripadvisor. I left and went to the Reunification Palace which was the headquarters of the south Vietnamese government. There wasn't that much information it was more of a walk round and see some rooms place but the one thing that did hit me was that the South Vietnam leader had lived in this palace with big rooms for meeting people and a concrete underground bunker while Ho Chi Minh had lived in a house on stilts and been revered by his people who had fought hard and won the war, it also had similarities to the Dune book I had finished a week back. Next I went to the war remnants museum which had a lot of anti US propaganda and went over torture they did, the prisons, the amount spent on the war, chemical weapons used and support around the world for US to stop the war. It was a bit one sided but still there were truths there. The museum closed at 12 to reopen at 1.30 so I zipped around the last bits then went back to the hostel and grabbed a sandwich on the way. I went into tourist agency and they said the bus to Dalat would be 280k which they reduced to 240k and I would have to leave at half past to get the hourly bus. When they said do I want the 1pm I thought that's not possible as it was 12.35 and I needed my luggage but I wanted to try for a normal local bus so I went back and used the WiFi. I couldn't find any good information so I booked a hostel in Dalat and went back to the travel agency for the 2pm bus and at 1.30 the guy drove me round the corner on his motorbike and bought a ticket for 210k for the bus, so I paid 30k for a 2 minute bike ride, still would have been 70k, but I could have got the 1pm bus after all so I had lost an hour. At 2pm a little minivan collected us to go to the bus station and they had wifi and a water dispenser there. I sat there for another 20 minutes before the bus came which was a nice large semi sleeper where the seats recline. It was a bit like first class on a plane except there were 2 levels of seats and nowhere to put bags. Luckily the bus was empty probably because it was the middle of the day and as my seat didn't stay upright I swapped seats a couple of times until I found one I was happy with. The bus had WiFi so I did some research as well as read on the journey.
We arrived at the bus station around 9pm and transferred to a minibus that took me directly to the hostel so I was there at an ok time and it was not a bad bus service in all. There was a girl in my room from Estonia who had been there 4 nights and she told me where the night market was so I went and had a look. The food there was not so cheap and they were selling lots of winter clothes. There were also some shoe places with trainers for just 150 Dong (£5). I wandered round and took some money out and went back to the hostel, read a bit and went to sleep.
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