Despite the incessant traffic noise from the street, several floors down, we slept late. The hotel girls gave us a very cheery welcome when we finally made it downstairs, which was only a little bit embarrassing! We had a photocopied map and a vage idea that we wanted to see the town, and headed in the general direction of the city centre. No matter what we see or do in Vietnam, the traffic is going to be the enduring image for me. It's hard to describe because I'm prone to slight exaggeration from time to time, but I don't think the sheer volume and chaos of the Ho Chi Minh City traffic can possibly be exaggerated.

As I said yesterday, the predominant form of transport is the moped. There are, quite literally, thousands of them. Traffic signs are more of a guideline, as are directions of travel and police signals, and the horn is used as an indicator, a method to avoid steering and a general way of making your presence known. Even one-way streets and pavements have copious amounts of traffic in both directions and the only way to cross the road is to walk, slowly, into the fray and let the traffic swirl around you. Hesitating, running or changing direction are certain to end in some sort of injury, and it is a feat of bravery and stupidity each and every time you step off the pavement.

We were accosted by many 'cyclo' drivers wanting to take us around the city in their bike-powered chairs, and I laughed at the lunacy of the thought. We declined politely, though. We walked through the town and I held my breath every time we crossed a road. It was so hot. The pavements are uneven and often have gaping holes in them, and are regular thoroughfares for bikes and mopeds. We passed a few groups of school children who all called hello to us and then giggled and waved when we replied. As we walked past a building site, we saw a man sitting on the pavement, hoisting sand up to a man on a ladder, via a bucket, a rope and a pulley. He signalled to Mikey to come over to him, handed over the knotted rope and got Mikey to pull the bucket of sand up to the guy on the platform, who looked almost as bemused by the event as we did. Then he thanked us and we went away again. I have no idea what went on there, but now Mikey can put on his CV that he did some construction work in Saigon over the summer...

We finally got to the Reunification Palace, which used to be the Independence Palace. There is a minor entry fee and the ticket entitled us to a guided tour which we took. The Palace is really rather unattractive, built of concrete and very dated. Granite floors have only been given a cursory brush and I don't think the place has seen paint since its re-construction in the '60s. Plaster was chipping, most of the walls were scuffed and the upholstery in the Presidential reception rooms was threadbare and tatty. The 'most impressive room in the palace' had laquer panels at one end and a chandelier. We saw three of the four floors (the ground floor was being used for a conference this afternoon) and one of the basement levels. There were two tanks in the grounds, the two that caused the surrender of the South Vietnamese, and a helicoptor on the roof. Much of the palace was a museum, I think which would explain its untouched state. At the end of the tour, conducted by a girl in beautiful national dress (wide, white silk trousers and a long-sleeved,high-necked silk dress slit from the waist down), we went into a dark, mercifully air-conditioned room to watch a video about the palace and the history surrounding it. Even this didn't make the place look any more impressive, and some slightly tenuous links to the Chinese characters that are visible in the architecture were really stretching the imagination even when superimposed on the screen. The film was very diplomatic in attributing America's attack on a poor country of peasants to its history of being unused to defeat in war, and they said that even though the American government insisted in waging a war that it could never win (due to the formidible strength of spirit of the Vietnamese people), the soldiers were just being forced to fight against their better judgement.

We left the palace not really any more enlightened about the cause and events of the 'American War' and the role of the French, so we decided to go to the War Museum tomorrow. Back in town, the sky was a heavy, ominous blue-grey, and a couple of very large drops of rain punctuated the regular flashes of lightning. I saw a place to get some photos developed, and while we attempted sign language with the staff, the rain started. Sheets of white obsucred the other side of the street and we escaped through the back door of the shop (through a few twisty corridors and past surprised men with coffee) into a covered market where it was almost impossible to hold any sort of conversation because the rain made such a racket on the plastic roof. We walked through a few stalls of bags and shoes (and I finally found some new sandals with non-absorbant soles so that they will stay fresh and dry no matter what the weather...) and through the local moped show-room and then realised it was about 4pm and we'd eaten nothing all day except the pomelo I bought on the way out of the hotel. Right next to the market, just three steps through the rain, was a German/Vietnamese restaurant that seemed to be open, and we ran in and sat under the canvas awning and watched the rain. I've never had Vietnamese food, and I was pleasantly surprised by what arrived (although I think my request for 'rice' was confused with 'fries'). I avoided all the snake, terrapin, eel and frog, as well as the fish, and between us we had very thin strips of fried pork in chilli and lemongrass, and chunks of beef with onion and green pepper with a healthy dose of garlic. All very tasty indeed. Mikey sampled the local beer (which, to his great shame, was served with ice) and then we attempted to head back to the hotel.

5.30 seems to be rush hour, and the four or five million mopeds that had been hiding all day suddenly came out of every side street to clog up the roads. It was an incredible sight, worthy of several photos, and I have never seen such a volume of traffic. Through eight or nine lanes of bikes, more bikes went against the flow, pedestrians wandered in and out of the vehicles, bicycles weaved and a plethora of moped drivers, dozing, feet up on their bikes, on the pavement offered us both rides on their bikes. Crossing the road has never been such an extreme sport, and I felt a surge of adrenalin every time we stepped into danger, and only breathed again when we reached the opposite pavement. Most of the big roads had knee- or waist-high barriers along the centre, in an attempt to keep all the traffic going the right way, but it added an extra challenge to our journey. At one point the eight-foot wide pavement we were standing on (littered disturbingly with very large, hopefully dog, poo) became a twelve-lane highway all around us. We stepped off the pavement under the cover of a parked bus, and waited for a couple of minutes until we felt that we had a chance of surviving the crossing. And then, suddenly, a man in a beige uniform was ploughing through the traffic, and he grabbed me by the arm (I was holding on to Mikey) and dragged us across the road. He smiled and disappeared. What a hero!

We stopped briefly at an internet cafe and then went back to the hotel. A half-hour snooze in the air-conditioning, and we were ready for more noodle soup, spring rolls and bananas. The hotel girls are lovely, so chatty, and they booked a couple of tours for us. We spent a short time talking to Irish people, and Lyn, one of the hotel people, mocked them and their accents and joked with everyone. It was good fun. When we finally went up to bed, she looked at her watch and said, 'See you at... midday?'