Ho Chi Minh City

Hi again,

Thursday was travel day and we flew from Hanoi to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it's called here. We arrived in rush hour and if we thought there were lots of scooters in Hanoi, it's only in the ha'penny place compared with Saigon. The traffic is amazing. You look down a side street and it looks like the biggest scooter race in the world is about to start, with millions of scooters on the blocks, but in fact , its just the locals on their way home from work !! The little video clip above will give you a flavour of the sights and sounds.

We drove about 5 hours east to Phan Thiet to the Blue Ocean Beach resort, which is lovely - on the ocean, the South China Sea. We stopped off on the way last night for dinner at the Forrest Restaurant - very interesting menu ; lots of seafood.

Here we are making short work of dinner,

with Martina particularly enjoying the crabs !!

We got back at about midnight and had a very welcome sleep, before setting off this morning to the Nick Faldo Ocean Dunes Club. Lovely course with lots of water and some very interesting bunkers. It's a lot hotter down here in the South and we had finished our round before the afternoon rain came. Then we went for a walk on the beach and a dip in the South China Sea.

Here's my team of Marianne from Austria and Marjory from Scotland, complete with local caddies, overlooking the China Sea.

Martina finished on the winning team again ! Stewarts enquiry underway and a definite handicap cut for tomorrow !! Well done again to the bandit !!

Dinner tonight was in the Ngoc Suong seaside restaurant, a wonderful setting on the ocean. We had lots of seafood with some very interesting dishes .. here's the flambeed prawns ; and Roddy making the fish stew, with Hung covering some of the finer points of Asian Cuisine with Martina!

Tomorrow, we're off to the Sea Links, which we're told is a bit more challenging. It's billed as 'The most Challenging Links Style Golf Course in Asia' .. mm .. should be fun. Will check in to report on it tomorrow night.

Bye for now,

Martina & Kate.