And another lovely holiday has gone by in a moments blink. Vietnam was a blast, and so was Brunei. Really-really nice. Honyea, Ros, David and I flew Royal Brunei Airlines in and out of Sydney. Quite an experience! 
But I’ll get to that later.
We took off Sydney on the 22nd arvo, prayers to Allah as we taxied and no alcohol whatsoever and seven and a half hours very long flight later we landed in Brunei. Bit tired yet enthused with the feeling of seeing Viêtnam, new country, new people, new smells — BO included. The layover at Brunei Durressalam or the so very officially known Negara Brunei Darussalam with its capital Bandar Seri Begawan that has a population of 322,000 people was only short, about two hours! The airport seemed mediocre in my opinion. Maybe the thought of Brunei being the richest country in the world had set my expectations high. The male toilets at the airport were clean. The female toilets am told, were a hole in the ground. We went up to a Coffee Bean Coffee shop to pass time but didn’t have any local currency a-n-d there is no official place to convert currency if you are in transit!! (The magazine shop, there is only one, does all currency conversion you’d ever need). It was pouring very heavily outside with huge thunderbolts flashing in the sky. Sydney was probably at 10 degrees. While we sat at 29º C in stifling humidity en route Ho-Chi-Minh. Little did I know we’re going into almost 37º C.
Soon we were on board our next Royal Brunei aircraft to the capital city of Viêtnam. Before I knew it we were descending down into Siagon. Immigration clearance took a long time at the port of entry. I am putting that down to the fact they don’t have many Indian passport holders coming into Viêtnam. Finally we walked down the green channel… we had to put our bags to scan ‘again’ while our cabin-bags could go almost un-noticed. Interesting. Soon we realised our driver was there to drop us off at the Hotel. Noice! Our itenary read Hotel Rex. The driver didn’t speak a word of english. He drove us out the Ho-Chi-Minh international airport which looked very clean and orderly and in a minute we were engulfed in a sea of two-wheelers, as far as you could see, left, right, front or even back. God they come in all directions, in all speeds and they all wore white masks and hats, not helmets. There is no concept of ‘following your lane’ or giving way to others. Our mitsubishi van veered left, right, centre, sometimes on the footpath if there was one and sometimes stopped a few centimeters away from an on-coming two wheeler. They never swore at each other, grimaced, chuckled or look annoyed. There were more two-wheelers, and even more and yet more. We held hands and thought of Lamingtons and Tim-tams back home. We were in Saigon!!
