Blogs from Cu Chi, Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 4

Caro: On the first day in HCMC we were woken up by a bl**dy cockerel at about 4am, the joys of staying in a backpacker hotel I guess. After Highlands coffee, the essential for a day of sightseeing, we set off and headed to the market. We weren't there long as we were harassed to death and I still haven't found any bloody leggings! Impressions of HCMC: it seems to be quite western in some places , certainly in comparison with Hanoi but it is clean, busy and you could get anything that you had ever dreamed of (ranging from tropical fruit to birds , drugs women and ust about everything else you could imagine! We decided to follow the walking tour as recommended by the good old Lonely Planet, this took us past the museums, ... read more

Visiting Saigon is like going to a rave on serapax. You just cant keep up and your never going to. The entire giant city is on meth. Its like watching a dvd on fast forward and you're part of it. Arriving in communist countries is always a drama, especially when just a few hours ago you were swimming in the andaman sea trying to straighten up enough to actually get on a plane. When your first meal in a country is rubbery snails, a tub of smuggled yoghurt and half a bar of smuggled chocolate and your mini saigon hotel room is the size of a cell at pentridge jail but with the added view of a vietnamese laneway filled with 126,000 motorcycles busy doing something from dusk til dawn, you are forgiven for having misgivings. ... read more

Wednesday 1-5 Today we headed into the Cu Chi Tunnels. Cu Chi is a small agricultural city outside of Saigon. During the Vietnam War, the gorilla fighters from Cu Chi set up an extensive underground tunnel system to evade and attack the U.S. military base, which was only a few hundred meters away from the tunnels. It’s easy to see why the U.S. had no hope of infiltrating the tunnels and defeating the Viet Cong in this area – the gorillas were hard core & the tunnels are insane! The tunnel system extends for an area of about 200 km. There are three levels below ground: 3m, 6m, and 10m. As visitors, we were allowed to go inside a 200m stretch of tunnel @ 3m below ground. Hard core! The tunnels were widened for tourists and ... read more

An early start this morning. I was up and downstairs for breakfast, god all those stairs are a killer. I think we were picked up. The Polish lass that was staying at the hostel was also going on the trip. I'm sure the pcik up involved us being lead to the main street and onto the bus. I think it was a minibus. Then we spent a while driving around different parts of the city to pick up more people. One bloke proper kicked off with the tour guise for no real reason. Yes it's annoying having to pick everyone up, but for God's sake the tour cost you like $4. If it bothered him that much he should over forked out for a private car and driver. Dickhead! Anyway, back to the trip. We basically ... read more

We arrived in Ho Chi Min city after an uncomfortable and long 13 hour journey across the border, only to be bombarded with hotel touts and motorbike taxi's, all wanting our business. We decided to grab some lunch before heading to a guest house called “My Home.” It was really nice, despite being up 6 flights of stairs with no lift, but at least they carried our heavy backpacks for us. We didn't do much the first night as we were tired from our long journey and it started to rain so we ordered a takeaway pizza and watched a film. The next morning we were woken at 7 o'clock by the sound of drilling, which was so loud it felt like they were in the room with us, and that was even with ear plugs! ... read more