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Published: March 3rd 2012
Arrived Friday night to Ho chi Minh city (after nearly boarding a plane in Kuala Lumper to Singapore....whoops!) and Neil had a sign waiting for me and airport transfers from our hotel. Lovely - especially after my first long overseas flight. HCM is FULL to the brim with bi-cylists and scooters. Drivers have one hand on their mobile phones to their ears and the other on the car horn. It's nuts but it's the way things are done. Lines on the road indicate nothing very much as you can pretty much drive where you want - often a bike will be driving up the "wrong" side of the road. haha Everyone drives on the other side of the road here anyway.
First hotel was ok but the shower was hanging off the wall over the hand washing sink and toilet... definately not up to my princessy standards - I like decent bathrooms. We wandered around the city and went to the night markets - I tried very hard to get run over on the way back to the hotel whereupon Neil saved me (for the first time....)
Saturday we took a boat up the river to the Cuchi tunnels
where the Vietnamese people lived underground for over 20 years - in something like 150 kilometres of tunnels - it was incredible. Neil shot an AK47 and ended up giving me 2 of the shots... the kick back was incredible. There is a stretch of 30 metres of tunnels which they've widened for tourists to go through... I made it about 3/4 of the way before taking the emergency exist as ppl kept stopping to have a chat and take photos - it was dark, very hot and because i had a backback I couldn't crouch - I had to squat-walk. Un-fun. The height of the tunnel would be about up to my mid thigh.
After that we went to the war museum - which was incredible and upsetting. It's truely amazing how humans can be so vile and horrible. We had dinner after our long walk back and then stopped for a look at a local park and watched the locals play a game with a shuttle cock where they hit it only with their feet - amazing skills - looked much like martial arts practise. One guy even did a hand stand while kicking the shuttle with
his foot. There we met Mal an Irishman who's been working in St George on a cattle farm for the last 12 months - stopped for a chat and a comparison on travel stories.
Sunday was our last day in HCM and we wandered the city, checked out the daily markets - wow they are assertive about getting you to buy things. I ended up with a embroidered picture - which by the way I seriously haggled for! Then we walked down to the post office to send Tash a postcard before flying out to Hanoi at lunchtime.
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