Blogs from District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 34

They came spilling out of the Le Loi darkness mounted on screaming metallic steeds. It looked as if the entire regiment was headed right for our position. The reflections of the decorative tree lights spun in their dark eyes like cigarette embers swirling down black holes. We saw an opening in their ranks and raced for it. “Karen! For the love of God baby, MOVE!” My shout was lost in the all encompassing, mind numbing roar. We froze like two befuddled deer that had stupidly stumbled onto an Interstate. Miraculously, the torrent of humanity cleaved itself around us and moved on. Welcome to crossing the streets of Saigon during Tet. Tet is Vietnam’s most popular festival. It is Vietnam’s New Year celebration and marks the beginning of Spring and the renewal of the Vietnamese hopes for ... read more

After getting through the border, we were on a bus heading to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), which is better known as Saigon. First thing we noticed was the traffic! In Asia, we have found traffic to be pretty heavy but Saigon was particularly hectic, and we were continuously dodging motorbikes and cars. We checked into a hotel and went out for a drink at a nearby bar before exploring the area to get a general feel for the city. We really liked the interesting architecture, which consisted of very tall and thin buildings. We enjoyed ducking into the narrow backstreet alleys, which had pretty balconies stretching above street level and was always buzzing with locals. Vietnam is a communist country so there are flags of hammer and sickles everywhere and lots of propaganda posters, showing ... read more

We have spent the last two days just walking around District 1 and we are very good at crossing the road without been ran over. Although we have found it much easier to deal with traffic here than in Ha Noi. The cool thing here is that they have these people in green uniforms that are Tourist security guys, and they help you cross the road if it is too busy or they think you may not survive the crossing lol. We head to the Mekong delta tomorrow to start our trip up to Cambodia. We spend the next three nights on a junk travelling up the river to Chau Doc. From there we catch a fast boat to the capital of Cambodia spend one night there then onto Seam Reap and Angkor Wat. We will ... read more

Well we left our beautiful Villa in Mui Nei yesterday and arrived in Saigon/HCM....we got to our Hotel and came down with a crash from 5 star luxary to a 3 star room with a window that looks out onto the airconditioning unit. Having said that it is very clean and quiet. We were so shell shocked by the noise of 7 million residents (most of them out on their bikes when we arrived) that we hid in our room for the night reading books and wishing we were still on the beach. By this morning we had gotten over ourselves and ventured out - although with a driver and guide (so not quite as adventurous as it sounds!). Headed out to the Cu Chi tunnels and Ella discovered that she is just a wee bit ... read more

A couple of things I forgot to mention from Eddie: * 32 people die every day in Viet Nam due to traffic * School breaks every day around 11 or 11:30 and the kids go home for lunch and some resting time before coming back at around 13:00 and stay until about 16:30 At 10:20 a minibus picked us up from our hotel and took us to what seemed to be a rather upscale version of a bus terminal. It cost 140,000 to Saigon and left at 11:15 (really it left a few minutes early...what if you were late?!). Apparently they leave every hour, and there weren't many people on our bus though there was an empty medicine cabinet and we did get free water bottles and wet towelettes from the stewardess lady. The bus ride ... read more