Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City and surrounds

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Vietnam opened it's door to toursim in 1995, and they have done a good job of embracing it. Despite still being a communist country, they have seem to have embraced capitalism: you can't walk 2 meters down the street without someone offering you a motorcycle rides, fake books, sunglasses, lighters, drugs, etc..

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, previously Saigon, the first thing you notice is the motorbikes. The city has a population of 8 million, and there are approx. 5 million bikes in the city, swarming through the streets in ordered chaos. There aren't many traffic lights, so crossing the street is an artform you quickly have to learn. You wait for a small gap, step onto the road and slowly walk across - the motorcycles just drive around you. A bity scary at first, but you quickly get used to it! It also seems that nearly every second building and streetlamp sport the Vietnamese flag.

My first day in 'Nam I went on a tour of the Mekong Delta, about 2hrs drive from Ho Chi Minh. Saw Many rice paddies on the way, water buffalo, and many, many people, all wearing the typical straw hats. Seems there is also a bit of a constuction boom going on, with new new roads and bridges being built.

The second day I went out to the Cu chi tunnels, built by the Viet Cong during the American War. Cu Chi is a network of over 200km of tunnels and lodgings, used by the VC to hide from the american troops & bombs, as well as mount ambushes. We got to see an interesting documentary, telling us about the atrocities committed by the US Imperialists. If it wasn't for the content of the video, the style of the propaganda would have been quite funny. We also got to see replica's of booby traps used by the VC. Quite brutal.Towards the end of the tour we also got to crawl through some of the original tunnels, widened for larger westeners to the height of 60cm and width of 50cm. Still quite tight, at 3m underground! To top it all off we also got to shoot an AK47.

The next day I managed to meet up with Rory & Connor, two Irish lads whom I had met at the begging of my trip in Peru. We nearly crossed paths in several places in South America, as well as in Thailand, but this time we actually managed to meet up, and catch up and compare trips over a few beers (see Rory's beard in the photo's - he hasn't shaved since we met in Peru last September). As we where sitting in a roadside cafe, all of a sudden Richard walked past, another guy I had met in Colombia, Panama and Nicaragua. Small world!

The next day we went to Visit the War Remembrance Museum, which is a collection of photo's of the Vietnam War, pretty one sided of course, but still very graphic and shocking!

As Rory & Connor where heading on to Cambodia, I continued north to a small fishing village called Mui Ne, where I relaxed a bit and saw the local sights, including several sanddunes, a canyon and the 'Fairy Stream'. Another interesting thing was to see the locals go out to sea in large woven baskets! Mui Ne was a nice place, but not much to do there, so I headed north again to Na Trang, a slightly larger town. The main attraction there is to see all the surrounding islands, do some snorkelling and enjoy with onboard entertainment and a floating bar!

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