Ho Chi Minh or Saigon

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Once again i'm going to talk about the bus ride...not as bad as some of the others, but to cut a longish story short kids should be given Valium and old people should be given deodorant for any bus ride lasting longer than 5 minutes...

Arrived in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh...apparently it's all down to you what the place is called) at around 8ish so didn't really get up to much than explore the local area. Uber touristy and full of westerners which was a pleasant surprise. Nice to hear some english accents for once whilst walking around instead of the usual "you want moped? marajuana?". Already, Saigon seems nicer than the majority of places in Nam.

The following day i jumped on one of those cyclo things...well i didn't actually jump, but you get the idea...and took a nice leisurely cyclo ride to the War Remnants Museum. I'd been told this place can be pretty disturbing in terms of what you see, but still wasn't fully prepared for everything that was there. Lots of pictures of victims of Agent Orange and napalm. Brutal stuff! Apparently a gram of agent orange can kill thousands...or so the Vietnamese say. But the worst bit of the museum had to be the deformed fetuses preserved in some liquid for all to see...what made that worse though was the Asian tourists posing in front of them. Sick much!
Rest of the museum was pretty tame. Think they do the whole shock factor as soon as you walk through the door. But the museum was slightly biased. But i guess they did beat America, so who wouldn't gloat a little bit.
After this i jumped back on to my cyclo and headed to the Reunification Palace. Now for anyone who doesn't know, this is where the tank broke through the gate and South Vietnam surrendered (nice history lesson for you). All of it is pretty much the same as it was...apart from a few signs here and there and the tourist barriers. And they've got a new gate! But looked more like a posh modern house (for the time anyway) than a palace. I was expecting something slightly more palace-like. Oh well!
Following this i strolled to the Saigon version of Notre Dame Cathedral. Needless to say it was shite compared to the French one. But guess that was to be expected. You'd think the French would put a little more effort in recreating something that good in a country they had conquered. Didn't go inside as it was closed up. A lot of wedding seemed to be going on, so guessing they had some form of Deli-Counter ticket system to get in.
Rest of the day, and there wasn't much left of it by this point, was spent strolling back to my delightful hotel and grabbing some food. I went for the healthy option of some rice and veg followed by oreos. Nosh!

Following day was an all day tour to some Viet Cong stuff. For $7 i was expecting some good times, and i wasn't disappointed. Firstly though we had to go to some church thing of some religion called the Cailow or Caidow (i should look this up, but time is money here). Basically this religion is a mish mash of Buddhists, Muslims (our guide made a remark of non-suicide Muslims) and Christianity. So, no matter what these people do in terms of religion they are guaranteed a place upstairs. Seems to be cheating slightly! Got to see them prey though...but by preying it was more like chanting/singing/noise making. Even our Vietnamese guide couldn't understand them! But prey they did in their glorious white robes (they need some daz to keep them dazzling white though!). Following this, and a bite to eat, we headed to the Viet Cong tunnels of Cu Chi! Another history lesson, the Cu Chi were local people who fought for the North against the South...nice and easy to remember. We got shown around the old tunnel areas and got to see how they made weapons, food, clothes etc. Also saw a lovely propaganda DVD that must have been made at the time of the war about how good North Vietnam was and how they rock etc.
After this though the fun really started! Shooting range! Haha! For around $10 you get 10 bullets for an AK-47. Mucho fun...but very loud and smelly. Not like the movies! No one managed to hit the targets though so no prizes. BOOOOO! Reckon it was fixed anyways!
Following this we got to go in some actual Viet Cong tunnels. Now the ones we go in have been enlarged for tourists. But this still involves having to crouch and at times crawl through cramped, hot, smelly, bug infested tunnels with no torches to light the way. It was great fun...think it helped being the height of the average Vietnamese person, but some of the taller people definitely struggled. But only injuries sustained was some bashed heads, and i've somehow pulled a muscle in the derier! And that was that! The tour was over, only the hour long journey back to Saigon...took a lot longer though as we hit rush hour, and it seemed like everyone was on a moped. Saw a few bumps and scrapes that always seemed to be settled with fists. Civil bunch eh?

Laters
x

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