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Published: March 28th 2010
SAIGON 12 - 15 MARCH
Although we had to yomp for around 10 minutes from Bui Vien we found good digs on a small cul de sac on Co Bac which is still in district 1 but just far enough away from the noise and chaos of the tourist track. $21 got us a top floor room in the Quynh Kim probably one of our favourite rooms yet. A/C was a must as the temperature seemed to increase the further south we got.
As I'm writing this up from our last stop before home, I'll be as brief as I can: HCMC is a bigger, noisier and busier version of Hanoi with maybe a few million more motorbikes. It's a great fun city with excellent bars and restaurants and obviously an awful lot of history and sights to see. Although things are quite spread out, we managed to find our way round on foot especially as we spent our first morning trawling around for a new power adapter/charger for this bloody laptop.
Travel note: be careful with laptop chargers when travelling, if you leave it plugged in someone will happily relieve you of it. They sell for $30 secondhand
Dave and Dean Armstrong
Our first meeting...quite a heavy nightin Nha Trang even though we bought a new one for $15 in Saigon.
Anyone who knows us will probably consider us a little too careful with our cash to spend an afternoon wining and dining in the Saigon Sheraton 5 star Hotel but sometimes even we have to make exceptions to our rules. We met up with Dean Armstrong from Hull on the eve of his 40th birthday and considered it rude to turn down an invite to join him and friends for the celebrations. Needless to say Anna happened to have a pretty frock for the occasion and looked the part but my standard scruffy traveller look ( ie Vest!) didn't go down too well so I was provided with a blazer before I was permitted to get stuck in...(Dave looked like an ageing rocker with vest and a far too small black suit jacket...ot something out of miami vice..hilarious) A lovely afternoon with spectacular food and drink and great company was followed by a rowdy booze up at Dean's apartment.
Travel note: The Sheraton “buffet” costs around $40 per head and after a couple of months on the road was well worth every cent. Beer and
wine is included so we simply grazed our way around the various top notch serveries and washed it down with quality plonk for 4 hours! Excellent fun!!If we could do this at home for 25 quid every sunday it would be fantastic!
War remnants museum - a huge collection of US equipment inc tanks, aircraft etc but also wall after wall of heavily biased but gruelling photographs and stories about the 10,000 day war. Stiflingly hot and mentally draining I found myself missing large parts of the museum after I'd seen enough in the first 30 minutes or so. Many of the images will be familiar with those who remember the war but even though things like the Mai Lai massacre have been well publicised I found it a harrowing experience. It is definitely a must see though and increases your knowledge of the Vietnam War.
Cho Chi Tunnels - the 200km network of tunnels dug out by the Vietnamese over years going back to French days is a mind blowing concept when you consider that the Vietcong ran full military operations from them. They consist of 3 levels of hand dug tunnels at 3, 6 and 10
Mobile squid seller
Market place in Saigon metre depths. The deeper the level the smaller the tunnels; the biggest of them was tight enough for me although other visitors including Anna tried the second level. The deepest are not open to the public. Admission is 70,000 vnd and you can pay extra to shoot ak47's m16's and other weapons of the period. The attraction is very busy with busloads of tourists and we found the actual visit slightly disappointing as each tunnel involved a lengthy wait. The display of traps used by the VC is gruesome indeed.
Anna:If you are short of time I really, really wouldn't push to fit this trip in, and I hate to miss anything at all, there are too many tourists and really nothing to see except crawling 20m through a very small tunnel which is quite easy to imagine and the journey is long and slow. Just my advice.
Anna: We spent 4 days in Saigon and this was no where near enough, you could do a week easily. Loved it, lots to see and do, hot and the usual chaos!
Travel note: it takes about 2hours each way from HCMC to the tunnels and trips can either by
all day or “half day” DO NOT believe agents who tell you that you will be back by 2pm in time for the bus to Phnom Penn. We fell for it and had to cut short the tunnel visit in order to rush back even though the same agent sold us both tickets and assured us that we would be back in time!!
Cross border bus to Phnom Pehn Cambodia cost us $11 each and took around 6 hours. It was the most comfortable bus we took in Vietnam and the border crossing process was quick and efficient. Tourist 30 day visa costs $20 US.
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