Ho Chi Minh City Tour

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This morning we started our guided tour of Ho Chi Minh City. We did it through a company called Happy Tours, and it included free breafast and lunch. And all the representatives were nice and helpful, so just thought I'd recommend them to any other travellers in the area.

Anyways, we started the tour by visiting some sort of Pagoda. I didn't catch the name of it. Actually, I didn't catch much of what was going on at the place. It had something to do with buddism, and monks, and dead people. I can't say that it really interests me all that much...but I guess it was good to see. Next, we visited a Chinese temple. There were a lot of very nice sculpted murals. But yeah, it's a temple, not too interesting. After that, we visited Cho Lon market. It's HCMC's largest market. It was very very crowded, and they sold all sorts of stuff that I didn't want to buy. =) There were fabrics, sandals, shoes, hats, pots and pans, bulk food, all sorts of household goods, and various other things that you might want if you lived here. After the market we headed back for lunch. We passed up our free lunch and went out for pasta. I haven't had pasta for ages, and it was a really nice treat. Speaking of food, there is an awesome fruit shake place on Da Tham(I think that's the name of it) street. It's called the Banana Cafe, and it's across the street from Sinh Cafe. It's a tiny hole in the wall establishment that has 24 different fruit shakes for very cheap(4000-5000 D). Today, I've already been there three times. It was recommended in the Let's Go Vietnam travel guide, and it was definitly a worthy recommendation.

Ok, back to the tour. After lunch we visited the War Museum. It had some amazing pictoral displays. It's incredible how well documented, photo wise, the vietnam war was. There are photos of American soldiers and airplanes. Lots of pictures of wounded soldiers, and a whole section devoted to the after effect of all the chemicals America dropped on the south part of the country. 75 million litres of chemicals were dumped by the United States, including Napalm, Phosphorous, and Agent Orange. The pictoral display shows countless malformed people born just after the war, and even people born now, 30 years after the war. They are born with bone defects, numerous skin diseases, and a variety of other terrible diseases. There are also photos of children, women, and civilians with burn scars all over their bodies from napalm, and they're the lucky ones who lived. There are pictures of hospitals, and schools destroyed by bombs. It's all quite sad, and what's worse is how they are still dealing with the effects of the dioxin in their soil today. As well as all these photos, there were a few airplanes, pieces of artillery, and a helicopter as well.

After the War Museum we visited another Chinese Temple and the Notre Dame Cathedral and the General Post Office. The temple was a temple. The Cathedral and the Post office we're intesting. Both obviously built while the french occupied Vietnam. So just looking at the architecture was nice enough. This is one of the things I love about the city so far, just looking at all the interesting architecture and french influence. Well that pretty much sums up the day. Not sure what the plans are for tomorrow yet, but we'll probably be heading to Da Lat in a couple of days. That's all for now.

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Photos

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At the War Crimes museum