Ho Chi Minh, my final destination in Vietnam, as you could imagine has a much more Western feel to it than Northern Vietnam. The local people still call it Saigon, so it’s hard for me not to do the same. The city has an expansive skyline, advertisements and billboards everywhere you look. If Hanoi reminds one of the West Village, Saigon feels like mid-Town. The pedestrian street crossings are a leap of faith or stupidity. But the prices are very un-Western … $8 guesthouse rooms with private shower. $1 bowls of pho. .75 spring rolls. I really only stayed in Saigon [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone, so I somehow messed up the last time I tried to write a blog and I don't think it published properly. So now I'm making a blog entry to direct you to another blog entry. It was meant to be published yesterday. Here's the link: http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-424509.html [View Full Entry]

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Can I learn more from a Sunday in Saigon than an entire semester at Iowa State? I woke up Sunday morning and walked out the cramped alley our guesthouse is jammed inside and saw streets bustling with activity. Maybe not bustling; Saigon is always bustling. Maybe... overflowing with riotous activity. The whole neighborhood turned into a giant market, and everyone showed up. Eating breakfast, chatting up acquaintances, hawking goods, buying from friends. I sat down with Rachel and a clutch of locals at the pho stand just out our alley for breakfast. Pho is a noodle soup, the noodle sou [View Full Entry]

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Wow, today was my last teaching day! I can’t deny that I was not looking forward to this last week of work, but I was also very sad having to leave. As usual I went to Tan Binh school that Friday morning. When we got there the boys were cleaning their beds, which actually were these wooden “matresses”. It was fun to watch them working hard tring to impress us and helping to get everything cleaned up for a visit from a foreign organisation. When they had finished cleaning, we gathered in the classroom and I (tried) to give a little [View Full Entry]

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Saturday, April 4th 2009 On Saturday I got up early, started several loads of laundry and decided to start packing that morning. My plan for today was to pack up, organise a box with things that could be sent home with some german friends (things I wouldn’t need on my trip, Japan, the states and Bangkok), have a small goodbye party for my local friends. I am very glad that I started packing in the morning, because it turned out to be a bigger job than I thought. I have no clue how I ended up with this much stuff and [View Full Entry]

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Here are a few photos from the Vietnam part of my trip, From Cambodia we took a bus over the boarder to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). Its the largest city in Vietnam, population around 6.5million, and is generally hectic both day and night. It seems like each one of the residents owns a bike, and decides to ride it at the same time each day, causing travel by any other means than foot impossible. Even on foot trying to cross a street can be a nightmare, as traffic signs mean very little to the locals. Some of the photos show [View Full Entry]

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Acts of Kindness I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on a rainy afternoon after a border crossing from hell. Feeling wrung out and exhausted, I allowed myself to be persuaded into one of the lurking taxi’s who were issuing promises of a ‘cheap guesthouse’. When I asked him how much the taxi ride would cost, he pointed to the front seat and said ‘meter…no worries’. Foolishly, I got in. The meter was in dong, which I did not have, and when I asked the driver whether I could use USD instead he said no. Alarm bells should have begun ringing [View Full Entry]

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After a much less exciting bus trip, we arrived in our final stop, Saigon. Throughout the trip we had heard nothing but negative things about the city, so we were a little unsure about the wisdom of spending our last three days here. Turns out, the critics were wrong and we loved Saigon! We checked in to our last guesthouse and hit the streets of the backpacker area in search of dinner. Saigon is known for its tall skinny buildings built leaning on each other AND its crazy, crazy traffic. 75% of the traffic is motorbikes and you have no hope [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday 27th May Arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) after the pretty rough bus journey from Nah Trang, im saying it was rough but i slept the whole way, the friends i was with were up all night as the bus was going so fast it was bouncing all over the place! hehe Glad i can sleep through anything! Arrived very early booked ourselves into some accomodation then straight onto the Cu Chi Tunnels, this was another hour or so bus journey to get here, where we had to get on our hands and knees and crawl through some really [View Full Entry]

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Saigon is a crazy, crazy city! We have spent two days here and manged not to get run over by a motorbike - yet! We spent the first day walking around the city - to the war remnants museum, the reunfication palace and the ho chi minh city museum. The reunification palace (which was the South Vietnamese President's residence) was quite spectacular and has been preserved as it was since the fall of Saigon in 1975 when a vietcong tank drove through the fence and the north vietnamese flag raised over the palace. The war museum was rather graphic and gruesome, [View Full Entry]

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