Advertisement
Published: December 8th 2009
Edit Blog Post
So after a hot, sweaty, bus ride with the tiny beds again and fearing for a lived for most of the journey because of the crazy driving, we finally arrived in Saigon at 5.30am Saturday morning, only 3 hours before we told we would arrived. Surprisingly the city was in full swing, all the locals exercising out in the parks, markets up and running bustling with customers, roads filled with all the crazy motorbikes, but Saigon seemed a bit less crazy than Hanoi as the roads are a bit wider and the streets, well most of the time, actually have pavements where we can walk on. We had a bit of trouble as at 5.30am most of the hotels were still closed, but luckily we found one that we had a card for, only 10 pound a night for a double room and it included breakfast and dinner 😊 After our awful nights sleep we headed back to bed to refresh before embracing this crazy city.
Once up and about we headed straight to the centre of all craziness...the local market. We knew what to expect as we had been to the markets in china where you just get continually
get hassled to buy something, but added with heat of around 30-32 degrees makes it almost unbearable, but we both needed some bits and knew this would be the cheapest place. Managed to get a vest top for Ste, 2 vests for me and each of us a pair of flip flops all for about 6 pound, bargain! After shopping we visited the war remnants museum to educated oursevles a little about the vietnam war, was quite interesting. We headed back to the hotel after as walking around the city is so uncomfortable in this heat. On the way back to noticed a cinema near our hotel wa showing 2012 in English, tickets we about 2 pound each, so we bought a couple for later that night. Had a chill out afternoon back in the hotel with the air con 😊 before grabbing our dinner (just some noodles and springs rolls, nice though) and enjoying our little date to the cinema.
Sunday we ended up having a bit of a lie in, due to finding a channel that was showing a load of friends episodes all morning 😊 We had decided to spend today planning the next few days
and then next part of our trip and our route into Cambodia, spent the afternoon dotted between internet cafes and the hotel getting details. Crashed to our hotel room pretty early and had a bit of a movie night 😊 Such good film channels here 😊
Monday was an early start as we had booked a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels - basically about 20km of tunnels built by the Communists from the North during the Vietnam War to try and infiltrate the south. Obviously the Americans found out and completely bombed the area, but most of the tunnels have survived. It was a really interesting morning learning about how they were built and some of the killing methods of the communists, really interested. Then we finally got to go in the tunnels for ourselves and for those that dont know Im not a big fan of small spaces in the dark!! Originally the tunnels were built only 27cm wide, they have since been widened to about 60cm for tourists to enter them but still pretty small and they are about 1 metre high so you have to crouch down and walk and the heat is unbelievable. The
tunnels go on for 100m, but they are exits along the way if you want to get out, which we did...at the 1st exit, but hey we did it, saw it, got a picture and had a good day 😊
That afternoon we had decided it was time for us both to get a haircut. Ooh forgot to mention in the last blog Ste finally got a proper shave, cut throat one, wasn pleasant to watch! But yeah so he was all clean shaven, just time to tidy up the hair, Stes looks good, much tidier, mine doesn really look any different. Rob and Ross were arriving in Saigon that afternoon so we met up with them for dinner in the hotel and had a few drinks with them, not a late one though as Ste and I had to be up at 8am for our bus to a town on the Mekong Delta called Ben Tre. Most people do a boat trip around the Mekong Delta, but we decided to just visit a couple of towns ourselves making out way to the south where we can catch a ferry to an Island Phu Quoc, which is supposed to
be pretty beautiful. After there we are staying along the coast, crossing the boarder into Cambodia and making our way south there to a beach town called Sihanoukville where we are planning on spending xmas!
Anyway, take care, lots of love
Layla & Ste
Advertisement
Tot: 0.125s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0645s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lisa
non-member comment
Glad you 2 r still enjoying urselves!!! But uve travelled all dat way 2 watch friends!!!!!!!!! hahah! bet it felt brill 2 get back 2 sum normality! speak 2 u sn lisa xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx