Advertisement
Published: March 28th 2011
Caro: On the first day in HCMC we were woken up by a bl**dy cockerel at about 4am, the joys of staying in a backpacker hotel I guess. After Highlands coffee, the essential for a day of sightseeing, we set off and headed to the market. We weren't there long as we were harassed to death and I still haven't found any bloody leggings!
Impressions of HCMC: it seems to be quite western in some places , certainly in comparison with Hanoi but it is clean, busy and you could get anything that you had ever dreamed of (ranging from tropical fruit to birds , drugs women and ust about everything else you could imagine!
We decided to follow the walking tour as recommended by the good old Lonely Planet, this took us past the museums, the cathedral, the Hotel de Ville and we ended up at the War Remnants Museum. We met a guy who had his forearms blown off by a landmine, he had a glass eye and walked with a stick, he was selling books and both of us were really impressed at the fact that he wasn't just begging and that he was very dexterous with what
was left of his arms, we bought some postcards from him and wished him a good day. It was about this time when I got emotional. It is one thing to hear about these things and I am possibly the most ignorant person but it all seemed very real and very recent. The museum was thoroughly interesting though and I was glad that we went in the end. We booked to go to the Chu Chi Tunnels the day after which was a really good day out, it was amazing how small they were and the fact that they had been widened for western people to try and move along them. Joff was worried that he would get stuck but a couple of folk that are bigger than him went through first so he tried it, not much room for either of us really. It was quite claustrophobic but it was only short and I was glad to get out the other side.
We headed back to HCMC and went for lunch and then took a taxi to Cholon which is Chinatown so that we could see the Pagodas. Joff found the most active pagoda and when we walked in
both of us were a bit concerned that we were intruding whilst people were praying. To be perfectly honest we looked like 2 western people walking round taking photos and I guess we were. Anyway we had heard that we should go to the Sheraton to the rooftop bar to watch the sunset. The taxi driver didn't speak English and despite the usual game of Charades we couldn't explain Sheraton hotel so we asked to be dropped off where we were picked up. We were walking down the street towards the hotel when we bumped into Simon, a friend who Joff knows from school who he hadn't seen for 6 years. We swapped details and arranged to meet up with them later!
We had a lovely couple of cocktails on the roof of the Sheraton whilst the sun went down then we headed back to the hotel to pack. We met Simon and Anoushka at the Buffalo bar and had some drinks before heading to the pub, it was certainly fate that we met up with him because if the taxi driver had known where to go we wouldn't have been walking down the street at the same time as
Guy Sleeping
it will never cease to amaze me how you can sleep anywhere in Vietnam! them!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.112s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0486s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
