Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City – The point where the bottom dropped out of my world, well actually the world dropped out of my bottom (Charles I have to confess I stole this one from your extensive jokes catalogue, just goes to show I did learn several

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Ho Chi Minh City – The point where the bottom dropped out of my world, well actually the world dropped out of my bottom (Charles I have to confess I stole this one from your extensive jokes catalogue, just goes to show I did learn several things from you!)

Good Morning Vietnam, well if only that was the case, I arrived in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) from Bangkok at around 7pm and shared a Taxi with a cool French guy who had travelled a fair bit. We were happily exchanging travel experiences when out of nowhere I felt like I had been repeatedly punched in the stomach and had the headaches from hell. Thankfully I was nearly at my hotel, I was feeling awful, very faint and dizzy and all I wanted to do was be sick. This is not the start you need in any new city but especially not HCMC. I will spare you all the hideous details but I will say this has surpassed any illness I’ve had to date, I got very intimate with the bathroom and the porcelain throne for 3 days solid, or liquid as the case may be (sorry to much detail!)

After being forced to move from my bed because the hotel was fully booked I made it to another hotel and I think it did me some good, it forced me to get some food on the way to the new hotel and I think this helped start the recovery process, I have no idea what it was I’m guessing food poisoning but thankfully after 3 more days I began to come back to life and was eating normally again. It makes you realise certain things you miss from home when you are unwell, like a car, a big supermarket and friend and family to help out, something’s are simply priceless!

Anyway enough about that, I was planning to be in HCMC for 4 days and basically 3 of them were spent inside a hotel room so not a good start. I decided to stay an additional day to explore but I still wasn’t feeling the best so didn’t do all that I wanted. This city has to been seen or experienced to be believed. I have simply never seen as many motor bikes on the road in my life and there appears to be no rules, if one side of the road is busy or blocked you just use the other side and the other vehicles will have to react to it. I saw several accidents whilst I was there and was doing my best not to be involved in one of them. It can take 10 minutes to cross the road at times the stream of traffic is endless and added to this I was feeling dizzy and faint so I felt like a walking target. The city is just way too busy for my liking and I didn’t really enjoy my time there, again I guess my state of health and some bearing on this but even so this place has too much noise and chaos for me, you don’t get the chance to relax its sensory overload to the extreme.

Although the city itself was not for me there were a couple of points of interest here, one being the war remnants museum. I well openly confess I’ve never been a history buff and my knowledge of most things historical is limited. But the museum here was fantastic, it was not super modern or fancy in fact it is very basic, but the simplistic graphic representation of the war between the North and the South with the heavy involvement of the US was a real eye opener. I think most people left there with dropped jaws at the horrific events that took places and it really hits home just how recent it was. I never really appreciated the effects of Agent Orange and the vast numbers of bombs that were dropped and still so many that are unaccounted for. It was humbling to hear so many American’s walking round and being out spoken in the fact they felt embarrassed to be American and really didn’t feel comfortable being there. It’s difficult to explain to much more about the museum because I think the feelings it leaves you with are the overriding memory I will take away from here, but if you visit HCMC you really must add this to you list of places to visit.

On my final day here I visited The Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Temple on a tour. The Cu Chi tunnels were used by the South to outwit or retreat from their enemies during the war, the size of them are tiny, I went through an enlarged section for tourists and it was very uncomfortable for the 100m I went along for, these tunnels were 60cm x 80cm and went on for miles without any lighting or ventilation, I can only imagine what it must have been like for real, but it appears they were a very useful asset because the Americans could not fit down them, to many burgers I guess! I also got to do something I was really looking forward to as well, firing an M16!!! You could select from all manner of different guns ranging from a simple rifle to a fully automatic machine gun. The only problem being is it wasn’t all that cheap and 10 bullets in a machine gun would have lasted about half a second so I went for a quick go on the M16 instead, I loved it! It was so bloody noisy, I have no idea how you could fire one of those all day long and not go deaf but I guess that’s the least of your worries in an actually combat situation.

My final stop on the tour and in HCMC was a beautiful temple called Cao Dai temple well it was actually 50km’s outside of the city but you know what I mean, the temple is located in a holy city and is one of the very few places around the world were 4 religions practice together in harmony without fighting and conflict. I couldn’t begin to tell you what the ceremony I saw was about because I had no idea and our guide didn’t know either, at least his was honest I guess. But basically the different colours worn here represent the different religious groups and it’s only the people at the very top who wear the different colours, everyone else wear’s white. The outside of the temple was a mix of architecture from the four religions. It was an interesting mix but it seemed to work and made for a good bit of tourist spectator sports.

My time in HCMC was disappointing, of course because I was ill but also because I didn’t really click with the place, it’s just too chaotic for me and you are never able to relax or sleep. The noise from the bikes and the nonstop use of the horn could work well in a concentration camp I’m sure, it nearly made me want to do something crazy! But like all cities and towns it does have its good points so don’t miss it out if you head to Vietnam and it also makes you realise how special the other areas are in the country as I’m about to discover…… more to follow in the next blog.

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Photos

HCMC - Cu Chi Tunnels
M16, hell yeah!