Christmas in Vietnam

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We had Christmas in Vietnam, en route to Cambodia for Peter and Christiana's wedding. Unfortunately all we really had time for in our four days was Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) - so it was just a taster of the delights that the rest of Vietnam has to offer.

HCMC was frantic, but fun. We ate noodles, shopped in Ben Thanh market, toured the Reunification Palace (slightly eerie - it's been left just as it was when the tanks rolled in in 1975) and the war remnants museum. The traffic was mayhem - although it's true what they say - if you just walk slowly and purposefully, several hundred mopeds will simply go around you!

On Christmas day we took a bus trip to Tay Ninh and the Cu Chi tunnels. Tay Ninh is the site of the largest Cao Dai Temple in Vietnam - an impressive pink and baby blue structure which a model cow astride the globe on the roof. The practitioners of Cao Dai recognise four Gods - Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad and, erm, Victor Hugo...

Then it was on the to Cu Chi tunnels. The tunnels were a famous Viet Cong hide-out in the 1960s and all together there are more the 200km of (itsy bitsy) tunnels under this part of the countryside (a mere 30km from Saigon) from where the guerilla campaign against the US and the South was conducted. You can go down into a small section of the tunnel network now - even though they've apparently doubled the tunnel size to accomodate western tourists (!), they're still really quite incredibly small!

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Photos

Tha gates!
The famous gates of the Reunification Palace. No tanks today...