A Palace, some temples and a tank

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Today took us first to the Reunification Palace, the home to the pre-Communist government until its fall at the end of the war. At the front of the palace are two tanks from the famous photo of the communists crashing through the palace gates and another fighter jet which apparently dropped a bomb there. The palace itself is a bit disappointing to look at, it sort of looks like an aging hotel from the 60's or 70's that needs a bit of doing up. The inside of the palace was also very dated (obviously) but has a lot of big open spaces.

After the palace we found that our next destination, the War Remnants Museum was shut for lunch, so we took an hour long cyclo ride to some temples. The temples were different to what we had seen before, mainly because they were not maintained in the same way as tourist ones, and because they were packed with locals. They were also very dirty and had a strange fascination with keeping turtles in ponds.

After our ride we did the war museum. As far as the military stuff it had for show, it was pretty similar to other war museums that we've seen in other places around the country - the usual tanks, guns, bombs and planes were scattered around. Inside was a huge collection of photos taken by war-photographers which were interesting, especially with the communist captions underneath. They also had some babies in jars in an exhibit on Agent Orange and heaps of disturbing photos.

Tomorrow we head off to the Mekong Delta for a two day, one night tour.

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