Ho Chi Minh(Saigon)

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Got the bus to Saigon and as we went through the border the difference was immediate, with the road turning to tarmac being the most apparent. Saigon is the busiest city we have ever seen. Just walking anywhere was a gamble with your life. Motorbikes everywhere and as usual with Asian cities the only rule is do what you want. People drive on footpaths, the other side of the road and red lights are just a suggestion. Its orderly chaos though and there are no traffic jams.

Stayed in the travel Haven street of Mini hotel Alley(thats the actual name) in a nice hotel for 12 bucks. Were the worst tourists ever. Of the 4/5 days we only saw the war museum and the tunnels. Also managed to get a decent guitar(to wreck melissas head!!) for 30 quid. The museum was brilliant and had tanks and airplanes from the Vietnam war. They had brillant photos and didnt hold back with the disgusting things they showed(as long as it was american horrors though). There was one with american soldiers smiling holding up dead vietnamese heads and there was a jar with siamese twins inside to show the effects of agent orange.

The tunnels were pretty cool aswell apart from the 4 bogger hicks in our group who went on like they were just emerged from a cave and made you embarressed to be Irish. And there's plenty of Dublin people to be embarressed about aswell before someone leaves a message!!!! Me and melissa just kept quiet in case people made the connection were of the same nationality. There was 200 km of connected tunnels only 60km from Saigon and the communists spend months in them. They showed us a propaganda video and they whole way through it a woman just kept saying "kill the americans" over and over like reading a poem or something. Everybody was just laughing at it so they had to turn it off. They showed some deadly(but horrible) stuff like the tiger cages and other traps and how they escaped from the tunnels when the yanks came. We got to go into one of the tunnels which was about 50 degrees inside.

Then we got to the firing range. Said i would do it once just for the expierence and had to drag melissa over to take a photo!!! So got to fire 5 Ak47 bullets and 5 M16 bullets. The Ak was shit and kept jamming but the M16 was pretty cool.
After that as i said we were really lazy for the next few days before heading to Nha Thrang.

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