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Published: April 3rd 2008
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I arrived in HCMC quite late on Friday night after flying from Danang so after checking into the Xuan Spring Hotel on Pham Ngu Lao (the main backpacking area) went for a wander to check out the local area. The Pham Ngu Lao area is similar to Khao San Road in Bangkok, full of alleyways with travel cafe's, bars, guesthouses, secondhand bookshops, souvenir shops and restaurants. It was very different to Hoi An but I liked it straight away. On Saturday it was an early start in order to fit in the HCM museum, War Remnants museum and the reunification palace. All three were quite good with the war remnants museum standing out as the best. I also booked a trip to the Chu Chi tunnels and Cao Dai temple for the next day through Sinh Cafe.
The Chu Chi tunnels are about 75 kilometers northwest of Saigon and were part of an underground network that zigzagged from the southern tip of the Ho Chi Minh trail near the Cambodian border to the Saigon river. The tunnels are smaller than those I saw on the DMZ tour and you basically and I craweled through them for about 10 minutes. It
was very claustrophobic and sweaty and it was amazing how they used to survive for weeks down though. Also in the area were busted up tanks and a shooting range where for 100,000 Dong you could shoot five bullets at a fixed target!!
The Cao Dai temple is like nothing I've seen before. The Cao Dai faith is a mixture of Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Christian and Islam beliefs. They adopt divine agents as patron saints such as Winston Churchill, Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, Moses and Charlie Chaplin. It copies its organization from the Roman Catholic church. Anyway it was a nice place to spend an hour and we saw them praying to their divine agents. A very unique experience.
On Sunday night the Hoi An possy arrived so we checked out a few of the bars and had a meal. There are lots of good places in the Pham Ngu Lao area ( Le Pub, Go2 Bar, Good morning Vietnam etc) but the best places were the sidewalk bars with the little red chairs outside where all the locals go. They are great places to watch the world go by and experience the local streetlife. The bar
we went to had the equivalent of Ali Baba's Kebab shop next door. All night locals would turn up on their motorbikes, order some noodles, sit down with us for 15 minutes and then race off on their bikes. It was so funny!!. The Saigon Saigon rooftop bar was also great fun if a little expensive at USD 3.50 for a beer - I'm going to have a price shock when I get back to England!!!. The other funny thing about Saigon was the street sellers-you'd be sitting down in a cafe eating your breakfast and they would come up to you trying to get you to but a book or sunglasses. It took a bit of getting used to!. There was one woman who sold these interesting fish baloons who seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. My back was to the street and someone pointed her out but not to look yet ( never show interest otherwise you'll never get rid of them). I looked round after she'd gone past and she looked round straight at me!!!!
After three weeks in Vietnam it was time to move on as I only had until 20th
Xuan Spring Hotel
Good for USD 17.00 per night March before my flight to Sydney and I wanted to spend a week in Cambodia and some more time in Thailand before then. Vietnam had been a great experience, a safe and easy place to travel around, full of history and culture, great food, friendly people ( e
On the Wednesday I booked a tour with Delta adventure travel to leave at 7.00am Thursday morning. The plan was to get the boat to Phnom Penh in Cambodia ( via the Mekong delta) and stay with a homestay family the first night and overnight on the boat the second and arrive in Cambodia on Saturday evening.........
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