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Published: September 12th 2008
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After our week of Vietnam beaches it was time to head back to the city. Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. No one really calls it HCMC, only government officials so I prefer Saigon anyways! Saigon is just as crazy as we heard it was going to be. There were millions of motorbikes everywhere just waiting to run you over! At least by now, we were used to the motos and therefore were able to just walk and hope they didn't hit us.
We arrived at 6am after an overnight bus and found a hotel that would give us a double room (one for Jeff and I and one for Chris and the Irish man, Kevin) for $14/room including breakfast and dinner! Not a bad deal- but our room wouldn't be ready till 8am. So we sat at a cafe and waited, exhausted from our overnight bus. When we finally got our room we decided to take showers and then head off to the Reunification Palace. This was home to the government of South Vietnam before the North finally won the war and broke down the gates of the Palace declaring Vietnam as one and semi ending the Vietnam War (or
American War as they call it). The building itself was fairly pretty, but we enjoyed the inside that was left exactly how it stood in 1979 when the north invaded. There was a basement with war strategy maps and communication tools that we found to be the most interesting stuff in the palace.
After the Reunification Palace, we headed to the War Museum. We had already heard that this museum was super anti-American from Andrew and Derek, but I don't think I was prepared for what was inside. The museum consisted of a few rooms focusing on different aspects of the Vietnam War. The first few rooms I really enjoyed. They were photos from different journalists that were taken during the war in both the north and the south. Although the captions were a bit biased, I still felt that it gave a general portrayal of the damaging effects of war from a general non-biased view. From there we went into the war crimes room. This is where it got ugly! There were pictures of American soldiers holding decapitated and generally mutilated bodies of Vietnamese soldiers. They were some of the most graphic photos I have ever seen. I
understand that they were not going to show graphic photos of American soldiers (why would they?), but I had to keep telling myself that these types of things occurred on both sides. From there it only got worse as we got into the Agent Orange section of exhibit. There were photos of tons of deformed people as a reaction to the Agent Orange they were exposed to at the hands of American soldiers. I drew the final straw when they had deformed dead fetuses in solution for all to see. It literally made me feel nauseous and I was done with the war museum.
After the war museum, we needed some cheering up so I decided to lead the boys around the city in search of a movie theatre to see the Dark Knight again and cheer everyone up. Well, I got us lost and probably wondering a Vietnamese ghetto, but we were the only white people around and there were tons of people selling fish from the Saigon River. As we all know this is my favorite part of traveling. I love getting lost in a city and really finding out what it is all about. I did
Graphic photo at War Museum
American soldier holding the body of a Vietcong soldier manage to get us on the right track and we found a movie theatre and yes- saw the Dark Knight again!
The next morning we woke up early and took a tour out to the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels were used by the Vietnamese guerilla fighters in the war. There are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels they used to crawl through and surprise attack the American soldiers. We were also able to see the booby traps the Vietnamese used against the Americans. They were crazy! Trap doors with huge spikes and stuff like that. There was also a gun shooting range where you could shoot M16's and AK-47's. We decided to pass because, well, I don't really like automatic weapons, but Kevin (the peaceful Irishman) decided to go for it. We took picture while he shot an AK-47. My ears were ringing afterwards and I had the headphones on to protect my ears! After that, came the real "highlight" of the tour. We actually got to climb through the tunnels the soldiers used. They were very tiny and I was super claustrophobic. Luckily there was an escape exit every 10 meters or so. I escaped at the first
one! It was hot and everyone was going way too slow for me! It was not my thing, but I'm glad I did it! The tunnels were even widened 20 cm from what they originally were.
From Saigon, we left the next morning to do a two day/one night tour of the Mekong Delta from Vietnam into Cambodia. We picked a great couple days to do this as it was raining the entire time! The trip itself was ok- the tour kind of sucked. We were able to see how the Vietnamese people lived along the river. We went to a floating market, which was pretty small- maybe due to the rain. From there we explored the small canals of the Mekong Delta and ate lunch on An Binh Island. We stayed the night at a floating hotel on the Mekong (which apparently we got a free upgrade to!). That was interesting with the cockroaches and the loud boats floating by our room all night long. We were able to venture into a few areas where we saw the local people making rice paper or weaving scarves. We also saw the Cham minority people that live near the Cambodian
border and are Muslim, not Buddhist. After two days on the boat, we finished with a quick stop at the Cambodian border and a 2 hour bus ride from the border to Phnom Penh.
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i like waffles
just wondering what the hammock smelled like? amazing blog entry i posted a pic of you on my MS...