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Published: October 13th 2008
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Hello All,
I hope your all as well as to be expected in Sunny (haha) England, a country from everything we read seems to be in a bit of a slide, increasing costs, uncertainty, credit munching and all sorts of stuff I read about on the internet. Of course travelling has it's on stresses as well, where to eat, drink, sleep and travel, whilst all the time trying to do this for the cheapest amount possible (keeping up with the Joneses in reverse). In itself trying to prevent people from getting every possible cent out of you is a fulltime occupation. Agreeing a price in dollars (because the vietnamese have no desire whats-so-ever to deal in thier own currenices) only to try to pay in dong had Carol going red in the face angry every day with fury because they want to charge us 17,000 dong/$ instead of the normal 16500 dong/$.
So I pick up the arrival in Ho Chi Minh City, a place I still call Saigon, and still get corrected on the fact it isn't saigon more. I prefer Saigon, it sounds better. So we got off our sleeper bus at 6am and spend the next
hour trying to find somewhere satisfactory in price and cleanliness, eventually finding one, turned on the satellite TV to Discovery, and fell asleep for a few hours. Even though the sleeper buses are great compared to a standard VIP they still don't compare to a normal bed!
We rose around mid day and found ourselves a nice cafe to watch the world go by which consisted of everyone on a bike, a fact that Carol found more than a little intimidating as in her words 'everyone is just trying to kill me whilst crossing the road'. After a little practice it was clear that walking in a straight line, and not hesitating was the best chance of making it in one piece. There are around 14 million people living in saigon of all ages. There are 14 million bikes. How that works i'm not sure, but it would not surprise me if everyone above the age of 5 has a bike.
The traffic is intense and has it's own rhythms and logic, none of which I can work out however the turning of a traffic light to green is akin to the start of a rather large bike race in
a mad jostle for position and speed one I'd rather avoid.
We looked around our immediate area of De Tham where the buses drop off the open ticket tourists, finding a cheap bar to have a good look throuh our rough guide book to figure out what to do/see in the area. We quickly ruled out the Cu Chi Tunnels as Carols love of small enclosed spaces prevented her from ever wanting to go down in the tunnels and as I had done it before got crossed off, we considered the Mekong Delta area but having spoke to a few people, no one sounded overly enthusiastic about it citing it as a 'tourist trap' so also got crossed off.
So the next day we embarked on an escorted city tour leaving around 8 to get a good start straight to the War Remnants museum previosly known as 'The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government' it does not pretend to be polically balanced in it's coverage put it that way. And neither was our Guide who seemed to change historical fact at a whim (apparantly the UN bombed Japan and freed them from
Japanese rule during WWII) but we were guided around the museum looking at the military equipment outside, including daisly cutters, M48 tanks, Huey helicoptors and the such, the photo documents and learning about the American War. Most of it was pretty graphic especially when it came to looking at the victims and effects of agent orange and Napalm including some feotuses in a jar that were deformed. Nice. Having cheered oursleves up in the ealy morning visit we jumped back on the bus and went to the Reunification Palace formally known as the presidents palace. This was the site where at the end of the war tanks are pictured crashing through the main gates 'liberating Vietnam from the imperialist Scum' Sorry, indoctrination coming out there. It was mildly interesting, looking like a bond Villans Lair especially the meeting rooms of the president. We soon left here, took in Notre Dam cathedral, the post office (both nice french looking places) and a chinese market (bedlam) and Pagoda before finally being let off the bus singing 'Uncle Ho, Uncle Ho, Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh, republic of victoreous Vieeeetammmm'
That evening we met up with our frinds from Laos, and
Nha Trang Ben, Amy and Katie for some Vietamese Victory drinks in a roof top bar Go2, enjoying some lovley cocktails and topping up my Beer Label collection (yes, sad i know)
We spent a day recovering from this palying darts to relieve our frustrations of booking though STA travel, not being able to top our Skype accounts up and wanting to leave the bedlam of HCMC. Wasn't the best day for Carol as the frustrations of trying to sort out the Skype account, so we could arrange the flights that the stupid travel agent hadn't done for us and then also trying to sort her bank account out...left her shouting in the middle of the road at noone in particular with sheer frustration so I took her for a game of darts! I think carol loved throwing darts at the board imagining it was our annoying spitting travel agents face!
We booked the next day on a bus to get to Phonm Penh in Cambodia leaving at an early 6.30, which should of taken 6 hours but didn't, as we got stuck waiting for a ferry across the Mekong for 2 1/2 hours and ended up arriving in
Meeting room
so spectre can plan to take over the world Phonm Penh at a fairly late 5 o'clock, pretty knackered, pretty tired and bored of buses in the extreme!
I'm going to write a seperate blog for cambodia because i'm trying to seperate the blogs into places and not just periods..... More to follow soon!
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Diana
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Oh My, Dont think the british should ever complain about their traffic jam again LOL!!!