Saigon - or should I say Ho Chi Minh City

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We arrive in HCMC at around 4.30 am. We knew our rooms would not be ready but we had the chance to freshen up and dump our bags. We then headed to the park to do some early morning Tai Chi with the locals. However, I think they must have finished their class so it turned into an early morning Cha Cha Cha!! Very surreal but great to get the blood flowing after the train journey. After brekkie we headed to Cu Chi to visit some of the tunnel network that the Viet Cong used to fight the US army during the war. We crawled through one of the original tunnels - literally on hands and knees. There are hundreds of these tunnels that the local villagers used to hide from the bombs and to fight the war. It was really amazing to see how these farmers came up with such solutions to fight for their freedom. That afternoon we had a cyclo tour of HCMC and visited the war museum - very sobering to see details of the war from both sides and also some of the after effects that the peopl of Vietnam are still suffering from. That evening we went for dinner to the local market - great experience and great food.

Day 2 was the Mekong Delts day trip. After spending 2 hrs in traffic getting out of the city we finally got to our boat that took us on the trip. Just as we were about to land it started to rain - so we had to slip on these very big plastic ponchos that they gave us to try and keep dry. We then got onto smaller boats to go through the canals to get to a little village where we had lunch followed by rice wine with honey. It was lovely sitting in the gazebo having our lunch. We then had a tuk tuk ride to a factory where the locals make coconu candy and it absolutely tipped it down. We managed to stay mostly dry in our ponchos though! A great day and a lovely way to end my time in Vietnam.

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