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Published: July 24th 2009
Saigon is a crazy, crazy city! We have spent two days here and manged not to get run over by a motorbike - yet!
We spent the first day walking around the city - to the war remnants museum, the reunfication palace and the ho chi minh city museum.
The reunification palace (which was the South Vietnamese President's residence) was quite spectacular and has been preserved as it was since the fall of Saigon in 1975 when a vietcong tank drove through the fence and the north vietnamese flag raised over the palace.
The war museum was rather graphic and gruesome, with harrowing details of the atrocities carried out by the americans during the war, and was and a vivd reminder of how recently the war finished and the devestating effect it had on the country.
Today we spent the morning at the Cu Chi tunnels - a network of tunnels the Vietcong built about 50km from Saigon in order to attack the Americans, which soldiers lived in. We had a great guide who told us a lot about the history and the construction of the tunnels, and we got to crawl through a section of the
original tunnel, it has been enlargened to accomodate westerners but it was still pretty tiny and hot and dark! It's amazing the lengths they went to defeat the Americans, and we're very glad we don't have to live in the tunnels!
The traffic in Saigon is something that has to be seen to be believed. We tried to capture it but the photos don't do it justice. There seem to be two road rules - might is right, and use your horn as often as possible and for any reason. The intersections are amazing to watch, there are hundres of motorbikes and cars going in every direction and magically they seem to be able to miss each other. Crossing the roads is a very interesting task, and one we had to do the moment the taxi dropped us off at our hotel! The best way is to go for it and don't look, hopefully everyone will avoid you, sometimes very narrowly.
The waether has been extremely hot and humid - as we were told today, Ho Chi Minh has two seasons - the hot season and the hotter season! And we are in the hottest season right now....
It has been an amazing experience in this hot, smelly, noisy, crazy city, and we've seen so many weird and wondererful things we can't even begin to describe.
We've booked a Mekong Delta tour for tomorrow, ending up in Phnom Penh to meet up with Kirsten, and are looking forward to a few relaxing days on the river!
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gran-vic
non-member comment
loving your photos. and your documentary feel I'm there with you. Don't let my no.1 son down a tunnel. he will get stuck!!! Have a fantastic time. look forward to receiving more.Lots of love to you both. xx