Saigon (HCMC) You don't know man.... You weren't there!

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So the 16 hour bus turned out to be two busses and 24 hours, with a 1 ½ wait in Nah Trang – the joys of travelling! We finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at 7pm and thankfully got dropped off right where we wanted to be. Within 20 minutes we had found a room, checked in, freshened up and popped out to find some food. We were over the moon to see a pizza hut sign in the distance. We got a takeaway pizza, went back to the hotel, ate and slept. It’s funny how after 24 hours laying down on a bus all you want to do is sleep.

We slept in the next morning making it out by around 12.45pm. We headed to the war ruminants museum, stopping off for coffee on the way at a proper coffee shop which was a nice treat. Half way between the coffee shop and the museum it started to rain so we took shelter on the steps of a building before deciding we would rather get wet than stand there for another hour and made our way, soggily, to the museum.
The museum is quite impressive and on display outside are a load of American war planes, tanks and bombs. Inside the museum are collections of photographs both from the war and of people born with deformities due to the American’s spraying land with Agent Orange. There were also deformed foetuses in formaldehyde to show the after effects of Agent Orange. We really found the museum interesting although at some of the pictures it was a tad hard not to shed a wee tear. We spent a good few hours there and after couldn’t really be bothered to do anything and so lounged about, had some dinner and an early night.

The following morning we were picked up for a tour by our tour guide called Mr Hai. We spent a good 3 hours travel before we actually got to the Cao Dai temple where we watched a ceremony. We were rushed back onto the bus and to a ‘popular’ restaurant with ‘popular prices’ for lunch. In other words the guide’s family restaurant with rather average and overpriced food.

After lunch we were driven to Cu Chi to visit the tunnels. The tunnels were dug by Viet Cong Guerrilla fighters and were quite extensive. We were shown the traps that the Viet Cong would set for the Americans and watched an old documentary about the war. Then we had the chance to shoot a gun. We chose the M-16 and had 5 bullets each to shoot. It was a little scary but Angelo loved it!

After this we were led to the tunnels – the one open to tourists has been widened twice over so that westerners can fit through! We crawled and crouched through the whole 100 meters of tunnel – only around 4 others of the whole tour group managed to make it all the way, the rest chickened out at the 25 meter exit!

By the time we got back it was around 6.30 pm so we went out for some very tasty Mexican food and a few beers.
We had decided to spend the next day sightseeing and eventually made it over to reunification palace only to discover it had just closed and would reopen in 2 hours time – Great! So we spent some time in a coffee shop until the usual daily downpour had almost stopped before taking a look at HCMC’s Natre dam cathedral (which was also closed so we couldn’t take a look inside!) and opposite the old post office. By then it was almost time for the palace to reopen so we headed back down the road and bought our entrance tickets. We joined a small tour of the palace and actually it was really interesting, the palace is still sometimes used by the government and other companies for conferences and important meetings.

We decided to spend a couple of hours exploring Chinatown and so got a taxi over there. We were crossing the road to get some lunch when we noticed a little kitten on the road, it looked hungry and lost. We put the cat back on the pavement where it wouldn’t get run over and went for lunch, but couldn’t stop thinking about the poor thing – it must have been put there by a person, the kerb was too high for it to climb by itself and if we hadn’t have moved it then it would have nowhere to go but the middle of the road. We got a box from the café and abandoned our plans in Chinatown to take the kitten back to our hotel where we thought we could find out where there was an animal rescue centre or something. The lady at the hotel told us that this doesn’t exist in Vietnam and the only thing to do was to take it to a market where it can survive with other cats from scraps of food. So we walked down the road to a small market where none on the locals would let us leave the cat by their stall (one lady picked it up by its ear and put it in my hands!), until we found one lady who told us to put it opposite hers and that someone would come later to pick it up. We bought the cat some milk but had no choice but to leave the kitten there. It made us sad for the rest of the day...

We decided to carry on with our day as planned and head to the war surplus market. We walked around in circles for about an hour before we found the market – we hadn’t realised it was an indoor market! – but by the time we found it it had closed and so instead we settled for a KFC.

We took a walk afterwards to the main market where we picked up a few things and headed back to the hotel.
In the morning we went back down to the war surplus market to take a look at all the original (but mostly copied) items from the Vietnam war for sale. We checked out of the hotel and caught a taxi to the bus station, and hopped into a minibus bound for Can Tho in the Mekong Delta .

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Photos

Images on display
Villager begging an american G.I to stop during a search and destroy mission. Suspect VC members were shot!

Little kitty we saved.
We hope he is ok. Sigh!!