Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

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Day 45

Today we woke up in Dalat and had a spicy pork baguette for breakfast before taking an 8 hour sleeper bus to Saigon! The journey was long and quite draining so when we arrived at 4pm we sat down outside what, according to the sign, was a cafe. After ordering drinks from what seemed a rather inappropriately dressed waitress, we went inside to use the loo and saw lots more inappropriately dressed women. It seems minutes of arriving in Saigon we had stumbled across a some kind of afternoon brothel! We finished our drinks swiftly and checked into our hotel before freshening up and heading back out for food and an explore. We stayed in one of the main backpacker streets, which was full of vendors selling street food and had a few of the local bars spilling out onto the streets with loads of people sat round on small plastic chairs having a beer and relaxing. We had some Pho at one of the places and did some people watching. It seemed to be even busier here than in Hanoi, with the motorbikes here even mounting the pavements at full speed to avoid waiting in traffic!

Day 46

Today we went in a day trip by bus to Cu Chi tunnels, which are 250km of underground tunnels dug by the Vietnamese and used extensively for hiding during the war with America. We got to squeeze into one of their tiny 'look out' holes and crawled 20m through one of the biggest sections of the actual tunnels. Mark could only just fit through and everyone was on their hands and knees, it was very claustrophobic! We also got to see some of the bamboo booby traps the Vietnamese used which were quite gruesome! Before leaving we took a visit to the shooting range and got to fire an AK47! It was so noisy with quite a few others trying out different guns but was good fun!

After travelling back to the city we took a visit to the War Remnants Museum. This was really heavy going and had a lot of information and graphic pictures about the war with America and its affects. Although it was really sad, and clearly only told one side of the story, the museum was interesting and we were glad we went.

In the evening we decided to have a few drinks as the area was quite lively. Cocktails and beers were very cheap and after a few too many at the Crazy Buffalo, we raided the local supermarket for junk food (consisting of a mini hot dog, mini pizza and, we think, a burger!) before bed.

Day 47

Today, feeling quite fragile, we took it easy and explored the city visiting the Unification Palace, the Citadel, which imitates the design of Notre Damn, and also the Central Post Office, which is quite grand and has become a tourist attraction as well as a functioning post office. We also took a quick walk round the Ho Chi Minh Museum but found this quite dull, so didn't stay for too long.

Although we had been warned it wasn't up to much, we couldn't resist seeing for ourselves, and in the evening we went to see the famous Vietnamese Water Puppet show. It was quite amusing but was unexpectedly in Vietnamese so we didnt have a clue what was going on! Afterwards we treated ourselves to a BBQ at the nearby Barbeque Gardens where you cook your own meat and fish at the table. To finish off we ordered a chocolate fondue! Delicious! Stomaches full, we headed back to the hotel to get prepare for our 3 day trip across the Mekong Delta, starting early tomorrow morning.

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Photos

The waterpuppets
Suzanne loved it