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Published: July 27th 2006
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My first day in Nha Trang I spent relaxing on the beach. Nha Trang is a hot spot for Vietnamese vacations so the beach was absolutly packed with lots and lots of Vietnamese people. In the Asia culture it's not attractive for women to be tanned, the whiter a women is the more attractive they are to the men. When you see Asia women driving motorbikes or out on the street during the day they have gloves on that cover their entire arms and wear masks and scarfs that cover everything on their head except a small hole for their eyes. So on the beach a lot of the Vietnamese women were fully dressed and covered, and the most bizarre thing was when they went swimming they just hopped in the water with their entire outfit on.
The next day in Nah Trang I went scuba diving. The conditioned weren't all that good, but I saw some cool fish, a huge moray ell was biting at my fins and followed me around. That afternoon I went for a Vietnamese mud bath which again was quite the strange experience. You sit in these huge hot tub type pools and as soon
as the watery mud started flowing in all the Vietnamese grabbed these small buckets and were pouring it all over each other. Some of them were even dunking their heads into the mud. Apparently this mud has rejuvinating powers, but I really didn't feel any different after the bath. The last day in Nha Trang I went on a full day boat tour. They took us around to four different islands we went swimming sang some Karaoke, had a good sea food lunch, and at the end of the day had a fruit party eating all different kinds of tropical fruits.
That night I hopped on a over night bus down to saigon(Ho Chi Minh city). I was absolutely exhausted from the boat cruise and slept like a baby on the bus, and before I knew it the ten hour trip was over. Saigon is a city with a population of 10 million people and I am pretty sure everyone of them has a motorbike. This city was absolutely nuts, again when crossing the street you just kind of looking down and slowly walk across and the motorbikes just weave around you.
I only had two days in
Saigon so they were busy busy days. I started the day by heading to the reunification palace. Which was the residence and office of the president of south Vietnam before the war. There really wasn't a lot to see at the palace, the coolest part was the basement of the building which had a bunch of rooms the military used during war times. Next I was off to the war remnants museum. This place was quite horrible, outside wasn't so bad, they had lots of american military equipment which had been acquired during the war. Inside the museum had lots of pictures of all the horrible parts of war. A lot of it had to do with orange gas and the effects these horrible chemicals had on the county. People in Vietnam still to this day are born with horrible deffects because their parents were exposed to the orange gas.
The next day I took a day trip off to the cu chi tunnels. The cu chi tunnels are a system of underground tunnels that were used by the Viet Con Soldiers during the war. These tunnels span a an area of around 300 square kilometers and have three
different levels. The deepest level being about 12 meters below ground. The tunnels have many big rooms which were used for everything from cooking to sleeping and even as a small hospital. This tunnel system was a huge cob web and had around 16000 entry/exit points. Our guide had been a VC solider and actually lived in the tunnels for 2 years during the end of the war. At the end of the tour there is a section of the tunnel which tourist are aloud to enter. The tunnels was about 90 meters in length and had an exit point after 30 and 60 meters. The first two sections were widened so that tourists can fit without any problems, but the last section has been left the same size as they were during the war. I did the entire 90 meters but that last section was quite difficult I was on my hands and knees and had to squirm to get through the narrow section.
So that was my last two days in Saigon, tomorrow morning I get up early and head on a bus to Cambodia.
I managed to put some more pictures up on the website
:
http://josasia.myphotoalbum.com/
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