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Published: January 13th 2007
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Welcome to Vietnam
View of the Vietnamese checkpoint from the Vietnam-Cambodia border 14th May (Sun) - We took a bus from Phnom Penh to the Cambodia-Vietnam border. The tiny bus was packed with passengers and the road was damn bumpy. At the Vietnam border, we queued for a long time because the immigration officers were paid by travel agencies to settle the passports of the people in the tour groups... Since we were not in any tour groups, we couly only helplessly watch the tour operators pushing piles and piles of passports to the immigration officers. After sometime, my mum and some fellow passengers in our bus were fed up and they complained loudly in front of the tour operators and the immigration officials... The tour operators, being scared by our loud voices, finally let us go through the immigration first... After another 2 hours, we finally reached Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon). We put down our luggage in the hotel, and then we took a walk around downtown Saigon. Famous sights include the Ben Thanh Market, Reunification Palace, and Notre Dame cathedral.
15th May (Mon) - We joined a tour group and visited the Cao Dai temple (a very unique religion with influences from Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam,
Ben Thanh Market
It's probably the largest market in the city and it's best summarised by the Lonely Planet's travel guide to Vietnam: "If we don't have it, you don't need it." etc) and the Cu Chi tunnel (a series of tunnels dug by the Vietnamese to avoid detection by the Americans during the Vietnam War). At night we walked around the city and did some shopping at Ben Thanh Market. (I bought 2 pairs of shoes and 5 T-shirts... very cheap!)
16th May (Tue) - We booked a taxi and went to Cholon, the "Chinatown" of Ho Chi Minh City. We visited the Quan Am (Guanyin) temple and the Thien Hau (Tianhou) temple. To our delight, most of the people there can speak cantonese! We also visited several temples outside Cholon, and we even witnessed a funeral ritual in one of the temples... To our surprise, the monks played electric organ and electric guitar, together with traditional chinese music instruments! In the afternoon, we went to the airport to take the plane back to Singapore.
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