Blogs from Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 8

Can't believe it is our last tour day. It really hadn't hit my that the tour was coming to an end till yesterday actually when they mentioned the farewell dinner this evening. Today we drove outside the city of Saigon and headed to the Chu Chi Tunnels that the Vietcong built. It is basically a complete underground city they built to escape the bombings. On the way to the tunnels we stopped by a home where they make rice paper for spring rolls. It was actually interesting to see how they make it and some in our group even tried to make some themselves. It's a very delicate process and not as easy as the woman made it look. After buying some souvenirs and trying the rice paper, we headed to the tunnels. We walked through ... read more

So another night train, actually the same one we have been catching , just further down the line, and that means all humanity has already used the beds, loos etc, and no cleaning has taken place. As Ken put it, we have done second class, third class, and now worst class! As usual we only had 5 mins to get across the tracks, and clamber up into the train, and in doing so Ken gashed his leg, but no time to do anything, just get into our allocated cabin, while having to expel the squatters! Once we set off, Kennhad to fix his leg, and I went off to tackle the loo, only I had to clamber over all the sqatters who had now laid down in the corridors, or set up camp beds in any ... read more

Now it is time for our group to head to our last country of the tour, Vietnam. As usual we woke up early and headed off to the airport. We were flying on Vietnam airlines and the check in process was extremely slow. but security was pretty fast. I was lucky on this flight as the person checking me in gave me an exit row seat on the aisle and no one sat in the middle seat so the flight was very comfortable. When we arrived in Vietnam we had to go through immigration which was relatively fast, but the luggage took forever to arrive. We met our guide for Vietnam, Vince and he took us on the bus straight to a local mall that had a food court of all sorts of cuisine. I laughed ... read more

Ha Ha! Arriver à Ho Chi Minh City (ancien Saigon) après Cambodge et Laos et un choc! Même si on vient directement de Montréal, car la ville a x4 + d'habitants. Arriver une soirée de St. Valentin c'est encore pire: chaque resto et bar met sa musique au max. Les rues sont un capharnaüm indescriptible. Il doit y en avoir minimum 6 millions de scooters et quelques milles voitures. Il y a de grands boulevards bordés d'arbres et de fleurs avec des feux de circulation, sauf qu'une minorité de conducteurs les respectent. En traversant on se sent attaqué de tous azimuts par les mobilettes qui convergent vers toi! Il faut être un tantinet kamikaze, inconscient ou complètement zen pour se lancer dans la traversée. Ceux qui ont visité le pays savent de quoi je parle. Mais, ... read more

We arrived in Saigon, and spending 2 nights in the Pullman Hotel - courtesy of Pat Sheahan who won the prize in a raffle held last year during the Long Tan celebrations. An interesting 5-star hotel in a convenient location. We were offered an upgrade to a junior suite - which we had no hesitation accepting. This upgrade included use of the "lounge" - where drinks and cookies are available throughout the day - and then a 2-hour buffet and cocktail session in the evenings. Other than using the "prize" - our main stop-over here was to visit the orphanage in Phu My - about 55ms southeast of Saigon. We had $1500 to donate to the orphanage in the form of needed daily supplies as well as cash so they could by essentials that we didn't ... read more