Saigon Saigon and the Mekong

---

In Mui Ne we finally found our beautiful beach resort where we drank to our hearts content in the hotel bar, went sand sledding with Vietnamese children in the red sand dunes and drove our bike through the somewhat stinky fishing village. We had all over body massages for three pounds each which has left Hywel bruised and generally recovered from the arduous mountain biking extravaganza!

Sunday brought a six hour bus journey to Ho Chi Minh City to meet none other than Mr and Mrs Payne. We all went to a service of te Cao Dai religion in Tay Ninh, a religion founded in 1928 which is a mixture of Confucianism, Taoism, Catholicism, Buddhism, with a sprinklling of Hinduism whose God is in the shape of a person's left eye and of which Victor Hugo is a saint! Very confusing.

We also visited the Cu Chi tunnels which were quite extraordinary. Hywel and I shot M16s which were loud and scary as were the traps that the Viet Cong set for the disheartened Americans. The original tunnels are so small and claustrophobic and its difficult to imagine how 10,000 Vietnamese near enough lived there between 1960 and 1966 in the Cu Chi area. The War Remants museum the following day told an even bleaker story with horrendous photographs of the effect of Agent Orange and the fighting on the Vietnamese people, a model of the prison cells they were housed and tortured in and pictures that Vietnamese children have painted of their interpretation of the war.

At 6am this morning we had a sunrise breakfast on the Mekong River and then weaved our way in and out of the 800 boats selling amazing quantities of fruit and vegetables at the floating market. My dad nearly singed himself falling in the cinders of rice husks used in a noodle factory in Cai Son, a village we visited on the banks of the river and we ate our own body weight in fruit at a local fruit farm.

Tonight we have arrived in Chau Doc on the border with Cambodia into which we are heading by boat tomorrow. Reall sad to leave Vietnam but really excited about the next part of our trip!

---

Comments

[Wendy]

All sounds amazing! John stay away from fires and Jean not too much rice wine. Take care. Joe and Wendy

[Livs]

A memory of Chau Doc!
To reminisce... when I passed through Chau Doc, a rain storm had just passed through. I was calmly waiting to get through the border, a little top heavy with my back pack on, and took a step forward in the queue only to fall flat on my front in the wet mud (literally, I had a mouthful of mud). Just as I got up and recovered... I fell flat on my back - 'you've been framed' could not have done it better! Hope the weather's treating you better than it did me! Have fun in Cambodia... don't shot any cows but climb some temples for me!