Orient Hotel Ho Chi Minh City

This will be short and sweet, I have to go to bed early because we are travelling to the Mekong Delta tomorrow at 8 o'clock and I need to pack etc. We are going on a boat and I just found out today that we will be rowing through the jungle, hmmm I actually didn't know that when we signed up for it. Anyway....Ho Chi Minh City is gorgeous, the area we are in is really lively esp at night and it has a great buzz about it. We have been wandering around the old French area of the city which is rea...

Arriving in Saigon at sparrows, we debarked the overnight train bleary-eyed and caught a taxi to the backpacker part of town in search of a place to stay. Even before 6 in the morning, touts were on the streets, hassling us to look at their hotels. We looked at quite a few (wasted too much time on mini-hotel alley, don't bother) before deciding on the Orient Hotel (which will come down in price for you). We managed to occupy a couple of days with grizzly reminders of the war; first stop was w...

City and Cu Chi Tunnel tours

Had a bus to Vietnam arranged already. But myself and Sinead decided to run over to the internet cafe for a last minute check on where we were going to stay in Ho Chi MInh. When we got back to the hotel the other girls were arguing with the receptionist about the remaining charges for our room. Apparently the price that the receptionist gave us when we were checking in was wrong. We payed 200 dollars including the 70 dollars deposit, but the girls said that our deposit was only 50 dollars. Af...

Since we had little time in Ho Chi Minh city we only decided to book a 1 day tour to the Mekong Delta, though I would advise a 2 day tour. Had to get up pretty early that day as the bus picked us up outside the Orient at 8am. It brought us down to the pier where we enjoyed a 2 and a half hour boat ride. Was really cool seeing Ho Chi Ming city from the river, check out that photo with the houses on stilts. I did see a dead bloated rat floating upside down though didn't take a photo, sorry! :) ...

We're going to the Cu Chi tunnels today! very excited as looking forward to that for the last while. We got an air conditioned van that would bring us to the tunnels and then the war museum. Air con was heaven! Got a really good guide at the tunnels, the whole site is set up really well. There's different tents that showed the life of people during the war. Like how they cooked and what and what sort of traps they made for the American troops. The actual tunnels are absolutely tiny! apparentl...