Ho Chi Minh City Hotels
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Beer Hoi
Entry 43 of 149 | show all | print this entry |
Arrived in Saigon to a bit of a bad start, from getting off the bus to getting inside the bus companies office (literally outside the bus) i somehow lost my sticky rice holder, which sucks. I did however bump into taylor and louise, who were inside the very same place using the internet, which was prety lucky.
Second day, me taylor and Louise went to the Cu Chi tunnels. Similar to the Vinh Moc tunnels i visited outside of Huie, these tunnels were used by the Vietnamese to outfox the Americans during the american war (As they call it). The tunnels were originally about 60cm high, but have been widened to about 1m high for us fat westerners. I also went down a trap door hideout, which was a hole about 1m deep, ith the opening about 50cm by30cm.. Pretty cramped in there. There is also a firing range there, where you have the chance to fire, amongst other things, an AK-47. I had no desire to do so, but Taylor and Louise both did it. Unbelieveable how loud those things are, i recon you'd be deaf by the end of the war (if you survived the fighting that is!). We also saw ssome of the traps used by the Vc to capture and main american soldiers. God they were nasty buggers, with traps involving you falling down a hole and being implaed by your armpits on spikes, amongst other worse ones.
Next on the intenary was a more sombre note, the war remnants museum. This is basically a museum documenting the abuse the Vietnamese suffered at the hands of the Americans, and although it is heavily biased, you cannot argue with the pictoral evidence displayed here. The numerous photos of those affected by the american use of agent orange and other defoliants are truly harrowing, and i was really disturbed by the babies affected by the chemical, which they have preserved in jars of formalhyde.
Next day i bought a camera (woo hoo), then as we were all feeling a little lazy (ok, hungover) we rented out cyclos and did a 2 hr tour of the city, taking in some pagodas and the reunification palace. (For those who are unaware, a cyclo is a bike with a throne like seat attached in front, and a Vietnamese guy pedals the bike around whilst you sit in the throne, feeling like a fat lazy king). The reunification palace, after being bigged up in the lonely planet, is officially the most dissappointing place i have been in my life. Its basically just a fancy building, and how they have the audacity to charge an entrance fee i'll never know. There was however a 'hidden gem' here, on the second floor in one of the rooms there was te most pathetic stuffed weasel i have ever seen, in fact it was debateable whether such a poor specimen could actually be called a weasel. Having taken several photos of this truly wonderous highlight, and having made several hundred jokes about it, we returned to our hotels for a break, before our bus to the border.
We also had had several nights out in Saigon, but i haven't detailed those as you all know pretty much what an average night out is like.
The bus to the border was certainly an eventful one though, made so by Taylor and Louises decision to arrive at the border without any money (schoolboy error guys!) It seems thast they presumed that there would be a bank at the border for them to get some money out. Anyway, i had enough money to get me across the border, then to a bank where i could get some money out, so i could onluy lend them $10, which wasn't really any help as they needed $20 each. Lots of scrounging and begging off of various peopole on our bus later, and we did manage to get across the border, however on the other side there was still no source of money, despite what we had been told. It ended up that people had to come with us in Phnom Penh to the guesthouse where louises mum was staying, so she could pay them back. All that done, we had an indian meal, then called it a night.
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