Ahh wet bag time again. Yep my bag always gets wet - Ben's bag never gets wet. Ironically I asked my parents for a rain cover for a backpack this christmas. I forgot to tell them I wanted it for a big pack not a day pack and got a rain cover smaller than I wanted although still quite useful for day trips. Ironically I forgot to bring this rain cover to Sth East Asia - land of the fricken wet back pack! Shit!
Got into HCMC to find the guesthouse James was in was full, but blessing in disguise, found a really nice place for the 3 of us - very cheap price - in the backpacker area.
Straight away we noticed the difference here. Yes there were still people nagging us to buy, but hardly at all in comparison to elsewhere. Often when you're eating, someone will come to your table and ask you to buy something they're selling and when you say no they go to the next person and so on till everyone at the table has said no. Then they ask, "why" or they try to convince you again. In HCMC people seem to get the message after just a couple of seconds. Most refreshing! It's safe to go outside again kids.
The first thing we did was find a place to drink some bia hoi which incidentally smelt like puke, but tasted ok. A guy with a really strong Aussie accent sat down with us and I interpreted for Nir & sometimes for Ben. About 5 minutes later a face walked by...a face I hadn't seen in about 6 years. A neighbour from the Gold Coast back in my uni days. Some of you will remember Lloyd from William Street (willow st) in Mermaid Beach. All my fantasies had come true. I have been wanting to bump into someone I know from Aussie, but in 6 years it has only happened once in London at a Less Than Jake/Frenzal Rhomb show. Unfortunately he couldn't talk long, but we were both amazed at bumping into each other. The drinking continued as we went to Guns & Roses bar and requested some good ole Metallica be played.
My head hurt the next day! The 4 of us walked for hours through HCMC and I found a bakery that sold things similar to sausage rolls. In the afternoon we went to the War Remnants Museum which focuses only on the Americans in the Vietnamese war and the atrocities committed by them (and a little bit on what the Viet Cong did to the Southern Vietnamese when they invaded the South ((non communist at the time). It's hard to get a good perspective on what happened as you're fed some information (via a lot of really good photographs) and some propaganda. Better off to read 'Idiot's Guide to the Vietnam War' available at Borders Books!! It still is amazing to be here and to see a different perspective and photos taken by photojournalists from all over the world (something like 60 were killed taking photos during this war).
Next day we did a walking tour of HCMC from the Lonely Planet. We got stuck in some markets taking photos of pigs paws and live crabs stuck in a pan together. We saw a woman clubbing huge fish to death on the market floor. Men walked through the markets with huge slabs of ice on their bags delivering to meat stalls from a large truck. Very interesting stuff and common in Sth East Asia as not all places have access to fridges and freezers you'll often see blocks of ice being smashed up to go in your drink along with any dirt that has affixed itself to the bottom. We went to pagodas, governmental buildings, the old grand Post Office, a cathedral etc etc. We even went out the back of a mosque (the Israeli sweating now) to find a quaint Indian 'restaurant' listed in the LP. The cheap prices listed in the guide book were now incredibly inflated even for the expensive standards of food in HCMC. Just goes to show that while guide books can be great they can also be a curse too. As soon as a place knows it's in a guide book they will raise their prices because they know the business will come (if you list it, rich tourists will come).
We found some mint Tim Tams in an actual supermarket which excited Ben and I (why didn't anyone tell me Tim Tams had gone Mint Slice!!!!!!)
We took a day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels were made and used when the French were occupying Vietnam. They were then used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War to hide from the Americans and launch suprise attacks on them from inside their base which had been built over some of these far reaching and intricately built tunnels. Once again we got to see a film feeding us with propaganda and interesting information (not mentioning why the Viet Cong were in the South in the first place). We also got to crawl through the actual tunnels which have been widened to fit us tourists. Some tunnels were a few metres long and one was a breath defying, claustrophobia inducing 50 mtrs of tunnels which got narrower and went lower into the ground as you went along. There were even little bats living inside that would brush past us as they flew away from us (they're in my hair, they're in my hair!!). We got to eat Minyards and some sort of rice that the Vietnamese ate. Don't ask what minyards are because I don't know - a vegetable I think. It was pretty cool to think we were at such an important site. We also saw bomb craters left by the American's B52 bombers. They were really big - at least to me.
We tried going to a new part of town after that. To an Irish Bar and an Aussie Bar with real Aussie music. The prices for beer were heinous to us as Ben and I have both realised we're getting tighter and tighter with our money. We're freaking out about spending under $2 a beer rather than 50 cents. Does this happen to everyone???
Yesterday after years of me telling him to - Ben ate a dick. Yes that's right he ate cow penis soup. Gross eh???? Just for the record he didn't like it (a little too fatty - ha ha ha).
Now we're ready to leave and take off on a 3 day Mekong Delta tour that will drop us off in Phomn Penh - Cambodia.
More thumbnails ...
Ho Chi Minh City Hotels
36 votes 
This is a top pick!
