Separated at Birth?

Trip Start Oct 22, 2005
1
38
224
Trip End Ongoing


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Vietnam  ,
Thursday, December 15, 2005

We planned to do a few touristy things today. Top of the list was the War Museum and we had a quick look at the Reunification Palace on the way as we walked there. The Palace was the first place the Northern Army stormed in the war's final days when Saigon fell. In the grounds of the museum were many different war machines such as jets, tanks, a seismic bomb and huge armoured guns. We wandered around looking at all the pictures on display and found it to be very anti-American. One gallery displayed photos from the journalists killed during the war. We weren't surprised it was one sided as we are in Vietnam. What did surprise us though were the hordes of school children that rocked up. They were laughing and taking notes at the display of the effects of napalm. There were babies with two heads, cleft palettes, missing limbs and Siamese twins in jars of formaldehyde. Meg was very surprised to notice the full names of the mothers and fetus and their bradma numbers on the jars. No privacy here.

Also on display were pictures of decapitated and dismembered soldiers, then to the side children's drawings depicting peace. A striking contrast we thought.

We wandered on to the old Post Office and the cool looking Notre Dame Cathedral, picking up some lunch on the way at KFC. No bird flu there according to the guarantee notice, but we did decide that Colonial Sanders bears a striking resemblance to the famous Ho Chi Minh, who's face is plastered about everywhere here.

We headed back to the tourist strip near our hotel then watched a bit of TV before heading out for some pasta dinner. Picking up our washing on the way back to the hotel we were not impressed to find they had washed everything together and Megs "mung bean" pants from Laos had turned everything purple. Bugger!
Slideshow Print this entry Ho Chi Minh City hotels