After Halong Bay and our crazy night out in Hanoi, we caught a plane to Ho Chi Minh City, which most Vietnamese still call Saigon. We found a little guesthouse in the backpacker part of town. It's tourist central with tons of souvenir shops, bars and travel agencies. We walked around a bit and went to the closest market. Since it was already late the market was closed and there were just a few shops outside, but tons of people and motorcycles. We found a whole new dimension to dodging motorbikes when crossing a street! We found an area with food stalls and indulged in a delicious seafood dinner.
Next day we tried to pick up the motorbikes we had reserved the previous evening to go on a tour, but the rental place was so disorganized that it took us forever and a lot of patience to finally have everything ready. then we set off to Mui Ne, but that's a whole other story in the travel blog.
So back to Saigon 5 days later: After our motorbike tour, we came back and stayed in Saigon for 2 days. On the first night we were just too happy to be back in an environment a bit cleaner and quieter than "on the road". It was Maitland and Debbie's last night with us so Maitland decided to take us out for a nice dinner. We were craving western food and we found a pizzeria with pretty decent pizza. Nice change from noodle soups and rice! Since they were flying back to Bangkok in the evening, Maity and Debbie had most of the next day. We decided to take a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels are a system of hand-dug underground tunnels which were used by the Viet-Congs during the American war (which we call Vietnam war...). It's an amazing network of 256 km of really narrow and twisty tunnels on 3 levels, with a system of vents and sniper holes. Pretty crazy what they set up. It is so clever that the Americans were actually never quite able to take it. They showed us bomb craters, the kitchens and their smoke disipation system, and the hospital. After the guide said at least 200 times that our fat tourist asses would not fit into the sniper hole, Maitland and Debbie had to prove the contrary by getting in there. It did not look comfortable but they did fit! Then we could go into the tunnels ourselves. Debbie and Seth bailed out after the first 30m, but Maitland and I went for another 60m. Better not be claustrophobic in these tiny dark tunnels. We had to go on our hands and knees for one part.
Afterwards we tried some snake wine, a disgusting thing I don't want to encourage since they put a real snake into a bottle and fill it with super strong rice wine. It has a snaky aftertaste, whatever that means. Yuk! Then we drove back to Saigon and said goodbye to Maitland and Debbie. It was weird to be just the two of us again after spending a month with our friends. But we were also looking forward to the rest of our trip together. In the evening we decided to go to the posh part of town where the rich tourists go. It's one luxury hotel after the other. We went on a little roof terrasse for a drink and almost left because a crazy wedding party was singing horrible but loud karaoke songs. But it stopped soon so we had a nice drink looking at the sparkling Saigon skyline.
The next day we slept in and were lazy. We decided to go on a small walking tour of Saigon but didn't get much past the market where we bought some beautiful chopsticks. Then at night we caught the bus to Nah Trang. One more night on a crampted bus... More thumbnails ...
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