Good day Saigon

Good day Saigon  

"Beauty Salon" workers await customers

So we arrived into the sprawling heaving metropolis that is Saigon. We'd heard plenty of travellers stories about just how hellish and manic Saigon (Uncle Ho didn't want the city named after him, so I'm sticking with Saigon) was so we expected the worst. But in truth, it's quite a nice sprawling heaving metropolis. Sure, everyone honks their horns a million times a minute, but we're immune to that now. And yes, crossing the road is a severely life threatening exercise - but at this stage, we glide serenely between the thousands of hurtling bikes and somehow it all works, no one gets hurt.  

We stayed in pretty much Backpacker central, but only having one day, we wanted to sort accomodation fast and have easy access to the airport. Our major port of call while in Saigon was going to be the War Remnants museum and boy oh boy did it not disappoint. Unlike the fairly clumsy museum in Hanoi (all the photos in the Hanoi museum told you who took the photos, at what time and date, but not actually what the picture was of), the Saigon museum is fairly harrowing and utterly compelling. The photojournalism exhibit was excellent and documented alot about the nutjobs who went to Vietnam to take pictures. The landmine exhibit was just depressing and the deformed foetuses in jar (thanks to the Agent Orange chemicals sprayed on villages) were absolutely horrible. It's odd seeing American tanks and uniforms being displayed as war trophies. In all, our museum trip left us fairly moved and a good bit shaken (war is hell etc).  

Deformed foetuses - Lisa's expression says it all

So we ambled back through Saigon's wide streets and under the French styled buildings and decided that Saigon was a damn swell place - deformed foetuses aside. We met up with our Aussie friend Richard (who we happily keep bumping into along the way) who'd got himself a nice cosy seat streetside to watch the world whizz by with a few beers. Somehow we forgot dinner and things got blurry. Richard, with his bars in Geelong near Melbourne, is solid proof hard work gets you places. So that's me buggered then.  

And that's it for our whistle stop tour of Saigon. Next up is a well earned week on Phu Quoc island, lazing about on tropical beaches and having a nice quiet time. The last few weeks have been very very hectic. Most mornings (indeed the previous 6 days) have all been 6am or 7am starts followed by extended bus or taxi or plane rides so we're looking forward to being in one place for a change. And the fact that we'll be surrounded by clear warm water and golden beaches is merely a bonus........ 

Family transport in Saigon

The excellent War Remnants museum

Your typical Vietnamese traffic jam