Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon

Trip Start Sep 06, 2007
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Trip End Sep 04, 2008


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Thursday, October 25, 2007

We had booked a bus from Mui Ne to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), also known as Saigon. Once the bus turned up, 2 hours late, we set off to see some of the most beautiful coast line along the east coast of Vietnam.  We arrived kind of late, so we decided to find our accommodation pretty fast.  We had the address, house no. everything but couldn't find it.  This Viet guy was watching our confused faces and came over to help us.  He told us to follow him in his broken English so off we went until he headed down this dark alley. We really weren't sure where he was going, so slowly and cautiously we followed him until we saw him enter a building...sure enough and true to form our suspicions were unfounded and he landed us at our hostel. We booked in and headed up to take showers.  We soon found out that the room faced a brick wall, the bathroom door was kicked in and the toilet leaked like a river once you used it...we were so tired, we didn't care!  Next day we were walking around and passed what looked like a fairly decent hairdressers, we went in and asked for a 'trim'', I came out with a 6 year old going back to school (early 80's) economic haircut, the look on my face said it all!!!  He was a nut case with a scissors. 

We took a day trip to visit the Cu Chi tunnels (220km long in total) and a Cad Dai temple (three religions in one), we had to endure a half hour at this temple to see what they for a ceremony.  Fiona described it very well in that, 'they were playing in one key but singing in another'.  Next stop was the Cu Chi tunnel. These are considered to be one of the masterminds that led the Vietnamese to victory.  They are the tiniest tunnels you have ever seen, not even a ferret would pass through them, but the Vietnamese's did!  They have three stories (deep).  Some of the fellas on our trip braved the tunnels and crawled through them, at the end they were shaking!!!! needless to say, myself and Fiona made great spectators and made no attempt to try this!  Further up in this region, the Vietnamese dug out some tunnels to allow Westerners through so they can experience what the Vietnamese did.  Both Fiona and I crawled through these and they were so tight and narrow.  It's mad to be in a region that was bombed to piece and serious guerrilla warfare,.  They also showed us the ingenious Vietnamese boobie traps...they are vicious!  Children as young as 10 fought in this war.

We visited the War Remnants Museum to see the effects of Agent Orange and the Tiger Cells...this really makes you realise what these people endured and are still enduring as Agent Orange carries through generations. 

Saigon is a great city, we were told so many terrible things about it before getting here, but we were given a great insight (although biased) into the Vietnamese history.  Our visas are up so now we have to cross the border into Cambodia via the Mekong Delta (it'll take 3 days)
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