Good Morning Vietnam!
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2008
1
10
41
Trip End
Aug 2009
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Monday, November 3, 2008
We arrive to the suffocating humidity of Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon to everyone who's old enough to watch Hollywood films. We get a taxi from the airport to our hotel, and the tiredness is soon wiped from our eyes by the sight of millions of scooters driving everywhere. And I mean everywhere! On the right side of the road, on the wrong side of the road, on the pavement! Some people at Daves work would have a field day with these riders.
We arrive at the hotel and soon are asleep. This travelling, and watching TV in the middle of the night, is tiring work.
We get up and begin to look around the city. We spend a few days doing the tourist sights.
The War Remnants Museum gives the Vietnamese perspective of the war with America, and the atrocities committed against the people of this country. The effects of Agent Orange and Napalm are still evident on the people you see in the street.
We also visit the Reunification Palace, but are disappointed by the bland 1960s government building that greets us. We move onto the Notre Dame Cathedral and the General Post Office, both remnants of the French colonial past of Vietnam. The extortionate cost of postage back home could be French!
The Jade Emperor Pagoda is worthy of the visit, said to be the best example in Vietnam. The dark wood carvings are aggressive and imposing, not really in keeping with the idea of a temple. But impressive none the less.
We finish with a visit to the Ben Thanh market. The same stall seems to appear a hundred times!
We are soon leaving Saigon for the Mekong Delta.
The great river becomes the life-blood of the people of this deeply poor region.
Villages and markets exist on it's waterways. Its people live in houseboats or stilted shacks on its banks. The river provides them with everything they need, except the pigs that live on the boats with them!
We reach the border with Cambodia. And like everyone else before us we decide to ignore national boundaries and push on to Phnom Penh.
