HCMC

We took a night bus to Saigon (HCMC), arriving at the crazy hour at 5am to an already bustling city- the amount of people doing workouts in the park was just crazy. We found our hostel easily but had to wait a few hours to check in - always pleasant - not!!

However, we had a productive day, we visited the War Remnants Museum which was really good but a little harrowing and saddening. It demonstrated clearly the brutality of the Vietnamese War. One of the scary after affects was that of agent orange - a chemical sprayed as a weapon on the enemy. There was so many living victims of agent orange today that suffer with severe physical disabilities and cancer. It appears that still today the US have given very little to these victims and donations have vanished.

Afterwards we visited Zak's for dinner ( met him on the easy rider tour from Hue to Hoi An - he is teaching in Vietnam for 6 weeks and this was his last night so he was having a dinner type party) met lots of his friends and had a really nice evening with great food cooked by his friends and students.

The next day we tried to visit the reunification palace and notre dame catheral but both were unfortunately closed. Had a very chilled day including postcard writing in nice cafes. That night we enjoyed the good night life on the streets in the city and met some Germans that had been travelling 7 months so lots of interesting chats - so a great last night in Vietnam before heading onto Cambodia