We arrived in Saigon after a relatively hassle free journey from Phnom Penh. The Cambodian bus company thought it would be a practice in efficiency to take our passports from us and sort out all our things at the border whilst we waited. We waited, and waited, and then they told us to get back on the bus, then off the bus so they could check our passport photos, and then on the bus, and then off the bus whereby we had to wait about 30 minutes with our bags whilst the Vietnam border man stamped everything. Of course, the western passports were at the bottom of the pile.

We got past the touts and managed to find somewhere quiet to stay. Saigon is pretty noisy, mainly due to the population of about 3 million motocycles (more on that later). In the evening we had our first bowl of Pho (noodle soup with beef) and watched the locals doing their exercise in the park nearby (just watched, no participation on our part of course!) The whole place had a really nice atmosphere to it.

The next day we followed our trusty (photocopied) guidebook's walking tour of the city to take in the main sites. Our first stop was an ice cream shop called "Fanny". Hmm. Conveniently (or perhaps intentionally), our map had marked the shop in the wrong place. Therefore we had to ask a little man, who didn't understand why we were giggling, where we could "find Fanny". The hassle was worth it though, their ice-cream sundaes were really good :-) From there we walked past the Town Hall, Ho Chi Minh Museum and round to Reunification Palace. This place, althought it had a lot of history, looked kind of like an old British Polytechnic-turned-University building from the 1970s. Indeed, it had to be rebuilt when the Vietnamese army turned on the American and French backed leader Ngo Dinh Diem in the 1960s. The air force tried to bomb the palace to kill the much hated President but succeeded in destroying the older, much more attractive palace. The result is something that resembles a bad-guy hideout in a James Bond movie (I'm talking Sean Connery era James Bond). It has a rooftop bar (the bar has a padded leather facade) and dance floor, complete with getaway helicopter, a cinema, a lounge with a half-boat shaped bar (that would not look out of place in Del-Boy's flat), some tanks out front and a huge underground bunker complete with retro radios, maps and a "BATTLE ROOM"! Excellent! All it needed was some little men all wearing coloured bolier suits and wearing hard hats running around everywhere, or being driven around on little golf-carts...

From here we went to the War Remnants Museum. Although undergoing a refurbishment, the displays were really informative, if a little gruesome at times. I think the idea was not to tell the story of the war in a historical context, but to tell it from the eyes of those who suffered the most: the civilians. The section on Agent Orange (the defoliant used by the US in order to clear the rainforest) and its after-effects was really quite horrific. How anyone could ever use biological weapons to that extent, and without realising that the effects of the chemicals would last for 3 generations and more (children and adults who had nothing whatsoever to do with the war)... even I was lost for words.

We walked a little to clear our heads, passing Notre Dam Cathedral and the Post Office. All the glass was blown out of Notre Dam during the war and never replaced, therefore it wasn't a patch on its Paris namesake. The tour took a bit of a down-turn after this. We walked to the History Museum but you have to pay just to look at the outside of it! From there it was a 20 minute walk to, apparently, one of the city's best pagodas. This brings me back to the 3 million motorcyles... As you can imagine, crossing the road is pretty hard work. Especially when the roads are 6 lanes wide. The best way is just to look out for the cars as they hurt more if they hit you. Walking steadily across, maintain eye contact with the bikes coming straight toward you to let them know you've seen them and they should, in theory, go around you. Its much, much more easily said than done, and is pretty close to an extreme sport. If youstop, it confuses them and if you run you're taking your life into your own hands. A 20 minute walk therefore becomes quite an ordeal. So when we got to the rubbish little pagoda we were a little peeved! In fact, the only thing that was any good about it was the randy dog that kept trying (sometimes successfully) to hump this poor lady's leg. She kept trying to push it away, but I think it was love at first sight.

The following day we took a trip out to Cu Chi tunnels, about 50km away from the centre of Saigon. This was a Viet Cong stronghold in the war, and in the face of the American attacks, the population took to living underground where it was much safer. It was actually a really good visit and it was really interesting to see all the little tricks and traps the Vietnamese used in the jungle. The booby traps looked a little dangerous, but their designs were really clever (in a "we want to cause you a lot of pain" way). One of the Americans (we were in a group of 9 of them) even said, when looking at a pit filled with spikes, "That is some serious Indiana Jones sh*t right there". Nice. 3 of the group tried out the shooting range (that had guns used by the Vietnamese to kill Americans...) and then we went down into the tunnels for about 100 metres of undeground passages. It was hot, stuffy and really very cramped and at times it was completely pitch black too. We then had to watch a propagana video that was made, I presume, a long time ago. Some of the quotes from it were classic: "The Cu Chi tunnels support the fight against the Americans who put their dirty big foot in someone elses business" "Hua Chin, who is only 12 years old, takes time out of rice fishing to kill some Americans. She has killed 50 and wins the Silver Medal for killing Americans" and so on. It was totally unnecessary, and prompted one of the others on the tour to leave the room. I didn't know quite how to take it.


On our 3rd day we visited Dam Sen park, a theme park on the outside of town. Complete with its own water park (that smelt really badly of Durian), it was just the place we needed to get away from the more serious parts of Saigon. The haunted house was really pretty scary and at the same time hilarious, as it was so dark in there you couldn't see a thing. There were some people dressed in suits that would then grab you or scare you just when you least expected it, one even chased us out of there. I say 'us', but what really happened was that we were both shouting at this little person in a horrible ghost suit to 'go away' and then Sheona let go of my hand saying 'I'm out of here' and legged it, leaving me to fight the creature on my own! Just as I was about to sacrifice her to save myself! Never mind. The water park was really good fun too with plenty to keep us amused for half a day.

Our final day we did a bit of shopping in town before the overnight bus to Nha Trang, a stop-off on our way up the coast. In the local park there were a lot of games set up like a carnival that were free to play, and if you won, you got a bag of crisps! I was in heaven.

All in all, Saigon was such a great experience. For me, it is definitely up there with Singapore in terms of atmosphere and enjoyment. You always felt there was something new to see and to do and if you were ever bored you could always cross the road...

-B