Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

29th October 2012

Xin Chao everyone, we arrived safely in Vietnam's 2nd City, Ho Chi Minh in good time after an excellent bus journey across the border from Cambodia. I'm talking a/c, good leg room, food stops, free snacks provided, drinking water & smoothish roads!

The tour guide on our bus was living a few doors down from our guesthouse so she showed us where we were staying & it's a good job she did. We would never have found it! The 'backpacker' district is an network of narrow alley ways housing restaurants, bars, barbers, guesthouses & everything else you could need. We checked in, dumped our bags & went for a walk in the afternoon heatwave to get some food. I ordered a salad which will surprise most, Carly had some crab vermicelli thing, it was good!

We couldn't take the heat for too long, it's a real feel of 98 degrees F, wind speed of 2mph & humidity in the 70%'s. We decided to chill in the room & get ready for the evening when it might be a bit cooler.

We walked to the market but they were packing most stalls away, it's pretty huge & sells tons of souvenirs, clothes & different food stalls. Walking back towards our place we took in the park & there were groups of people doing aerobics, fitness lessons & some random foot badminton game. They certainly make use of & respect their public spaces. More than I can say for England/English!!

We tried a couple new beers with dinner & called it a night as we were shattered.

Tuesday 30th October

Suzanne & Brett arrive today to give us some company & probably to have a bit of a holiday for themselves no doubt. Expected in at 8pm.

We grabbed breakfast & planned a walking tour of the City with our basic map. We headed straight to the War Museum before the sun could warm up, that didn't work. We looked like we'd just been swimming when we arrived & were so grateful that it was at least partly air conditioned!

$0.75 entry fee for the best - if not incredibly bias Museum we have seen yet. In the entrance courtyard they had several tanks, planes & heavy artillery lined up. We took the obligatory photos & wandered inside. It describes in great detail, mainly from the Vietnamese perspective, the Vietnam War. Set over 3 stories, each section covered different aspects. 'Agent Orange' for example, walks you through the chemical warfare inflicted on their people & their land. Children born even today are affected by these attacks, many born with disfigurements, missing limbs, blindness, dwarfism, paralysis & severe learning disabilities as a direct result of Dioxin, the chemical used on the land that their parents & grandparents live on & in the waters they drank from. The use of this chemical was to destroy the vegetation entirely, leaving no chance of ambush from the Vietnamese Guerillas.

The graphic pictures were hard to look at, dead babies, bodies in pieces after bomb blasts & mines, charred bodies from napalm strikes & they even had jarred stillborn babies, lost in theory, to the chemical affects of 'Agent Orange'.

It certainly makes you feel a resentment to the Americans, they were relentless & many of the soldiers carried out mass murder of women & children with smiles on their faces (pics show this). Some sicko's were taking photos of the most disturbing pictures in the Museum which I thought was a bit gross.

Thoroughly educated & feeling a bit sad, we walked on past 'Reunification Palace', a building preserved in a state unchanged since the day the communist tanks smashed through the gates in 1975 & Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City surrendered to North Vietnam. We carried on to the Cathedral & Opera House, taking photos of each, then on to the riverside but there wasn't much of interest for tourists down there other than 1 hour boat tours. We walked back through the main shopping district & stumbled across a Burger King which we abused. Next door was 'Fanny' ice cream parlour, we decided against it.

We met with Suzanne & Brett around 8pm & took them to dinner & had a few beers together on the main street. The locals were celebrating Halloween & the bars were rammed, spilling out onto the road! The police came by twice while we were there to move everyone onto the pavements. It was a bit of a farce because as soon as the police van drove off they reset all the tables & chairs in the road until they came back again!

It was 1.30am before we knew it so decided to get some sleep.

Wednesday 31st October

Today we did a bit of shopping in the local area & I got a much needed haircut. We also booked the bus to Mui Ne for tomorrow, $5 each. Transport is sooooo cheap you wonder how they make any money! Saying that, the average wage is around $3 per day.

We had a chilled afternoon watching a film in the room & then went to dinner with Brett & Suzanne as we bumped into them on the way out of our guesthouse. We had 4 meals, 14 beers & a cocktail, all for less than £12.

We had a few games of poker back at the guesthouse with Brett while Suzanne had a pedicure & manicure. We lost 2 grand to Brett but we didn't mind, it's only 8p.

We went to bed ready for our early start tomorrow, they carried on until 4.30, surprised us with faces painted as zombies, Brett wearing a snorkel for some reason(!) & then met us for breakfast at 7! Crazy.

Ca mon for reading another instalment of our journey. Hope everybody at home is well.

Modes of Transport so far - 2 planes, 1 Taxi, 9 Tuk Tuks, 3 VIP Bus, 2 shared taxis, 5 minivans, 2 speed boat, 2 slow boats, 3 ferries, 2 pickup trucks, 1 sleeper bus, 1 kayak, 1 moto

Countries Visited - Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam

Beers Sampled - Chang, Tiger, Leo, BeerLao, Namkhong, Angkor, Anchor, Klang, Green Saigon, Red Saigon & 333 (a few cocktails & buckets too!)

Miles Travelled - 9,332