Our bus stopped on the side of a busy street to an island in the road where there was a festival with people and motorbikes whizzing around us as we tried to find our bags in the luggage compartment. Gangnam style along with 20 other tunes were belting out of various clubs and sound systems and there is just people and scooters everywhere!!!!!!! We put our backpacks on and braved the crazy traffic to cross the street. Lucky for us our hotel was just around the corner, was a good feeling not to have to treck around the chaos looking for it!!! The hotel was fine- but no honeymoon perks this time! We had a quick look around the backpacker district (dodging and weaving around street carts, dogs, scooters, etc) and had an average dinner at one of the restaurants. Cheap beer so all good! Went back and had an early night. The next morning we got up and went sight seeing. Attempted to look at cycle tours through the Mekong delta, but $400 each so that's a no-go will look into a tour instead. Went to the war museum (just about melted on the way there!) very sad and very confronting. Quite horrendous the stuff they had photos of, and really really sad to see the photos and stories of victims of agent orange. Even generations on so many disabled people and so little funding or support for any of them. From the photos their living conditions are appalling and no equipment or anything to help with daily life, it made me so sad to know there are thousands suffering by this caused by 'soldiers' and the US government. Especially the fact they are doing nothing to compensate for those generations on affected and disabled, it just disgusted and saddened me. We then went to the reunification palace, was pretty nice and interesting history. We wandered around to the impressive cathedral and post office, then caught a 'moto' back to the hotel (motorbike) a pretty hairy ride and not very enjoyable!! That night we went to one of Sashas recommendations for dinner, was really yummy food and a very funky building. The next day we did a tour to the cu chi tunnels. On the way our tour stopped at a factory where the workers are all disabled as a result of agent orange. It was explained that the government built a few of these factories to help these people get money (they only get a $40 a month pension from the government) and to also give them a sense of importance with their life. I'm no occupational therapist but there could have been at least 100 easy ways to make the working conditions better for these people. A prime examples were that the toilets for the tourists were just behind the workers, I saw a worker have to crawl up to his wheelchair (no hoist or railings) and go about 150m to some crappy toilets out the back past piles of junk and rubbish on a dirt road. The tourist shop with all of the products made was right next to the workshop and clean and airconditioned. No aircon for the workers. They did seem to be quite happy though, just upset me again how unfair it is for them!
We eventually got to the tunnels, worth the visit despite the hundreds of tourists! Quite amazing the intricate networks of tunnels and the design of them, and how fricken small they were, we struggled to walk through 100m of one that had been widened for tourists! Also interesting to see how the viet cong worked, their traps and crafty bombs were inventive and quite amazing how they fought with so little resources. We had the opportunity to shoot guns at the end at a rifle range- we didn't bother with it! That night we went to the sky bar in one of the tallest buildings. We went at 5.00pm after a shop for some singlets at the chaotic bendang markets, was the perfect time to go! Not only was it happy hour, but it meant we got to see the sunset and then all the lights in Saigon turn on whilst sipping cocktails (very slowly- they were still expensive!) it was a spectacular view from 52 stories up! After that we had a fantastic dinner at a restaurant called Dong Khoi area where there were stalls all around making a range of different foods with a central menu u ordered from. The food was fantastic and it's in a really beautiful building with nice outdoor areas. We then went for a walk in the backpacker area and sat and had a beer with about 200 other tourists on the sidewalk. A couple of shops opposite each other put out rows and rows of plastic stools on the footpath and as it gets busier they put more rows out on the street until it becomes a really narrow street for traffic to get thru! Beers are only 50c so we made sure we had a few. We met a nice Brazilian guy who gave us tips for beaches in brazil- awesome! Ended up getting to bed fairly late and a bit tipsy!