Saigon (Ho Chi Min City)

We arrived in Saigon around 7pm Tuesday (1 September) after spending the day between flights, in Kuala Lumpur. We were very lucky to have friends Okki & Remco pick us up at the airport at 9.30am and drive us into KL where we had a late breakfast under the Petronas Twin Towers and a great long chat before Remco kindly drove us back to the airport to wait for our flight to Saigon after 5pm.

Saigon was extremely wet when we arrived but this only lasted the night.We had a great hotel in the backpacker area of the city which was close to everything so we walked everywhere. Wednesday was Vietnam's Independence Day which was the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by Ho Chi Min in 1945 so it was a public holiday.We visited the Reunification Palace which used to be the home of the South Vietnamese Government and which is decked out 70's style to transport visitors back in time to that day in 1975 when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.We also visited the War Remnants Museum which is the most popular museum in Saigon and one which is both fascinating and horrifying at the same time.Huge displays of bombs, weapons and photographs of the Vietnam War and the atrocities which resulted from it.Models of torture equipment and even deformed fetuses in a glass display cube as a shocking reminder of the results of the damage caused by bombing and chemical warfare.Certainly displays of photographs which will stay with us for ever.

Thursday (3 September) we took things a little easier - a visit to Fanny's ice cream café which, according to Lonely Planet, sells the best ice cream in Saigon - it certainly was delicious and a good sweetener too for our walk round the Ben Thanh Market which is huge and sells a huge variety of clothes, souvenirs, shoes, accessories, dry food, flowers, fruit & vegetables, not to mention fresh meat & fish - we thought we would bump into Bobby Chinn from the Food & Living Channel on satellite TV at any moment!!However, around this market area we did notice quite a number of people bearing scars from the war years, begging in the streets.