Ho Chi Minh:
As usual, the bus took much longer than we were told it would and we didn't arrive in Ho Chi Minh until around 8pm on Tuesday 16th. The hostel we had wanted to stay at was fully booked but this turned out well as we went to Vietnam Inn instead which we absolutely loved and was much nicer! The six of us (Ellie, Lisa, Ross, Owen Coops and Jenna) checked into a room and went up to the rooftop bar. It was amazing, it was like our very own skytower which looked over the city and was beautiful. The hostel we had originally tried to go to was across the park and looked like a pea in comparison, we were so high up. We were determined to find street food where we could sit outside on plastic chairs and eventually turned down into an alley into plastic chair heaven! We had planned on going out afterwards but it was so late by is time and everyone was so hungover from the night before we decided to save ourselves for a big one the next night.
The next day, after delicious calamari and Caesar salads, we headed to the famous war remnants museum. Outside there were lots of tanks, fighter planes and helicopters that everyone was taking photos with. A lot of Asian people seemed to be fasniated by us and all wanted photos with us. However, we weren't sure if they wanted photos with us for good or bad reasons! Inside the museum it had a very different atmosphere to the touristic posing with tanks outside. It was extremely sad. The museum was filled with photography of the war crimes and the victims of the agent orange. The photographs were very graphic and there were also some detailed descriptions of how certain criminals had tortured innocent people. It was horrific and very very sad.
After the museum we were all feeling sad and decided to cheer ourselves up...this meant the girls decided to go for some retail therapy whilst the boys went for beers! We went with Jenna to the market where we got absolutely harassed by every Vietnamese person determined to sell us their stuff! We had people shouting prices in our faces, begging us to come back and buy, and getting very angry when we said no. It was the best place ever for haggling...Ellie managed to get a souvenir down from 120,000 dong to 20,000 dong and Lisa was offered a bikini for 200,000 dong after originally being 900,000! It was madness. The taxi driver had no idea where he was taking us but, after putting Ellie on he phone to some random man who spoke English, we eventually made it back.
We ate more street food and then hurried back to the hostel in time to do our ice bucket challenge! The hostel had a deal that if you did the challenge you got a free nights accommodation and free breakfast! We all did it In pairs and when Coops poured it over us we were absolutely screaming our heads off, the bucket was huge and the ice was absolutely freezing. But it was hilarious and worth the free night!
We then began our night on the rooftop bar overlooking the amazing city. We played some hilarious drinking games with everyone. The boys were awful at 21 but we were pros! We then introduced everyone to the animal game where everyone picks and animal and you have to make your animal action and say the animal without showing your teeth and laughing and send it on to the next person. Everyone loved it and the rest of the bar thought we were absolutely mad. Lisa called it a night due to her eyes but the rest of headed into the city to find some backpacker bars. We were expecting every bar to be booming but they were all dead with rubbish drinks deals! We went into one called hair of the dog which was packed but left as it was full on sleazy annoying people bumping into you everywhere and Coops was getting angry! Instead we went back to find our plastic chairs and sat outside and ordered some bucket! We then thought as there was nowhere decent to go why not just buy our own alcohol and have our own party back at the hostel. We got up to leave but as we were walking down the alley a man came running after us, extremely angry, and telling us he had poured our buckets so we must come and drink them! So we went back and drunk them and decided as it was our one night out in Ho Chi Minh we were determined to find somewhere to go. So we walked down the street as we had been told of a good nightclub and ended up getting a taxi to it only to find that it had just shut. We then got out of the taxi in search of more clubs. After briefly going into some extremely posh gentlemans club to use the toilet, we bumped into a German man on a bike. Ellie and Coops had a ride on his bike up and down the street and then he took us to Burmah bar which was a strange but really cool place up lots of stairs on a rooftop. Coops bought us all sangria which Ellie thought tasted vile but drunk it anyway and was singing very loudly to John Legend with everyone. On our way back home we stopped off for an amazing and much needed McDonald's.
Coops and Jenna left very early on Thursday 18th before the rest of us had woken up. After we had checked out with Owen and Ross and had our free breakfast on the rooftop, we got picked up to go to Cu Chi Tunnels where the Vietnam war happened. It was extremely interesting. Our tour guide showed us how the Vietnamese people had made such small tunnels which they could crawl through in mazes underground but which larger Americans would not fit into! He explained how there were air vents in mounds but the American sniffer dogs could smell the Vietnamese people through these and then they would be shot. So the Vietnamese people put empty beer cans outside which threw off the dogs scent as they thought they were smelling the Americans. The Americans caught onto these and realised it meant the Vietnamese people were down there so they then started putting chilli powder over the mounds which stopped the dogs sense of smell. They also wore their shoes backwards so the footprints see going the other way...it was all very clever! We were also shown lots of different traps and some people had a go at shooting the guns. Then we went to a tunnel which had been made bigger than it was originally so that tourists could fit into it. Ellie Lisa and Ross climbed down and crouched, nearly on all fours, through the tunnel. It was extremely hot. We got out after 20 metres but you could carry on of for another 100 metres with the tunnel getting even smaller but we didn't fancy that.
When we go back to the city we went for dinner and waited for our next overnight bus to Sihanoukville. We slept at the border for three hours until it opened and went through. It was early in the morning and we were absolutely shattered so were not happy to find out we had to change buses to one without sleeping seats.
We thought we were driving straight through Phon Pem to go to Siem Riep however this was not the case. Another crazy Vietnamese driver tried to get us off the bus while it was still moving and dump us on the side of the motorway in Phon Pem. We made them take us to the travel shop where we thought we would be getting on the next bus. No one knew what was happening but a Vietnamese girl explained to us that we had to make our own way to another travel shop to arrange the next bus which was great. So we got a tuk tuk there and the driver of course tried to rip us off but we were having none of that. We arrived at the other travel shop to find out we had to wait an hour and a half for the next bus. We sat in a little cafe, ordered one coke between four of us, and played card games until it was time for our bus. We then had to get yet another tuk tuk to the bus station and finally got on the bus which was old and dirty. Ellie and Ross spread themselves across the back seat and were extremely comfy. Lisa was chilling across two seats in front. Owen was doing the same for about five minutes until a Cambodian man came and sat down beside him and put a load of bags under his feet which he was not pleased about at all. Eventually we made it to Sihanoukville.