Having blown out the optional Cyclo trip, I decided on a bit of a lie in, or at least until around 9am. The Cyclo would have been fun if it was a nice sunny day but, well, it wasn't.



For those who think I am spelling cycle wrongly, I'm not. A Cyclo is a variation of the three wheeler. It looks like a three wheeler assembled backwards. Your driver sits behind you and does all the pedalling. Meanwhile, you sit in an overgrown baby buggy and take in the sights and smells of the city.

In the case on inclement weather there are sides and a roof but the viewing area is considerably reduced, as are any photo opportunities, without getting out. Also, your driver cum pedaller may not have much English, as with Paula's driver who seemed a little limited with his vocabulary. Apparently he kept tapping her on the shoulder, pointing and saying "Oh, wow". Must have learned his English from some Americans off the cruise ships!

Anyway, back to my lie in. I was rudely awakened by some knobend in the room next to me. The incessant peeping that I thought was my alarm, was him trying to open his door. Looking at the clock, I could see it was 7.30am. Having failed miserably to open his door, this lobotomised idiot decided that a few sharp kicks would fix it. This did not have the desired effect either, so Mr Knobber decided to combine the two, kick, kick, peep, peep, kick, kick....... When told rather loudly to go forth and multiply, he ambled off to Reception.

There endeth my lie in.

So, brekkie then. Yet another infernal stupid toasting thingummy, the worst one yet. I think I have met my nemesis. Five attempts later, it yielded slightly brown on one side and mostly just bread on the other.

Why, you might say, did I not have something else?

Have you ever tried having tomato soup for breakfast? Or noodles and some indeterminate meat gently stewed in washing up water? How about spring roll liberally filled with chilli?

So now you know. Even the coffee is weird, it's a kind on mocha flavour, very strong and if you forget to ask for fresh milk, you get condensed milk.

We were due to meet up at midday for a trip to the war museum, which to be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to. Nam said that he finds it hard to stay there very long as it is so upsetting. So anyway, I decided to just catch up on this blog and mooch around the hotel. We were warned that Saigon was not a very safe place to wander about so I stayed inside, not wanting to risk going out on my own. We were going to see plenty whilst we were here anyway.

Midday arrived and we decided to let Nam choose lunch for us, local style. We wound our way around very busy streets, rucksacks to the front as instructed. He suddenly branched off through an alleyway, past a moped parking garage and then we climbed four floors of stairs to be greeted with a lovely little restaurant called The Loft.

Two of the girls decided to gorge out on chocolate fudge brownie and ice cream, I had spaggie carbonara as I thought it may be sans le chilli, everyone else chose from the specials menu which worked out a £2!

It was a lovely little spot but we had to go and find out the Vietnamese side of the story of the Vietnam War.

I can remember the Vietnam War from when I was a teenager but we only ever heard about the US side. This museum was filled with photos, documents and weapons, outside in the grounds were US warplanes and tanks, bazookas and replica bombs.

The second floor exhibitions were all locked up, so we started on the third floor. This told the story of how the war started and how it escalated and eventually what led to the US withdrawal.

I never knew that it all started when the French tried to reclaim Indochina after the war. Vietnam was once occupied by the French and they wanted it back so that they could continue to obtain their raw materials such as tin and tungsten. The US were also concerned that these same resources would be in short supply, if the French were unsuccessful, so they assisted the French in their mission.

The Vietnamese were most unhappy to find that the French, and now the Americans were trying to walk in and claim their country and put up a strong resistance. And so it all began. The Vietnamese were lacking in firepower but the Russians soon came to their aid. The Americans were joined by the French, Australians, New Zealanders and the Chinese, among others. A particularly nasty hill tribe from China was recruited to join the US Special Forces. They took great delight in torturing captured Vietnamese.

This is when the Cu Chi tunnels came into their own, whilst the Vietcong were being pounded by B52s, American tanks and ground forces. They hid out in the jungle after their towns and villages were razed to the ground. Then some evil little scientists in the US discovered Agent Orange and Napalm.

The jungles were liberally treated and the Vietcong not only lost their jungles to hide in, they were also poisoned by Agent Orange, with people suffering, even today, several generations on, with birth defects, cancer and skin disease.

The war should have ended three years before it actually did as the Americans continued their assaults even after the peace agreement had been signed. The Vietnamese believe that JFK was assassinated because of this, which is the first good reason I ever heard for him to be killed.

After finding out the history I was ready to leave, there were several Americans, veterans of the war, who were loudly denying that any of this was true. A trip to the second floor, which was now open, told the true story in pictures. I didn't take any photos, it was just too upsetting to see the shocking birth defects resulting from either being in or near the treated areas or from eating contaminated food from the rivers.

Conjoined twins, horrendously malformed heads, legs never having formed in the womb, huge upper arms, bigger than the head, really small heads, no eyes, the list goes on and on.

I came out of there in a state of shock and horror.

We were all quiet on the bus, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

Our next trip was to the Presidential Palace which was actually extremely dull and the place was filled with the most uncomfortable furniture I have ever seen. I have nothing else to say about it!

We had a spare hour before the next highlight, so we discovered this really weird coffee place, again up loads of stairs. It was full of 1960 mementos and vinyl records hanging from the ceiling on strings. On the walls were bazookas and old Vietnamese bamknotes, army officers' hats and all sorts of, well, crap. The beer was Ok though, I abstained from the squid jerky.

This was a really full day and we now made our way to see the Vietnamese Water Puppets. We had seats at the back, but it was a tiered theatre, pretty small really, the seats were really uncomfortable!

The lights dimmed and I could see about half of the water which was very dirty looking.

Enter the puppets.

Up go all the bloody I-phones and I can't see a thing. Well I suppose I could watch it on Mr Miyake San's iPhone screen, except his stupid head is even in the way of that!

Oh, God then the music and singing started which sounded like someone bashing pan lids together whilst torturing a cat.

An hour is a long tome at the Vietnamese Water Puppets and I now have a stonking headache.

We had to walk back, about half an hour, through the pouring rain, dodging mopeds taking short cuts along the pavement and trying not to trip and fall into holes as deep as the Cu Chi mantraps.

At the hotel, I decided not to have anything else to eat as I just wanted to get packed up for the next day and then get some sleep and lose the headache.