Our last day in Ho Chi Minh City today. Actually, we should have gone on a sleeper train last night to Nha Trang, but plans have had to be changed due to the train tracks being flooded. Also Nha Trang is a mess due to storms and flooding.
So, we're now skipping Nha Trang and flying to Hoi An - it's only cost us an extra $25 each so that's not so bad. Save a load of time by flying so we can spend more time in the cities.

This morning, we met at 8 to go to the War Remenants museum. There's loads of vehicles there from the Vietnam war like helicopters and tanks.
We didn't actually know much about the Vietnam war. Knew it had happened, but what we didn't know is how bad it was. It was horrific. We read about all the thousands of bombs that the US dropped on Vietnam and how they used chemical bombs that are/were illegal. There are many many people who are deformed through exposure to the chemical Agent Orange from the bombs. And worse, there are many many children who have been born with all kinds of different problems: dwarfism, deformed faces, different limbs missing, no muscles in limbs, the list is endless. They also had malformed foetus' on display as well as pictures of people with the deformities - it was a shocking way to learn about the war. It wasn't just chemical bombs though, civilians were slaughtered and tortured.
I thought what we learnt in Cambodia about the Khmer Rouge was bad, but what the Americans did was probably worse. I never learnt about the Vietnam war and the only things I know about chemical bombs are the ones Saddam Hussain used in Iraq. What he did was bad, but what the Americans did was worse. And if you read about what they were doing in Vietnam, like creating the puppet government for example, it's similar to what they are doing in Iraq now.
Anyway, I still don't know that much about the history of these different wars, but we have seen and read the after affects...and it's hard to put into words how disgusted and depressed you feel about it all.

We spent just over an hour in there, and then went to find some breakfast, as it was still only 9.45, and had plenty of time to relax and have a coffee.
We had a couple of hours before we needed to set off for our flight, so I used the time to update the Off Exploring blog and photos, and managed to upload some photos to Facebook too.

(hope everybody is remembering to change the dates on the blog entries in the top left hand corner above the text of this blog!)

Next stop, Hoi An...