Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
Thursday, November 2, 2006
After a very early morning flight away from our confined room in Kowloon to Ho Chi Minh City (saigon), we were more than a little scared about what our next hotel would be like. After a insane taxi ride from HCMC airport, where i think i saw all of the 4 million motorbikes that are in the city, we arrived at the Metropole. It looked great from the outside, a good start and then when we saw our room i was wrapped! We arrived there about midday and decided we needed a bit of a sleep after not sleeping at all at the last place. After that we got up, and still not keen to leave the hotel, we had dinner in the restaurant downstairs and headed back to bed. The next day we had booked a city tour which took us in a mini van to Notre Dame Cathedral where we lit a candle we bought from an old disabled man who was selling them for charity. we also went to the General Post Office which was more exciting than it sounds because it is a big old building. The next stop was the Reunification Hall which is like the Presidental Palace, with heaps of pretty fancy rooms for entertaining guests from all over the world as well as bunkers in case of "accidents" upstairs, as our guide told us
. Next was the War Museum which has several of the tanks, planes and weapons used in the war as well as some pretty grousome photos (all of which painted the Americans in a terrible light). This was where Ral got ambushed by a war veteran who had no arms only one leg and one eye, who convinced him to buy a copy of a book he was selling, he did just to get away. We had a break for lunch which was actually bought off the street from a lady, it was the first time i was game enough to try this because of my germ phobia. the food was pretty good and i stuck with vegetarian, Ral of course ate whatever they gave him. In the after noon we went to the Giac Lam Pagoda (a Buddhist temple), the Binh Tay market where i bought my first souvenir, a fake prada bag, and then we went to the Thien Hau Temple, which is not a religious place but a spiritual one that allows to you prey to any god, or just ask for luck. It was here that i lit a coil incense with all of the families names written on a piece of paper to bring everybody luck. (How did it go? Did our horse win a race?) After all of this we were pretty buggered but we headed out for dinner to "Good MOrning Vietanm" which is actually an Italian restaurant and then to the GO2 Bar for way too much beer!
The next day we booked a tour to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai temple. It took a good 2 hours to get to the Cao Dai Temple which is a place of worship for 4 different religions, Catholic, Buddhist, Chinese Confusism and Hindu (?)
. Here we listened to them sing at prayer time and admired this massive colourful temple. Next we stopped for lunch and again we had traditional Vietnamese food which i was getting used to. On to the Cu Chi Tunnels next which was actually probably the most interesting thing so far. The way the Vietnamese speak about the war it is as though it is still so fresh in their minds and they believe that were 100% justified in their actions. At the tunnels we were shown some brutal traps and devices used by the Vietnamese, but also some ingenious ideas the had for tricking the enemy. The tunnels themselves go for around 200kms and we only went through about 100metres of them and that was hard enough. That night we went out for dinner with a couple from England and a guy from Singapore that we met on the tour, we had a great night and a few laughs, and again way to much beer!
The third day and our last tour for HCMC was to the Mekong Delta. Our first stop was Mythowhere we caught a boat across to Bentre. Here we saw people making the coconut candy (awesome!) and got sucked into buying a heap of it. After a quick coconut drink we were onto another smaller boat to a small village that was actually a bee farm that made some weird honey tea, where we held the pet python and had some photos. We stopped for lunch and then some tropical fruits and then listened to some traditional music. next we were on an even smaller canoe which took us through little canals surrounded by coconut trees it was really nice. Back on the bus again and back to our hotel where we decided it was a night for room service before our early flight!
