Dan and Ells' Travels: Last stop in Nam, Ho Chi Minh City

Sun 24 June

So we hop on the bus for our trip to Saigon, another nice long bus trip (7hours), but was all good because we had a delightful bus that was comfy. Something interesting we have noticed is that at gas stations, they often don’t even turn off their cars/buses, and they freaking smoke around it too! Crazy. Arriving in Saigon it was nice to be in a large city again as bit of a change. We didn’t have to walk far to check out places to stay, found a cheap one for $5 each a night, and boy was it a piece of shit - discovered later that the toilet leaked and when I had a shower I tried to close the door and ended up catching it before it fell on me.

this one is for Sean

Mon 25 June

Elliot had a shower, and then too realised that it was a shit hole place so we headed out to find a better place, and found one two doors down and down an alley, YAY. We headed out to look around town, with the intention of checking out the war remnants museum. After walking around in the warm warmness, and getting a toothpick stuck in my big toe (painful!) we got to the war museum, which with our good luck was not open till one due to some electrical problems. So instead we went to the independence palace and learnt some historical things, and then tootled back to the museum. Wow, that place is intense (it’s a museum on the vietnam/usa war).

Independance palace

a copy of the tank that crashed through the palace gates

maps in the palace

a fancy room in there

the Notre Dame Cathedral

batty little seats

war museum machine

tiger prison cell

large bullet thing

Tue 26 June

Today we went to the Cu Chi tunnels (tunnels that the Cu Chi people dug that they hid in during the war), about a 1.5 bus ride out of Saigon (at this point my ass is getting used to all the bus rides).

mmm delicious pho for breakfast

Our tour guide, Ken also loved the “my family” chat, so us and this bus of 15 strangers were all family, yea ok. It was pretty funny when we got to the place and there are plenty of other tour guides around also saying “this way my family” argh, thank god he was wearing a bright green top that also made him easily identifiable! Ken toured us around the park, showing us different traps they used to catch out americans, woooooo they be brutal much.

Ken getting in a hidey hole

one of the many evil spikey traps

After all the traps came the tunnel (a recreated tunnel for tourists – and they also made these tunnels wider so tourists could get through them) I got in, turned a corner and NAH bro that was not for me, I had to turn around and get out, totes claustrophobia. Ell went through the whole thing, go team go.

After we arrive back into Saigon, we think hey lets walk along the Saigon river and check out the opera house! It was so warm and we had done so much walking the day before we could not appreciate the pretty opera house. But we did go to the large mall and looked like poor hobos amongst all the designer brand stalls. And the we stumbled across Games World, it looked like crack for kids, it was all colourful lights, a hideous high pitched song on repeat and many many arcade games.

ze river

opera house

there are a few motorbikes around

office on the street...

need I say it

Weds 27 June

Had a totally unco morning, we were out to breakfast at our fav place - asian kitchen (2 doors down from our guesthouse) and I managed to spill my delicious smoothie all over myself, followed by a coughing fit, then I headed back up to the room to shower my sticky smoothie carcass and then realised I had left my camera in the restaurant – lucky for donnies it was still there. Whilst we were having breakfast we chatted to an English couple that had been on a couple of out bus trips around Vietnam, and they were flying out on the same flight as us that evening to Bangkok, so we planned to share a cab to the airport later that arvo. We had time to kill before our taxi and also dong to spend before we left so headed out on a spree. Ell got his teeth polished and cleaned for 180,000Dong (equivalent to around $10NZ). I chose to buy things.