Crazy Saigon

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam after the looong bus journey from Phnom Penh and our first impression was... this is a crazy place! There are twice as many mopeds and no one acknowledges the zebra crossings so you have to be very confident to cross the roads! Although this was a very busy city we immediately liked it!

After a little nap we set about exploring the backpacker area and stumbled across a sister shop to one we had been to in Phnom Penh, Mekong Creations, the lady in there was so nice and helpful and gave us a map and lots of info about the city even though we didn't buy anything from there, that was great as we had heard mixed reviews about the friendliness of the Vietnamese people.

We then met up with Cassie and Ciera the Irish girls we met in Battambang which was great and spent a couple of days with them again.

We went to the Cu Chu tunnels which was where people hid from the USA army during the Vietnam war, this was interesting to see, even more so for the heavily one sided propaganda video we were shown which dubbed the USA soldiers as 'Crazy American Devils'.

The tunnels were not for the claustrophobic as your had to bend right down and shuffle through some parts, Mike and I were the only ones to complete the full 200m!!

We also visited the War Remnants museum which was not for the faint hearted, walls lined with gruesome pictures of the War and the after effects of Agent Orange were hard to stomach, but again a must if you are to understand the Vietnamese past.

Other than that we just enjoyed wandering around this city, enjoying the hustle and bustle, seeing the very french influenced architecture and just easing ourselves in to the Vietnamese culture.

'Notre Dame'

For saying we had not really got excited about Vietnam, it seems like an amazing place and we can't wait to see more!

S