Next stop is Viet nam...

The dusty roads and rural charm of Cambodia behind us, we were thrown head first into the urban jungle that is Ho Chi Minh City.

HCMC is perhaps better known as Saigon, and is still referred to as such by the locals. When the city was taken for good by the NVA it was renamed in honor of the ever present Uncle Ho. As far as we could tell no one save government officials uses HCMC, even the airport letters are SGN.

Our first 30 minutes in a taxi to our hotel were about as scary as it gets. We have never driven full bore into on coming traffic like we did here. We were overtaking left and right for what? 10 seconds quicker arrival time? To us it just didn't add up, but hey that's the way they do it and we weren't about to get out of the car. What we quickly learned is that when scooters share the road en masse with cars everyone just goes like hell and gets out of the way of the bigger vehicle. This smaller to bigger hierarchy is pretty solid, except somehow pedestrians, if walking slowly are simply avoided and cross entire seas of traffic with complete confidence.


After checking into our hotel we decided to venture out on foot to check out the sights and try our hand at crossing some streets. The first few were somewhat mild, but by the time we reached the Reunification Palace, the traffic was so thick we considered hiring a cyclo just to avoid walking across the street. We did make it after a deep breath and some good blocking by some locals also making their move.





The cathedral in town was our next stop, and interestingly it is not made of brick as it appears, but tile on a cement base. Here's a picture, maybe you can see what I mean...



We only had one spot in town we knew we had to go, the rooftop bar at the Rex Hotel, and that was our next stop. Next to the Rex is one of the most impressive buildings in town, the old city hall.



We enjoyed our drinks at the Rex and had a good laugh when we were taken aback by 2 dollar beers, how can they charge such inflated prices! The Rex Hotel was an old war correspondent haunt and one of the most notorious places in the city.

Here I am, happy to have crossed over a dozen streets successfully. We didn't drink too much because we knew we still had to walk to dinner.



Our dinner was at a place called Bo Tang Xe, and we absolutely loved it! Our meal the previous night in Cambodia was great, but this was even better, definitely top 3 of the trip. The restaurant is, we are borrowing this fitting description, like a beer garden and for about $15 total we both ate and drank till we couldn't any more. The main dish here is beef, marinated in something wonderful, which you grill yourself at the table along with various veggies you can choose to grill or just devour. Here's Michelle working on her next few bites.





We spent the next day at the Cu Chi Tunnels and will post about that seperately asap.

When we returned from our day at the tunnels we made our way to another market that deals in military items. The one thing that I was interested in were vintage zippo's, but we couldn't tell the real from the fakes and you really can't trust anyone, so I decided to have a pass. Here are some jackets as well as helmets in the bottom right corner...



We also came across some industrial products, future competition for QMS Saigon.



After a very long walk to an unfortunately disappointing dinner, we decided to treat ourselves to expensive, this time $3, drinks atop the Sheraton with the best views in town. On the left is the Rex Hotel and the right is City Hall.



Our final morning in Saigon was spent at the War Remnants Museum, a chilling place that was educational and heart breaking at the same time. There were a variety of exhibits on display, the most difficult of which dealt with our use of chemical agents against the Vietnamese people and the long term effects things like agent orange had and are still having on them as well as the offspring of US servicemen. Many of the graphic images are not the kind of stuff that we see at home, but it was an important reminder of the brutality of war. No pictures from this one, as I deleted anything I had after feeling pretty weird about half way through.

Our final Saigon moment was classic gridlock as we were trying to get back to the hotel to get to the airport. We tried to make a left turn, while a bunch of cars had decided to plow through our lane the wrong way and we were at a standstill until a guy got out of the taxi he was in and did his best to make it all work. He eventually succeeded, and we were off to Hanoi.