Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City! Our final destination in Vietnam!
It is lucky I still have one last place to talk about as my last week and a half has been spent studying... I have either been in class (28h of class last week!) getting food or studying by the pool! Mid-term is over now and went better then expected so hopefully I will have time to start exploring to have more to talk about... until then I have Saigon to talk about :)
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They say there are 10million people in the city and 5million with motorbikes.
for a guy: if you have 1 bike you have 1 girl friend, 2 bikes = 2 girlfriends, 3 =3 and so on...
that's what they told us at least! |
This is by far the busiest city I have ever experienced! More cars, bikes, scooters, tuk-tuks, people and bicycles then any other city street! I thought Hanoi was bad, crossing the street in Saigon is another experience all in its own!
We arrived in the city early afternoon and after finding a hotel to stay in we roamed the city.
Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum. We were warned before we went that it was a very powerful and intense museum but it was still a bit of a shock once we arrived. The museum used to be called "The American War Crimes Museum" and is a more fitting name to go along with the exhibits. As with the rest of our holiday we were fascinated to see what the Vietnam's had to say about the war. It was especially interesting for Amber having grown up in America where the war is not talked about much for how controversial it was. It is the type of museum you walk out of and stay silent for many minutes after. Interesting but intense and not very forgiving towards Americans.
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| Entrance to the museum, with the new name... |
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| American planes on display |
After the visit we roamed the city awhile but we were exhausted by then so decided to go to the park near our hotel and people watch. We sat for awhile watching the Vietnamese play a game similar to hackie0sack but with something that looked more like a badminton birdie... they are very good with their feet!
While sitting in the park, watching ballroom dancing actually, 3 guys came up to us and asked if they could speak English with us. I was very suspicious and skeptical at first but they turned out to genuinely want to practice their English and we ended up going out for drinks with them later in the night. It was pretty funny!
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| Sunset from the park... |
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| Cathedral that we walked past. |
The next day we woke up bright and early to go to the CuChi Tunnels! It was a long bus there but well worth it!
The CuChi people lived in these tunnels for 7 years! They made the tunnels so they could hide from the Americans and attack them very sneakily! The amount of booby traps that they created were shocking!
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| Used to kill the sniffer dogs... the dogs to sniff out the mines... instead they would put fish oil on top to attract the dogs and well you can see what would then happen... |
The tunnels were tiney! Here is one of the entrances to the tunnels that I could even hop into! (it was dark and a little creepy... )
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| Now you see it... |
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| now you dont... Camouflaged! (well kinda) |
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| ME :) went in and even closed the top down on myself! |
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| The entrance to one of the tunnels. |
Half way through the tour we had the opportunity to shoot guns! You had the option of many but we chose...
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| AK47! |
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| We were also able to climb up on an American tank! |
The final part of the tour was a real tunnel that they "widened" for us giant westerners... I have to say their idea of widening is not wide in the slightest... I have never once felt claustrophobic, I've never been scared of heights or anything along those lines and this is the first time I have ever started to feel claustrophobic.
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