Day 13 - Saigon

Like the previous post said we arrived in Saigon at 4:30 in the morning so we were pretty knackered. We couldn't even check in to the hotel until mid morning so we went on our tour of Saigon. Saigon is the western brother of Hanoi in the north. Saigon has more traffic lights and the mopeds are a bit more organised, but then there is a lot more on the road than Hanoi. Crossing the road here is almost as bad as Hanoi, except for the fact that they have "tourist police". The tourist police are great, they always look unhappy 'cause of the awful green uniform they have to wear, but when they see you they smile and help you cross the road or try to answer any questions that you have about the area.

We decided on having our cyclo tour round the city to kill some time. Like I said, everyone was pretty knackered from getting up early, Andrea was coughing like a trooper and not talking 'cause she's allergic to early mornings.

The first stop was the war remnants museum. This place was pretty amazing and will leave quite an impression on me for some time to come. Whilst the museum in Hanoi was overtly more biased, here the photos pretty much told the story. Outside the place there are capture vehicles, aircraft and bombs, but it's the inside that's the most dramatic. There are quite a few famous photos here and most of them have been taken by American journalists during the war. Of course i can imagine there was atrocities on both sides and this place wasn't going to speak about the VC ones, it certainly shouted very loudly about the American ones, particularly agent orange and the My Lai Massacre.

The next stop was the reunification palace, this was quite cool as we'd seen the different photo's from the war where the tanks went crashing through the gate (it marked the end of the war). Both of the tanks that did this are restored and are on displace at the from of the palace :) The palace itself wouldn't look out of place in Milton Keynes as it was pretty bland and ugly.

Our little cyclo tour then headed into the center of the city, on the way we saw a street stall selling puppies,turtles,squirrels, and chipmunks (our guide Khiem thought that only the puppies were pets the rest was being sold for food!). Then it was a off to the Notre-Dame cathedral and the post office in the city to look at their architecture, they're the oldest buildings in Saigon. That marked the end of the visits and only the return cyclo trip back was to go. The one sight i remember seeing on this journey back was going through the posh shopping area, there was a giant Louis Vuitton shop and right outside the shop was an old woman getting told to "move" by the police as she was trying to sell live chickens to passers by. hahahaha I'm guessing it'll be a while before the place is fully westernised and that'd be a good thing.

Back at the hotel we dashed out again to hit the big market, Andrea was getting an itchy purse. We went to a "Pho 2000" place for lunch first i had a beef stew which was nice and everyone else didn't like theres. There was a picture of Bill Clinton on the wall when he visited, the photos are following us as we saw a similar one on the wall in a craft shop in Hanoi. In the market, we lost people countless times and traders offered me clothing, watches, coffee beans, junk and tat. A massive storm hit then which made us stay in the market to try and wait it out, this storm was not going away though so we just had to make a break for it back to the hotel. Everyone pretty much fell asleep for the afternoon then.

The evening consisted of a few of us going out for a posh Chinese where they served stuff like "pig's stomach". I don't think anyone really enjoyed their meal that night and Carmel had to wait over an hour for hers to turn up (she was always last to be served).