Ho Chi Minh City - Blogabond

After a journey that lasted 26 hours and a whole day in bed we finally started to explore Ho Chi Minh City. We were, at first, a liitle scared after a crazy taxi ride from the airport to the Hotel where we unfortunatley witnessed a girl being knocked off her moped and our taxi only just missed her! Nobody seemed to take much notice though and she was straight back up with shopping bags and high heels intact!

The hotel is great and has a mini bar, cable TV and air-con, so much for roughing it!

The first thing the intrepid traveller must learn when in Ho CHi Minh, is how to cross the roads and still be alive when you get to the other side. We had begun to believe that we would spend our entire two weeks here just walking round the same block! However, when in Vietnam do as the Vietnamese do, take a deep breath and just go for it. Corinne is especially good at this, though I think she just closes her eyes! I, on the other hand just follow her and say " oh my god" alot.

Yesterday we had a brillant day. The day before we had been accosted by several people wanting us to see the city sights from the backs of their motor bikes, three words came to mind, NOT A CHANCE! So we gave in when a friendly rickshaw driver offered to take us. As agreed we met him yesterday at 11am and proceeded on our white knuckle ride around the city! You have no choice but to trust these guys and they are excellent at what they do, which is basically to ride out into the middle of very busy roads. (Again lots of eye-shutting is involved!) But we were soon loving it and Naam Proved to be a very good guide and took us to lots of interesting places. We visited two Pagodas in China Town which were extremely beautiful and very peaceful. Then we went off to the Reunifcation Palace Which is still used as a presidential building today. It was facinating and we took a guided tour round, which included the basement/bomb shelter used for war operations in the sixties and seventies. We were then taken to the War Remnants Museum which had many heart breaking pictures of atrocities carried out on Vietnamese people during the war, and the deadly effects of "Agent Orange" which was used as a herbicide to destroy acres of farmland but had horrific effects on the people which have also been passed on to their children. Naam and his partner then took us back to our hotel and we went out for a nice cold beer and scrumptious food (which cost about $3 each!).

Thats all for now folks! We'll catch up with you soon.