Saturday, May 10, 2008

Last Stop Saigon!

With another early morning arrival from the sleeper bus, we had a look around the local hotels in Pham Ngu Lao- a local hangout of the backpackers and the travelers. Down another 'budget alley' we soon found our hotel the Ngoc Linh. For $15 a night we get big room, hot water, satellite TV, free breakfast, free Internet....you really can live it up for a little in Vietnam! After a short sleeper bus catch up we decided to head out into the big city! Having read our trusty lonely planet guide book we decided to make a start on the walking tour around the bustling busy busy city!!!


On day 2 we completed the rest of the walking tour by going to all the major attractions such as the War Remnants museum, Reunification Palace and HCMC History Museum and Ben Tanh market. The War Remnants Museum is a must see, it's a heart wrenching museum currently showing a exhibition of war photographs from a number of countries including Sri Lanka. The rest of the museum also contains photographs from the Vietnam war, some of which are truly harrowing and make you question humanity, some of the things the Americans did to the innocent Vietnamese and their country is simply disgusting.

As a day of relaxation and in order to allow Geth to release the child trapped within went to a water park one day - fantastic fun!
We also booked ourselves on a day trip to the Mekong Delta and (despite our apprehensions due to previous day trip experiences) found ourselves on a highly enjoyable and relaxed tour! We took a minibus - yes we in a reasonable sized group for once! - to the Mekong Delta and then hopped onto a boat to the floating market, from there we then went a coconut candy factory and rice paper factory. After this we went to an island for lunch and a bike ride before heading back to the mainland and the bus. A very pleasant experience indeed!
We also took a half day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, felt a little bit like sheep on this one but crawling through tunnels was great fun! We were a little gutted we didn't get to fire the guns on offer but the bullets were simply extortionately priced for our limited budget!

After a week exploring in Saigon we were then getting ready to jet off to our fifth country in as many months...Malaysia!

My apologies once again for the lack of photographs but yet again the computer won't upload for us...we will hold an exceptionally long and arduous slide show upon our return to which all family and friends will be made to attend and bored to death...jokes!

Much love to everyone back at home
Susy and the Ginger One x




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