Ho Chi Minh City (A.K.A Saigon)

So my time in Thailand had come to an end, I packed up my apartment and backpack and was homeward bound via the beautiful country of Vietnam with a month to explore. First stop the bustling southern city, Ho Chi Minh which used to be called Saigon. I was now on my own again travelling having said goodbye to my fellow teacher friends. I treated myself to a short flight from Bangkok instead of taking a 24 hour bus, and arrived at a sensible time in the after when it was still day light!

I spent my first day in the crazy busy city just walking around and soaking in the atmosphere. I probably got asked about 100 times if I wants a motorbike taxi somewhere from the locals who just wanted to make a bit of money. The roads were crazy, when I first got to Thailand months ago I thought the roads there were bad, but they were nothing in comparison to the mental traffic in Vietnam. They say its the easiest place for a blind man to cross the road as everything will just go round him. This is kind of true, the advice I was given was just to walk slow and steady, do not hesitate and you will be fine, bikes, cars, bus and anything else will just swerve round you.

Vietnam is full of a long and interesting history, involving many wars and conflicts with many different countries. But the one part in history which is still very raw and talked about a lot is there war with America in the 1970's. I didn't know much about what went on in this time period having never had the chance to study it before so learning everything was very intriguing for me. There are certainly two sides to every story and the way the Vietnamese portray what happened compare to the Americans was very interesting indeed. I'm still yet to draw my own opinions from everything having such an information overload in the few days I visited the city. My first source of information came from the Vietnamese War Museum, it was full of graphic images of victims from war injures or agent orange. There was lots of anti America propaganda followed by photos of riots and protests. It was certainly eye opening for me.



For the rest of the day I did a spot of sight seeing walking past a beautiful church and old central post office. This was followed by trying my first Vietnamese street food in the form of a baguette filled with egg, salad and some questionable meat! In the early 1900's Vietnam was a French colony and therefore has many French influence such as delicious bread and bakeries selling delightful pastries and treats!



The following day I booked myself on to the Chuchi tunnels tour which definitely gave me another view to the war between America. Our tour guide was a Vietnamese man who fought in the war for America. He showed us the tunnels where the Vietcong (the tiny Vietnamese soldiers) who crawled and hid in the tunnels. They would then pop out at unknown locations to the US soldiers and kill them. Alternatively they would lay awful traps that would kill or extremely harm the men.

We got the opportunity to crawl through the tiny tunnels, but our western bodies didn't last long, we were too big and claustrophobic for us. That evening I went to experience some more street food in the form of a national dish Wat Pho, which is a delicious and spicy beef noodle soup.

With Love from Vietnam xxx