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We thought Hanoi was crazy and frantic and hot, but Ho Chi Minh City is on its own level. After having fresh air and country side for our week on the bikes we were back to inhaling fumes and diving out of the way of traffic, as well as eating tourist food. What may have made it seem worse was that we were unable to escape the heat. On our rapidly depleting budget we couldn't quite stretch to Air-con in our hotel room. We had a fan but all it did was push hot air around the room. Add that to the terrible mattress and sleep seemed like a thing of the past for our 4 days here, and doesn't make getting through the hot days very easy. 3 cold showers and lots of water just about kept us going, but it meant that after a few hours of sweating in the heat of the day we were flagging again.
One day we spent doing chores, none of which are ever straight forward in Vietnam. First we had to get sun cream, insect repellant and shampoo. We tried to find a supermarket, which we couldn't do so ended up at a market stall where all they had was 15% Deet insect cream which Emma hates the smell of, and 50+ Sun block, which we decided against. Managed to get Head and Shoulders though so our hair smells of home! We eventually found a supermarket, got sun cream and managed to find me some boxers which I was in desperate need of as I'm somehow down to 3 pairs. I am XXXXXL in Vietnamese sizes!!! No comments please!
After our shopping we tried to put some photos up again. It took me 3 and ½ hours, and all I managed to get on the blog was 30 of Emma's NZ photos! It drove me crazy. No where has DVD drives on their computers, and when we found one that did, the internet was so slow, and the drive only worked sometimes. We gave up and went for a beer to recover. The backpacker area of Saigon is pretty chilled out. It has a few Western style coffee bars and lots of restaurants and cafes. The food wasn't a touch on the cheap locals food we were having on the bikes though.
We managed to get out and see Saigon properly for one of our days there though. We followed the Lonely Planet walking tour and went to the HCM City Museum, the War Remnants Museum, Reunification Palace, and saw some of the old impressive French buildings left over from their occupation. This included the Notre Dame Cathedral which was impressive but not a touch on the Paris version, and the post office.
The museums were, for want of a better word, quite harrowing. The HCM City Museum was interesting but had an obvious Communist influence, so it felt you weren't quite getting the full story. The photos of the war were interesting and it had more stories from the Cu Chi tunnels. I'd read a book on them after we visited them on the bikes so it was good to see photos of how the war was fought after reading about it.
The War Remnants Museum was very well done, but very sad. Death was everywhere you looked. There were so many photos of mutilated bodies with proud, grinning soldiers standing next to them, or even in some cases holding them. There was also a huge section of photos from the war taken by photographers who died during it. There were some amazing photos of the action, they really got up close. If it wasn't for them, then the American public would never have known the full story, and the war may have gone on a lot longer.
There was another section all about the innocents that suffer during war time. The children born with deformities due to Agent Orange, and the hundreds of women, children and older generations killed by bombs, land mines and soldiers who don't know who is, and who isn't the enemy. It is scary how similar the Vietnam War and Iraq war seem to be. Things that happened during the Vietnam War must be happening now.
After all of that we headed back to the tourist area to recover and have a drink, before crashing out in our room. All that walking took it out of us and we had an early start the next day to get the bus to Cambodia.
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