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After arriving in Saigon at about 6am in the morning it only took about an hour until I had bumped into almost everyone from Nha Trang and previous. Shows how all the backpackers head to the same place. Had a look around the city and although there are even more motorbikes on the road than there are in Hanoi, the streets are wider so it is not quite so chaotic. Ended up walking all the way to the botanical gardens but when we went in it turned out it was pretty much just the zoo and not many gardens. Bit sad there as the animals did not look at all happy and were in dirty cages. They just don't really know how to treat their animals in this country I guess when they eat for dinner the animals that we keep for pets! Did also manage to see the Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral and their very impressive Post Office as well.
Got up early the next morning and headed over to the War Remnants Museum and there is no holding back with the pictures that they show from the Vietnam War. It was really interesting though if pretty harrowing as to how totally brutal it all was. They had a whole section on the journalists and photographers that risked their lives to cover the war which was really interesting. You have to have so much respect for the risks that they took and the risks journalists are still taking covering the likes of Iraq. The stuff that they see must stay in their heads forever. The rest of the day was not quite as depressing and we ended up meeting a Youtube celebrity in Bill, that worked in the market selling postcards. He is in his 70's or 80's, has learnt all his English from watching American movies and cracked us up with all his Western sayings like 'Take it easy man'. Hard to explain how funny he is but go on Youtube and search 'Bill Saigon' and you can see him for yourself. He has become a bit of a local legend with people that had seen him on the internet searching him out to say hello.
Had a very early start the next day to go and see the Cu Chi tunnels that the Vietcong operated out of during the war. There was no political correctness in terms of how they spoke of the Americans and showed all the fighters that had been given awards for manging to kill the most Americans! They had made the area fairly touristy which made it feel more like a reconstruction than the real thing at times but it was still a fascinating place to see how resourceful the Vietcong were with their traps that they made and how the tunnels were constructed. You could go down into the tunnels which we did and even though they had widened one level so that the Westen tourists could fit through, it was still so tight down there and really hot and claustrophic. You could get out at the first available exit but I went down to the next level where the tunnels were even darker, even hotter and even tighter and the only way through was on hands and knees. How they did it with all their equipment in the middle of a war with a lot more people down there baffles me because the 10 or so minutes I was down there was more than enough for me! I even got to fire an AK47 while I was there and the noise that it made was deafening and after day after day of warfare that noise must have kept ringing in their ears for a long time after.
My last few days in Vietnam were just spent chilling out as by now I was just waiting for my flight to Singapore to see Jo and Neil. As amazing as the backpacking is, it will be very nice to have a short break from it in Singapore.
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