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Leaving Mui Ne with a heavy heart, at least from me if not Page, we travelled down to Ho Chi Minh and we were pleasantly surprised. It's a vibrant, clean (ish, for Asia) friendly city where people seem to actually enjoy, rather than lament, their status as a tourist hot spot. We decided to treat ourselves a bit, it being Christmas and all, and splurged on a slightly nicer hotel than we were used to and we were not disappointed.....Page almost died when she saw we had a bath (she had 4 in 5 days!?)!
I wanted to learn a bit more about the Vietnam War (or the American war as the Vietnamese call it) so we headed off to the war remnants museum and like most of the museums in Vietnam this was massively changed from what we have been told about the war in the west. We can't quite decide if the other museums we've been to in England and America are equally propaganda filled and we just don't notice!? Either way it was a bit boring (also like most Asian museums) but it did have a lot of photos of the war crimes committed by Americans during the war and I have to admit the photos seem to show a lot of terrible things.....I guess it made me realise the power or propaganda!
To try to understand a bit more about what it would have been like to be a Vietnamese soldier during the war we decided to visit the Cu Chi tunnels which served as an underground home for the guerrilla fighters just outside "Saigon". I found it very interesting and had a great time, I went down into the tunnels and even got to shoot an AK47, Page on the other hand was not so enamoured and became petrified of the noises from the AK47 - she even had to move away and put her ipod in!
Before we get to Christmas I'd like to impart some wisdom on crossing the road here in Vietnam. In England it seems perfectly adequate to wait for a gap in the traffic, or even a red light and then walk casually across the road, if you tried this in Ho Chi Minh you would never get across. In Ho Chi Minh you just have to go for it, let cars go past and hope the millions of mopeds swerve around you, one guide we had at the very beginning of our trip told us to imagine that we are a stone in the middle of a river of traffic - a lesson I took to heart and came to see the whole endeavour as an adventure Page however hasn't enjoyed it and almost has a heart attack every time we cross!
This brings us to Christmas which, being in a Buddhist country, we didn't have much hope for however it turned out to be great (well Christmas eve at least). We spent the evening sitting on a street side drinking 40p beers, the street was so busy it was reminiscent of a Jubilee street party! There were people spraying "snow" (even one bloke who kept spraying it in people's faces, Page was ready to bottle him at one point when he got a baby in the face, as were a lot of people!), singing and everyone was talking to everyone. We met a lovely group of Vietnamese people and a couple from India/Singapore (Page thought it was hilarious when I said they had really good English, I hadn't heard them say they were from Singapore which is an English speaking country - a bit like telling an American they have good English!? Whoops). Anyway this night of frivolity meant that Christmas day was a bit of a write off, we kind of ignored it really - had pasta for Christmas dinner and sat in a cafe playing movies most of the day. We did however go up the Saigon Sky Tower which was cool, not a hugely clear day, but you could still see pretty far around the city. From the outside it looks like Tony Starks/Iron Mans house, that's what I was most excited about but Page didn't seem to care.....silly girl haha.
Oh, I almost forgot....the most terrible thing in the world happened here, my flip flops broke. Now some of you may think that this is no big deal, and in a way it wasn't because I picked up some new ones the next day for a few dollars, but I was devastated. I had moulded them to my feet and could cross continents in them quite comfortably if necessary. Now I'm stuck with a genuine pair of AberCONNbie beauts till I go home, nightmare!
We have been in Phnom Penh for a couple of days but we will fill you in on our Cambodian adventures in another blog, hope everyone has had wonderful Christmas and we wish you a happy new year!
Love to all.xx
- comments
debglithero the things you've done/seen ,amazing.did you have a memorial service for the flip flops !! merry christmas xx