Ho Chi Minh City (26 - 29 September 2007)
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City by bus from Da Lat at about 18:00 and struggled to find a hotel for under $10 per night. We finally settled for The Blue River Hotel at $13 and this hotel turned out to be fantastic - I would really recommend it to anyone travelling to Ho Chi Minh.
Ho Chi Minh City is a buzzing city with a population of about 10 million. As you know, we are not fans of the city-scene and we decided to do a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels for one day, do some admin for another and then head out to the Mekong Delta for our remainder in Vietnam.
We booked a tour for the famous Cu Chi tunnels, just out of town, and it also included visiting the Cao Dai Great Temple. What a bizarre day this turned out to be!
The tour guide, Slim Jim (I kid you not), was an absolute ass! The tour group consisted of five Spaniards, two Aussies, a Brazillian guy named Mao, a couple from Hong Kong and four people from Japan and, off course, two South Africans.
On fetching us from the hotel, the guide asked where we were from, on which we replied “South Africa”. On the chock a block minibus, he went off on a tangent about how he hated South Africans, and South Americans, and Italians, and Spaniards, bla bla bla! anyone who he felt could not speak or understand English was not worthy of his respect (I did not know that South Africans cannot speak English!!!).
Apparently, he only liked Australians! As a matter of fact, he likes the Aussies so much that he bought an Australian phrase book, with Australian jokes that he shared with the Australian couple in our minibus. Slim Jim also made it very clear to us that the tourists today are not as nice as back in the day. He condemned the Brazilian for touching the air conditioning thingy in the bus - screaming at him not to break the air-con! After what felt like an eternity, we finally arrived at the temple and Slim Jim explained the repercussions of not being back at the bus on time!I must admit, I returned five minutes earlier to the bus, as I was not taking the risk of experiencing Slim Jim’s wrath!
We made some good friends on the bus though - strange how people stick together in times of crisis - and we all just laughed-off Slim Jim’s remarks. George and Doug, we will definitely visit you guys when we are in Hong Kong again!
The Cao Dai temple was very interesting - the Cao Dai religion is only 80 years old and consists of a combination of four religions (Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism). Their symbol is the Devine Eye, which insinuates that their gods see everything. We attended a prayer service at noon and Eon got great pictures of this colourful temple and the worshippers.
From the temple, on the way back to Ho Chi Minh, we stopped at the Cu Chi Tunnels. Here we had the opportunity to see what the tunnels looked like where the Viet Cong soldiers used to hide for weeks at end from the Americans during the war. The tunnels were not just for hiding, but became so intertwined, that it was a safe way for them to travel around and have war strategy meetings. These tunnels are extremely small, some only 80 cm wide and high. We crawled through one of the tunnels that were widened to about 1 meter wide and 1,2 meters high to accommodate tourists. And even at this size, I was straining to move along. Unfortunately, it was pouring down and we could not get any photos of this.
At the Cu Chi shooting range, visitors get to fire some AK47’s. The Irish guy had a bit too much to drink the night before and he was a bit bomb-shocked at the shooting range - hiding behind other tourists, using them as decoys against the blearing bullets’ racket. In his disarray, he got separated from the group and for some reason ventured into the tunnels by himself and got ‘lost’ (the tunnel is only 100 meters long and runs in only one direction!.). Anyway, he finally got back to the bus, soaking wet, covered in mud and looking bewildered. I could not help laughing at the poor guy’s story - only when you’re Irish!
The last day in Ho Chi Minh was used for serious souvenir shopping, admin, emailing and sending home the treasure that we have acquired in Vietnam. After buying three bottles of snake wine as gifts to our dads (and one for ourselves), the lovely lady at the post office informed us that we are not allowed to mail this home. So now we will have to travel with three bottles filled with snakes, scorpions and some alcoholic substance!
Book Review: The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
So I finished reading my first book for this trip - a brilliant gift from Melindi!
This is a must read - a tear-jerking tale of a young Afghanistan boy, Amir, and his hare-lipped friend, Hassan. The book portrays the honest emotions we all experience in a friendship - love, jealousy, happiness, sadness, loneliness and many more.
I cried all the way on the bus from Da Lat to Ho Chi Minh City. Eon has taken up the challenge of reading it too, and so far he says that it is a bit depressing! I’ll give him time to finish it and then let him comment on the book as well.
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