Sorry for the very very very very long time since our last blog update. We have been crazily busy. Right pick up where we left off, Saigon............
After we had recovered from our bus ride we had an adventure round the city, which rules!! Its full of little old alleys that take up random little streets, filled with street food and little market stalls. The motorbike system was mental, the roads were constantly awash with scooters!! No matter where you looked there was a scooter driver coming right at you.
On the first day me and Shalina spilt up for a few hours as we needed some time apart as we had been travelling constantly together for a long time. So Shalina went of to explore the culture of the city, i went of to find ........food!.
Up of the alleys near our hostel me and another girl found the most AMAZING noodles in Saigon, for only 15,ooo. Which is crazy cheap, something like 50p, with fresh noodles, fresh spring rolls everything. This lady became known for the rest of our stay as "Noodle Lady" very imaginative i know.
The next day i woke up to find one of our mates we had met previously (in Vietnam) in the bed next to me!!! I was a little bit confused as the last time we saw her was Nha Trang. Soon enough we had made a little group with Shalina, Trude(mate from vietnam),suzi(mate from vietnam),klara, angus, and a german guy who i cant remeber his name. We ventured out to the war museum, which was really cool but quite scary at the same time. As it was all about the Vietnam war and the things the vietnamise people suffered at the hands of the Americans. There were loads of photos of the conflict, a whole section on the photographers who had gone out there and lost their lives. There were make shift Tiger Cages, which is where the americans tortured the VC. It was really well set out with loads of info about the war, like in total 2 million civilians died and 1 million soldiers! It was breath taking i stood staring at a photo of an american soldier just holding up half a corpse of a vietnamise civilian!!!!!
The only down side i thought was it was completly one sided, there was no mention of the american soldiers (except as monsters), no mention of what the VC died to captured americans. But i guess what do you expect when you are in Vietnam!!!!
After this we were starving so we ventured towards the market and picked up some noodles. BIG mstake at 2 pm, inside a building, eating really hot spicy noodles. I was so hot by the end of it, i must have sweated out half my body weight!
So to cool of me a klara went on serach for something cooler, while the others returned to the hostel. We ventured towards a supermarket, but this meant you had to cross a huge roundabout.
This roundabout in question was huge!, which a constant supply of scooters and buses whizzing round it, no system of giving way and letting other people go, definatly not. It was everyone for themselves! We had to cross it holding hands very slowly with scooters whizzing past about 15 cms away from us!!!!!!! We found ice cream which was by a company called "fanny" so we had to get some.
Evening time, a few of us decided to go out into Saigon. We met up with a couple of other guys who we had met previously and decided to head to the main club in Saigon, called Apocolypse Now. Very fitting dont you think? Went in and there were prostitutes EVERYWHERE, male and female! That literally swamped us and where trying to impress us with their moves on the dance floor, which was so funny i was in tears. The club closed at 1am tho, the last song of the night was This Is The End-by The Doors!!!!! Even more fitting, very random, not sure if a line was crossed or not!
Made it back to bar street just in time for the Arsenal Barca game. For anyone who doesnt know im a Arsenal fan, to top it off we met a really nice barca fan. Whicah made the game a whole lot more interesting :). Awesome first night in Saigon.
As the next day i had a huge hangover, Shalina went for an adventure. She had a wander round the market, haggled for Sams bday present. Had a dragon fruitshake!.Whereas i was dying and returned to noodle lady:).
CU CHI TUNNELS tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today we woke up early and had a 3 hour drive to this temple outside of Saigon. It was really beautifull, it was decorated head to toe in massive dragons, every colour of the rainbow. Painted starts on the ceiling and sparrows flying around in the rafters. It was a special temple as it contained 3 different types of religions. They all prayed together but wore 3 different colours, white,yellow and blue. Really nice to see but not sure how it would work at big celebration times, surely there would be fights over who gets the temple!
Anyway proceeded on to the thing i was soooo excited about the Cu Chi tunnels.
For anyone who doesnt kno these tunnels were the tunnel system that the Viet Cong used to defeat the Americans during the Vietnam war. They were homes underground, with the tunnels linking all the way through Vietnam. You could walk from Saigon to the Mekong delta even, underground!! The tour guid was awesome, he was so proud that the Vietnamise had won the ware. He kept saying things like "when the americans invaded MY country" and "WE fought underground" etc etc.
It completly blew my mind, we saw the booby traps the VC used to put down and they were horrible!!!! so deadly it was unbelievable!! Massive bamboo spikes. Apperently the VC used to switch round where the booby traps would be in the tunnels so the ameicans never ever knew where they could be even! There was an american tank that had been blown up by a VC landmine that was still in the same postion today. The VC used to collect any bombs that hadnt exploded take them apart and rebuild them so they could use them, often they would blow up when people were working on them.
It was then time to venture down into the tunnels (which have been widened for westerners). As orginally they were only 80 cm in diameters!!! We went down into the tunnels and i have never been so scared in my entire life! It was pitch black, boiling hot, no space at all you had to crawl!. We went down to the 3 rd level of tunnels and made it right to the end!!! 100 meters of VC tunnels and i will never be the same again. Amazing thing to do, and completly blew my mind at the same time!
It was Trudes last night in Saigon tonight so we all went out. Less we say about that evening the better i think............
We spent the rest of our time in Saigon exploring more of the city. Wandering round to the independence palace/gardens and lots of other things. Found some very radom places, returned to noodle lady quite a few times aswell :)
Off to Bangkok next :)
Sarah
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