We arrived safely in Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh city and soon found that the taxi drivers are absolute cocks with one taking us for a 25 minute tour of the city when all we needed was to go around 3 corners and we would have been where we wanted to go, but when your in a new city and its 9:00pm at night and you dont know where your going $20 doesnt seem like a massive price to pay for getting to a clean hotel safely.
Day 1 in Saigon:
Wake up at 7am to go and have as look at Cao Dai temple one of the only temples in south East Asia that recognises more than one religon with this one being for 3, interesting yes, uncomfortable watching 100 people prey to their god yes, would I recomend going no. Now for the main reason we decided to come to Saigon the Cu Chi tunnels, a series of tunnels that vary in depths that were created firstly as a means of scantuary to escape the bombs of those crazy demons (the americans) who bombed and shot everything they even shot the pots and pans as we learnt in a propeagander video that was the prequel to our look at the innovative traps that the Viet Cong used against their enemy the one i liked most was the one that was designed like a fish trap where 7 barbs direct your foot into the centre without injuring but in the centre there is one spike pointing straight up that goes straight through your foot and the guiding barbs that are pointing down trap your foot, they called it a suvioner trap because most of the Americans took the trap home because they couldnt get it off their foot, then we went and had a look at the entrance to the tunnles I had difficulties as it soon became apparent that no matter how skinny i was my hips were to wide to fit down, oh well, we then went into the tunnels that had been made taller so that westerners would fit down these tunnels were aprox 3 feet tall but about 2 feet wide, they were very intereasting and it made us wonder how people lived down there for months on end. now for a beer or two and get ready for day 2
Day 2 in Saigon:
today was a quiet day going into the Mekong Delta we were originally planning on going into this area for a few days however our cock up with the visa that you would have read in the previous blog took a few days and something had to give so instead we did a day trip we went we listened to traditional music (i believe that being a musician here isnt that hard most instruments arent in any noticable tune and there is not real rhythm) we ate some hunny straight out of the bee hive that tasted awesome, we then went for a paddle boat ride the two people that were in the back of out boat were in their late 50's and didnt seem to understand that if they rocked hard enough that the boat would tip over, luckly enough they didnt tip the boat over and we contuned our trip where we saw some people making coconut candy which tasted very good (they acted like it was new i dont think they have bounty bars here...) after this we went to a temple which had a big buddha at it after the millions of buddhas that we have seen we just took photos and left nothing amazing about this one then for the 2 hour bus ride back to the city!
R&L
