Our final destination in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City otherwise known as Saigon. Taking another night train this time from Nha Trang to get there. It was due to leave at 9pm, but when we got to the station our leader overheard someone say the train was delayed until 2am - and held our bus while he checked. The news was true and we went back to the hotel where we could watch the end of the film we had started watchng - room 1408, and then we slept around the pool until it was time to leave. We were all so tired that when we got on the train that most of us slept until we reached Saigon. An interesting thing was when we got to the station, all the shop owners were asleep on sunbeds by the platform and when we came they got up and opened the shops - it's sad that they have to do this to sell another bottle of water and can of coke.
This city was different to others we'd visited, there seemed to be more western type shops, and maybe more cars? It was difficult to describe but you could feel it was different. Anyway, our train delay meant that we had lots to do in a little time and first thing was Cu Chi tunnels - for me it was a highlight to see how the vietcong fought against the americans, watch a very dated, one sided video about the war, and we got the chance to jump in the hiding holes and crawl through the tunnels. It was amazing. On top of that we got to fire overpriced AK47 bullets at a picture of a deer! Very boyish but I was surprised how loud it was! Not nice if you had to use one all day - everyday.
Next day we got up early to visit the Mekong Delta which was another massive hit with the group. We took a boat to an island where we say coconut candy made and we spotted some weird fish that use their fins like hands and breathe air! After that some of the boys got to try snake wine, and later we had a superb local lunch and tried some honey wine too - neither of these drinks were really wine but strong liqeur - the snake wine actually has a snake in it!
After this great day we took a cyklo around the city and went to the war museum which was pretty gruesome, and very graffic - it was a little upsetting but good preparation before what we were about to see in Cambodia, and created a lot of discussion among the group about American and international involvement in the conflict.
In the evening we moved hotel and met our new group before going out for a farewell/hello dinner with our new and old groups.
Tomorrow we would go our own seperate ways.
