Good Morning Vietnam

Reunification Palace Tank
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The whole plan all along was to get to Vietnam for the first of June and stay for 2 weeks.  This would give us half a month in Vietnam and half a month in China before meeting up with the our tour.  So we left Cambodia wishing that we had more time... but excited for a new country and a new adventure.  The bus is only 6 hours from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City.. and the craziest thing happened.  THE BUS DID NOT BREAK DOWN!!!  It was amazing.  Also, the bus had air conditioning as advertised.. and actually turned it on!  Wow.  Our bus was full of Vietnamese who had been visiting Cambodia and was actually a Vietnamese company which may explain the slightly nicer circumstances.  We crossed the border over land which was the first time and it went fairly smoothly.  It was a little hot waiting in the line to pass through.. but there were no issues.  Some guy had bribed the bus driver to put a giant box on the bus during the cross over.. but that had nothing to do with us so we were fine.

Ho Chi Minh City
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Ho Chi Minh City is very different then the last few places we had visited.  It is huge.. and noisy.. and obviously more developed than Cambodia or Laos.  We liked it.  It started to pour rain when we got off the bus.. so we found a hotel that was close by and checked in.  We started Vietnam the way it should be started with Pho, a noodle soup.  It is so good... the beef is put in raw, but the soup is really hot and cooks it as you start to eat.  We also had vietnamese coffee with sweet condensed milk and were hooked.  It is delicious and almost as thick as syrup.  It will wake you up.. thats for sure.

The food in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam has been really easy.  They were all colonized by the French.. so you can eat rice and noodles.. or have a really good coffee and a baguette.  All the western food in these countries is actually pretty good.. unlike Thailand and Malaysia where you were better off eating the local dishes.  A quick note about the fruit.  We have already mentioned the weird and delicious fruit here.. but in Laos we tried something called a durian.  It's banned on all public transport and most hotels because it stinks.. bad.  Apparently you have to try it a few times to like the taste.. but I can tell you from one attempt it is pretty bad.  It tastes almost like garlic and is really mushy in your mouth.  If it takes 5 tries to like it I will never know.. because I am not getting close to it again.

We took it easy the first day not really seeing much except the crazy traffic.  We put up a video on flickr.  There are hundreds.. no thousands of scooters everywhere.. and they do not stop for pedestrians.  You just walk, slowly making eye contact with the closest bike.. and he will either move in front or behind you.  Slowly you work your way across and somehow you make it.

When most people think of Vietnam they think of the Vietnam war.  There is lots of history in Ho Chi Minh City.  In the war the Americans were fighting on the side of the south against the North who were communists.  Its really funny because at home they make the Americans out to be the good guys.. but here.. southern Vietnam was "liberated" from the Americans by the north.  Both stories are pretty one sided and I imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle.  HCMC used to called Saigon and most of the locals still call it this.  Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, formerly called the American War Crimes Museum... which was changed because it was apparently not appreciated by the US visitors :)  It has a number of picture displays of the war including some horrific shots of US soldiers killing women and children.  There was also pictures of the lasting effects of agent orange on the population.  It was spray to kill off the jungle.. but has caused lots of birth defects.  The even had unborn deformed fetuses which was pretty gross.

We ate some more Pho and then went to the former government palace of the south now called Reunification Palace.  This was the strong hold of the southern army and where they surrendered when the northern tanks crashed through the front gates to end the war.  The building was pretty neat with a built in underground bomb shelter where they ran lots of the war.  The two tanks that crashed through the fence are still on display in front of the building.  The rest of the day we walked around in the backpacker area where we were staying.. and then went to bed.

The next morning we joined a tour group and went outside of HCMC to the Cu Chi tunnels.  When the Viet Kong (North) fought with the Americans they used these tunnels to hide and live in.  It was pretty amazing.  We saw displays of all the horrible traps the Viet Kong set up with nails and bamboo spikes.  They also showed a movie that was about 40 years old that showed how the locals were getting medals for killing Americans.  It was weird and the biggest propaganda movie I have ever seen.  Eventually we got to crawl through the small tunnels.  In the Vietnam war they were actually not super small compared to old tunnels used to fight the French but it was still hard to crawl through and not feel claustrophobic.  I made it 30 meters and then took the escape hatch.  Krystal was braver (no surprise) and made it all the way to the end.  90 meters.  Apparently at the end it was pitch black and a little scary.  The tour was fun but really touristy with about a million other people milling around.  Overall it was a good experience.

That night we booked a night train to take us North to Hoi An.  Most of the trains were completely booked so we have to sleep in a hard sleeper with 4 others in our room and we get the dreaded top bunk.  Adventure.