Goodnight Saigon (Knives, Knives, Knives!)

So good morning Vietnam and all that! Hooray we are in Saigon and country number four in the trip. Saigon is a huge, bustling, fun city with crazy driving and loads to see and we managed to meet up for one last shindig with our ol' Pai friends David and Lisa. After a cheap and delicious curry, we headed out for some 5,000 dong fresh beer (thats about 15p a glass)

David and Lisa are here front left, and they introduced us to some cool people, including Paul who had cycled from Hanoi to Saigon in 19 days.

So we set about the immense task of exploring Saigon, first taking a stroll through the Botanical Gardens where we were attacked by some fierce creatures:

If I keep really still and try to blend in, maybe they won't see me...

We stumbled upon a display of Vietnamese Water Puppetry in our journey round Saigon History Museum. Don't forget to turn the sound on!

That night we returned to our guesthouse in the torrential rain, only to find that our third floor room was flooding...

As we ventured out for food I found the water on the road came almost up to my knees! I had to take off my flip flops and wade home for fear of losing them under the water.

We spent a few days exploring the War Museum, Reunification Palace (where the North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates at the end of the war to take control) and some of the local parks.

Reunification Palace

One of many rooms with phones at the Reunifications Palace

Fisherman's Friends Bench

Notre Dame Cathedral

Jenny and some friends and the Ho Chi Minh City Museum

Then we went for some Franco-Vietnamese ice cream:

We decided to venture out of town a little and visit a local theme park called Dam Sen. It had loads of fun rides (haunted houses, dinosaur lands, jungle adventures - even a roller coaster) We found in the midst of all this in the 35 degree heat, an ice palace.

Dam Sen had a water park too, but we decided not to visit it in the end as we were the only non-Vietnamese people in the park, and that seemed to attract a LOT of attention, so when the rain came in the afternoon we headed back to the city.

The next morning we struck out with some other people to be Viet Cong in the Cu Chi tunnels. These are a network of tiny tunnels built underground for about 250K to fox the American soldiers in the war. Our guide was actually a 'Tunnel Rat'  - a small Philippino man employed by the US to go down into the tunnels where they themselves couldn't fit.

Our guide Mr Bean showing us the entrance to one of the tunnels

My bum halfway down one of the tunnels -

they got a LOT smaller than that - we couldn't make it to the end

Spikey Man-trap - eek!

Here endeth our time in Saigon - On to Dalat...