This post comes to you courtesy of a reasonable 100d/min. Internet establishment on Thai Van Lung St. in Saigon, the name still in use for this central district of what’s now Ho Chi Minh City. We’re on the last full day of our trip, and it hasn’t been a bad one.
Our couchsurfing host has provided us with palatial accomodations and been fantastically generous. It’s a little tricky to have to coordinate our schedules with him, resulting in having to nurse drinks or mess around on the Internet to kill time waiting for him once in a while, but it’s not bad.
Friday we arrived after a preposterous additional security search in HKG, where US airlines (even flying away from the US) are subject to the TSA’s baffling liquid regime. We had checked one of the backpacks to prepare for this eventuality, but it was still a pain. After everyone underwent the liquid screening, both of my travelmates got the magic SSSS on their boarding passes entitling them to additional screening on the jetty. Luckily for them, an on-time departure trumped security and they were waved past.
After wading through touts we found a recommended taxi company and made it in to town for the fair price of 60 Kdong. Not bad, though our glacially-paced set of buses in Hong Kong was around half the price.
Saturday was a day of hard-core sight-seeing. We saw the War Remnants Museum, the Presidential/Independence/Reunification palace, and the girls went motorbiking while I did a little more spelunking through old colonial buildings around the Notre Dame cathedral and post office. We also saw the Ben Thanh (sp?) market and crossed quite a few streets, which is something you might not think of as exciting if you haven’t been to Vietnam.
On Saturday we went for a package day-trip to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels. The Cao Dai temple is the Holy See of a local combination religion, and can only be explained by pictures (to come). The Cu Chi tunnels are a 200 km system of, well, tunnels, used first against the French and later against the Americans. We saw the traps, crawled through a section, and all the usual tourist stuff, in addition to taking bus rides on some more interesting roads. It was good to get out and see a bit of the countryside, though.
Today has been a day of chilling out so far. We had some iced coffee and sat/walked in the Botanical Garden for a while. But it’s about time to meet our host for lunch, so here I sign off.
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