Well upon arrival we got more Dong (Vietnamese money) and took a taxi to the backpackers area (Pham Ngju Lao) and walked into Sinh Cafe to book a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels for the next morning. Then, we walked across the street to Delta Adventures and booked a bus for Tuesday morning to Phnom Pehn, Cambodia (the capital city). We decided to a bus not a boat to save time. We will do a boat from Phnom Penh to Siam Reap (the launch city for Ankgor Wat). Then, we dropped our stuff (which we had been carrying/dragging along in the 90 degree weather with circa 90% humidity for about an hour) at the Yellow House Hostel and immediately headed out to the War Remnants Museum. This museum showed the Vietnam side of what they refer to as the American War. All I can say is, if you go to Saigon you must go, but you will feel awkward being an American there. While yes, the US committed a number of unthinkable atrocities, the other side was far from innocent. There are lots of Ho Chi Minh posters up and the museum opened September 4, 1975 – count it 4 months and 4 days after North Vietnam got control of the city. It had fetuses in jars who had died prematurely due to their parents exposure to some of the chemicals the US sprayed. It had lots of information about Mai Lai and another similar situations. Also, it had an interesting section about all the journalists and photographers who were killed during the war and showed the photos they died taking. The whole thing made me fairly pissed about Iraq – as the section about the build up to the war had many parallels. Now don't get me wrong, I support our troops 120%, and that is why I want/believe they need to be sent home now. Those stories and pictures showed what war does to people – it isn't pretty, it isn't glorious.
The museum gave us these numbers: 3 million Vietnamese died during the war, 2 million of whom were civilians. Another large number were injured or missing. Bottom line: War sucks.
Moving quickly along, after the museum, we were feeling the whole history thing so we headed to the Binh Soup Shop. This was the soup shop in Saigon that was near to a US army post where the entire wait staff was Viet Cong. It was from this soup shop they spied on US troops and overheard their conversations. It was hear that the Viet Cong planned the infamous Tet Offensive (for those of you who don't know what that is, open a history book or Wikipedia it – you should know the reference). Anyway, the man who owned it and allowed the Viet Cong to use it and received many a medals from the Viet Cong in return still works/lives there. He is older now, but he still sits there. Sarah, Nicole, and I got a picture with him. We ate their famous Pho (spicy- well you can make it spicy and I do- noodle soup with green onions, vermicilli noodles, and pork/beef/chicken – famous Vietnamese food that they eat mainly for breakfast) soup which I did proudly eat with chopsticks – Courtney I have gotten much better since PF Changs!!! We signed the guest book. Oh, and I got up the nerve to ask if we could go upstairs to see his medals and the secret meeting room where they planned the Tet Offensive and countless other battles, and they let us. So, we got to see that too!
Now, we were all pretty damn tired of the war, so we walked around the city a bit and ended up finding this ice cream parlor called Fannys that has an all you can eat ice cream bar the first Friday of every month – sadly we missed it by days. But, we had awesome ice cream / gelato including passion fruit flavored and a frozen mango stuffed with mango sorbet. Honestly though, how good does an all you can eat ice cream bar sound??? Pretty damn awesome to me.
Taxis in Saigon have better meters than those in Hanoi had. However, our first night we had a taxi driver take us on our first drive around. Aka where they know you don't know where you are going and therefore drive you around aimlessly and run up the meter. We caught on but it was too late, also, there wasn't much we could do- they speak very very little English in Saigon (surprising to me). Most tour places spoke some but we got numerous taxi drivers who spoke not a word of it.
Then, we had a quick night cap/beer at this Saigon Bar near our hostel where draft beers are 15,000 dong (about 90 cents). This bar also sells or exchange books – including Nancy Drew which I was excited about!<
This ended day one in Saigon. By the way, we did all that in about 8-9 hours. Phew.
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