Uncle Ho .....

Hi All
Today we had a fun packed day around HCMC aka Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. This place is a busy as Hanoi but its not just the thousands of motorbikes packing the streets, the whole place is on some sort of high speed journey as if its drunk a thousand red bulls or some sort of other stimulant!!!  Our first stop today was the Reunification Palace that was the South Vietnam Presidential palace prior to the 'reunification' of North & South Vietnam on 30th April 1975. The building is still in use by the government today, but some of the floors have been left as they were on that day as a memorial. This includes the two level basement bomb shelters. Next stop was the War remnants museum, which some friends had warned us would be quite sad, but in actual fact I found it pretty must a great big propaganda campaign and all had the desired affect in making me quite angry many towards the Americans. True these people suffered at the hands of the US and their use of chemical agents such as Agent Orange, but it was all a bit to brutal and obviously one sided to me. Anyone thinking of visiting should still visit as the second floor memorial exhibition created from the work by the photo journalists who died during the conflict. The photography was emotional and very raw a fitting tribute I thought.

To lighten the mood we finished off at the Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre, which even though the songs were all in Vietnamese was very entertaining. It was a bit like a neutered Punch and Judy on water............and very funny, plus all for less than a fiver for both of us... Bargain!

Our next post will be from the Mekong Delta as we are now off on a three day trip which concludes with a boat ride across the border into Cambodia.

Thanks for looking
Hugs
Sara xx