michael keetman's blog

Day 1 - Saigon

The flight was very un-eventful. The food pretty standard, the lay over in Brunei possibly the most boring 3 hours of my life. My first taste of Saigon was a taxi from the airport to the hotel we had booked in advance. This was an interesting trip. There appears to be a set of rules, but I couldn't figure it out. It is more manic than what I experienced on the GT in Pakistan for those who understand that...

After enjoying a basic breakfast, James and I began our grand adventure by crossing a road. Now to explain crossing a road in Vietnam, it would be best to include a video, I don't have one right now, but make sure I share one when I get back. As far as we could tell, you simply put one foot in front of the other at a constant velocity. The bikes and cars simply flow around you.

The photo above sows a typical street. And yes, I did walk into that a number of times.

The main pupose of the day was to see Saigon by day. For us this meant the walking tour which would take us past a couple of museums, a palace, a couple of pagodas and finish with drinks on the roof of the Sheraton. So like I said, we started by crossing a road, and found ourselves walking up Pham Ngu Laos St, being pestered every five meters by gentlemen offerring motorbike or cyclo rides. We politely fended them off and kept gonig. We were on a mission to find some tours for the next day, and possibly find a genuine rolex or a lonely planet. I did end up getting ripped off by a kind lady, paying 120,000d for the latest Vietnamese version. I did haggle and managed to get 10Kd off!

We wondered through the streets and walked past a number of very grand hotels, an opera house, and finally made it to the old Presidents Palace, the Home of the Ho Chi Min museum. There wasn't a great deal in here, some interesting facts about the end of the War, and a model of the US Embassy as it was when they were evacuating their ambassador at the end of the War. They had on display a couple of "Liberated" tanks and F5 aircraft

This one came with a story of how a pilot with six days research and training flew the aircraft to successfully destroy a further 26 planes and cut off the US resupply path.

From the City museum, we promptly got lost, so we decided to get lunch. I had a Pho bo Vien, which is Rice noodle soup with meatballs. We ended up finding our way to the Re-unification palace. This place was pretty neat. Above ground it was all grand rooms, similar to how I would expect the white house to be. Below, however, was a labyrinth of tunnels connecting bomb shelters with military command and more. It was pretty neat being given a tour through the area, somthing I doubt I would be able to at the white house.

From here we went to the War Museum. In the courthard there were a collection of US tanks, artillery, and planes as well as ordinance and un-exploded bombs. Inside the musum itself the mood is very Anti-American (Why would that surpise me?) There was certainly no holding back on graphic images of what happened during the war.

At this point we were both very tired, having walked quite a bit further than we were supposed too, but still an excellent day. Tonight I am in the hunt for a TV showing the F1, but other than that, it will be a very quiet one. Tomorrow we have booked a tour of the Cu-chi tunnels. I am hoping I will get to fire my first gun, will be looking for the biggest one Neil!

Cheers, Michael!